First weekend of language training

• I’m so good at making friends with Asian women 7-10 years older than m
• For two consecutive nights (Thursday and Friday) I’ve managed to have hour long conversations and get QQ numbers (the Chinese version of instant messaging) from woman who are not that noticeably older than me but you can tell they’ve been out of college for awhile
• The first lady was a “Free Spirit” type who was in Kunming on travel after quitting her job as a company photojournalist
• The only reason I started talking to her was because I was practicing pronouncing the pinyin “sh” and “x” which are very close to each other and she came over and helped me
• And when I say, “I had a conversation with her” it was more like half of it was spoken word and half was on google translate
• It was a good conversation though because for half an hour we looked at her pictures of her travels around China and now I have some new photo pose ideas to use
• The second lady was a lady at the hostel who was an English tutor/manager of the hostel
• I went to the “Chinese Corner” they have here at the hostel in order to figure out how to translate my phone now that I have it switched to Chinese characters in order to immerse myself in the language
• I feel I made a pretty good friend because she even let me borrow her dictionary which had all of the names of fruits and vegetables I would find at a grocery store in English (which I now have to translate into Chinese so when I’m shopping at Carrefour I actually know what I’m getting this time)
• When I asked her how I would return the book she said, "Oh I'm a manager here so I'll just go to your room and get it from you and if you're not there I'll just use my key to find it" which didn't really sit that well with me when I heard it but then I thought about all of the cleaning ladies that come in and out of my room when I'm not there and I thought I guess it's not that bad the manager can come and go as she pleases
• Learned a lot of useful phrases in language school
• Now when someone asks me in Chinese why I’m doing Teach for China I actually have a Chinese answer, “每个孩子都应该有机会” Měi gè háizi dōu yīnggāi yǒu jīhuì or “Every Child Deserves A Chance”
• Now I also now to say something that happens to me a lot in China, “我迷路了” Wǒ mílùle or “I am lost”
• On Saturday morning we learned some lessons in emergency Chinese
• I guess they don’t think we’re going to go all American and say, “I’m going to beat the hell out of you when I catch you!” if someone steals our bag but it is nice to know how to call someone a petty thief
• It was also nice to know that if I ever cut myself bleeding I know the difference between calling an ambulance (120) and the police (110) but I still need to figure out how to actually talk to them in Chinese so I'm hoping that the Chinese government is really good at tracking cell phones
• I need to build up my alcohol tolerance if I’m going to do well in business in China
• I overheard one of the fellows talking about how at a business meeting in China they bring beer and  they like to target the weakest drinker so they’ll say, “I’ll toast to Bruce” and I and the guy (or girl) will have to drink
• Well they do this so many times that (if it's me in this case) I will pass out and they won’t stop until I pass out
• I think this is common because I remember one guy talking about the Chinese idea of a drinking game is, “basically we drink until the first guy passes out”
• Another guy added, “Well the medical bills are probably so cheap here that it’s not that big a deal”
• Awesome hiking brought to us by the staff of TFC
• So instead of a full day of classes our TFC BLAST institute took us out hiking to Dragon Gate which is on the outskirts of Kunming and you can see the entire city from the top
• Besides the guy who tried to commit suicide on the train tracks on the way to Dragon Gate it was an awesome trip with the highlight being 3 of the fellows busting out singing "Monster" by Kanye West in front of the cable car entrance
• Oh, and this kid who had a star carved into his hair

• And these guys were pretty awesome who just set up their food carts right on the train tracks (which were still in operation)

• And here are some actual photos of the park

• Then you know this guy must have been awesome to have a flying tiger put on his gravestone

• Sunday was Chinese, Chinese, Chinese…
• Today I reviewed all 31 lessons of the pronunciation of Chinese Pinyin characters
• It took me 4 hours total but about half an hour of that was laundry Chinese style (in a sink with soap) and another half an hour was a mid-study nap in order to recover from the sheer amount of information regarding where my tongue, lips, and teeth should be in regards to producing the right sound
• Sightseeing in Kunming
• Yuantong Temple
• It’s the cheapest Buddhist temple I’ve been to in China (6 RMB) and it was actually a really nice and beautiful place

• The one thing I really liked was all of the turtles this place had

• • The only thing that robbed it a little was the sheer amount of renovation that was going on
  • I thought that if you have a 1000 year old temple you don’t really want to mess with the woodwork

• Kunming Zoo
• Next time I go here I’m bringing peanuts because I don’t want to be the only one there not feeding the animals
• My favorite was this little kid whose parents put him over the guardrail separating the public from the monkey cage, gave the kid a peanut, told him to go feed the monkey, and a monkey fight broke out right in front of the kid

• It is the kind of zoo you see PETA protesting but it was still really cool
• Some of the zoo honestly reminded me of American prisons but the peacock park was my favorite place because the peacocks will literally walk right up to you and you can pet them

• Watch out for the puddles
• I was walking around and I noticed all of these little puddles and although it rained I thought it didn’t rain enough to make standing puddles
• Then I saw all of the little kids running around with the classic Chinese kiddy pants that run across the places where the sun is not supposed to shine on and I concluded, “Oh man, these kids are publicly urinating in the zoo”
• 发票 (Fapiao) Paradise
• So it has been a little bit of a struggle complying with TFC’s meal reimbursement policy that I have to get a 发票 (official government tax receipt) everywhere I go because few restaurants have them because these restaurants don’t want to pay any higher taxes than they have to and the government can’t cover 1.4 billion people that effectively
• TFC does allow us to get replacement 发票 which is a tax receipt from any type of store (like a zoo ticket) that if we use this replacement 发票 and show the receipt of the restaurant with it then we’ll be reimbursed
• Rolling in the 发票
• So each ticket to the zoo costs 15 RMB and I noticed that some people were just throwing away their ticket and I thought, “Hey, if I get their zoo ticket then I can get a meal worth 15 RMB at a restaurant that gives receipts but no 发票 and get reimbursed for it” so I started asking people for their zoo tickets
• In the end, I got 590 RMB worth of 发票 so now if I eat at a restaurant that illegally doesn’t have 发票 then I’m ok because I have all of these zoo tickets and everyone (me, TFC, and the Chinese government) is happy
• I don't get a spirit animal
• So most of the fellows got assigned a spirit animal based on their physical characteristics (one person got a dog for facial construction reasons) or personality traits
• I didn't get one because I remind people of a migrant worker during the Great Depression who leaves their family to go find work to support them
• This only came up when I came back from Carrefour with 2 boxes of breakfast crackers
• I didn't have any hands available and I had an umbrella so I just slipped the handles for the boxes into my umbrella and flipped the umbrella on my shoulder so when I walked into the hostel I looked like I had a satchel on my stick and therefore it came up that I reminded people of said migrant worker