Chinese living

Wednesday in Shenzhen was rather quiet. I had an English lesson with Michelle, where I tried to do something a bit more entertaining than just talk about verbs, which she doesn't understand anyways. Instead we drew animals and described them and talked about what actions they were able to do. Michelle's favourite sentense is: "wauw, so beautiful!" She is lovely!
In the evening we yet again ventured to the cinema. This time we were watching a Hong Kongese movie. It was better than the Chinese one, for sure! It would have been even better if I understood anything of it as it was in cantonese with mandarin subtitles. Anyway, the thing I like most about going to the cinema is when the host family buys me either a milk tea, which I love so much, or a mini cup of Häagen-Dazs. Yum!

Friday turned out to be somewhat hectic. Before I continue let me inform you that the average temperature is 32 degrees and high humidity. So anyways Friday, I was sitting and chilling youtube, when Michelle came into my room and said: "Barbara, Barbara let's go!" I asked where. This was her reply: "It will be good!" So I grabbed my stuff and off we went .. to a theme park. In a gazillion degrees, with heaps of people and queues to everything. Fortunately, we only spent a couple of hours there. I was dying it was that hot.
I took Michelle home and waited for Elisa to ring us, because the same night we were going to the swimming finals of the Universiade.
We went for an hour in a taxi and it cost us 120 yuan, which is around 24USD. Pretty cheap if you ask me. I was really excited for the finals, seeing as I have never been to any major sporting event. There was a lot people there, most of them Chinese. Nor Denmark nor Hungary was represented at the finals, so I either cheered for Australia or New Zealand, occasionally a European country, mainly Italy. But then China was represented in one of the disciplines! Man, I have never seen anything alike. People we're jumping out of their seats screaming and yelling, and when she won a rush of joy went through the hall. It was amazing and scary at the same time. I guess the reason why I found it really scary is because I suddenly remembered everything I was taught in school about how the communists would treat their athletes. Impregnating girls so they would perform better, not paying them unless they won, not giving them food etc. I couldn't help but wonder if any of the above had been relevant for Sun Ye, the winner of 100m breast stroke.

Scary or not, I really enjoyed the competition. I took a few photos with my iPod, which I will try to upload later.

Friday morning Becky, an 18 year old girl who has been here since I arrived, left to go back to her hometown. She is a really nice girl, so I was rather sad when she left. Will, my host dad, went with her. Yesterday morning Elisa went to Guangzhou, leaving me alone with Michelle. I feel like she is my nanny and not the other way around. For a 9 year old girl she is incredibly independent! In the afternoon she decided that she wanted to go shopping. So we did. For her shopping is really just an excuse to go to the plaza and chat with whoever she meets. She is always asking people questions, and she is genuinely interested in .. well everything. We went into a magicians shop and stayed for 45 minutes while she was trying to learn a card trick. The good thing about her is that everybody loves her and think she is adorable.

While I have been here my host family has started to get to know me slightly better. For example they know that they can't tell me what I am going to eat. They let me try it or do as Becky did the other day, walked up to me and popped something in my mouth, which at first tasted a bit like pork rinds. Turns out I wasn't too far off. It was pork ears. It was alright, but after I learned what it was I didn't touch it. It wasn't that good.
The other day for breakfast we had "black eggs". It tasted alright, not much flavour really but it was good in the soup we had (yes, soup for breakfast is normal). Anyway, I googled it afterwards to find out what exactly it was. Click here to see what I ate.
I still don't get a whole lot of meat, but neither am I hungry. Yesterday we skipped breakfast and it didn't even bother me. Opposite to my days in New Zealand where I was hungry all the time. Whenever meat I like is served, I stuff my face like a greedy pig. Like the other day when we had KFC.

Another funny story that I have to share with the world is what I saw when we went to Toy'R'us yesterday. They have all of these toys on display that kids can play with. Michelle wanted to play with this swimming pool something for something like Duplo figures but not quite. It was meant for smaller kids, so there was a lot  of them playing with it. At one point a boy, who must have been only 2 years old, if not younger, who was sitting with his grandma, started weeing. See, they don't really use diapers here. They cut the kids pants instead, exposing everything. So the boy casually started weeing on the carpet in the toystore. Then, his grandmother turned him away so he would wee on the floor instead which resulted in his rays hitting not only his grandmother but other kids too. How's that for hygiene. I wonder if you see this anywhere else in the world.

Something else I have been thinking about, is how observed I feel. I am not talking about people in the streets, who obviously notice me because of my race, no, I am talking about the police and military who is on every corner. I am not even lying, they are everywhere, watching every single move you make, listening to every single word you say, and not just me, no the Chinese too. It's scary, but hey, I am guessing that's communism. The word "freedom" has been given a whole new meaning. I don't feel free, at all.

Sometimes I forget that I am caucasian which makes me wonder why people are staring at me.

And that's all for now!