After getting my luggage I sat down and waited for my host mum to come pick me up. The Shenzhen bay doesn't open until 8, so I had to wait quite a while. She finally found me and had brought Michelle too, my new little sister. She is adorable!
After brekky in the airport we headed to China. It is not easy to get in to this massive country. An older passport photo is enough to cause three policemen running around you, looking at you from every angle to see if it is really you on that photo, or if you are just some imposter trying to get into China. After having been checked from left to right and from every possible angle, they finally decided that it was me on the photo and I was allowed into Shenzhen. Yay!
It was so hot and I was wearing my jeans and flannel shirt from when I departed Melbourne.
Shenzhen is host to the summer universiade this year and they have posters everywhere with the mascot UU. There is therefore also a lot of tourists, but I still only see asians everywhere. Whenever you see a caucasian you smile and nod. We finally got to my home for the next three months.
My host family is absolutely lovely, but they really don't speak a lot of English. Sometimes communication goes through a translating programme on their iPads. They each have an iPad even Michelle, who is just 9 years old. Welcome to China!
I was really scared at first, when an older lady entered my room, which by the way is purple ( ..), but then I learned that she is just the cleaning lady, who comes everyday to clean the house. The family also has a chef to prepare all of their meals for them. Very different from what I have ever been used to.
I was really scared at first, when an older lady entered my room, which by the way is purple ( ..), but then I learned that she is just the cleaning lady, who comes everyday to clean the house. The family also has a chef to prepare all of their meals for them. Very different from what I have ever been used to.
My first evening in China, my host family took me to a very fancy buffet restaurant to introduce me to Southern Chinese cuisine. You can tell that Shenzhen is the gateway to the Western world. In the restaurant you'd have forks next to chopsticks, which a first time tourist may not pay attention to, but when you have travelled around China, you know that this is a very rare.
The Chinese culture is so different and it has been one big culture shock. Smacking is not considered rude. In fact the louder you smack the better. Spitting on the street is just a casual Chinese thing. Be careful where you walk, I almost had a Chinese lady spit on me today. It is so weird though, because women walk around in fancy dresses and nice shoes, but spit as if they were men.
Another thing I have to get used to: I am too masculine for this country. When my host family realised that I didn't bring any dresses with me they almost fainted. How can you be a girl without having any dresses?
Observation no. 4: the Chinese are dead on honest. I showed my host mum some photos from New Zealand, to which she said: you are fat. Thank you! So then she said: you must lose weight.
Which, to be frank, I probably will too. They eat a lot of fish here and I am not too fond of seafood, so I don't really get any meat.
Saturday they took me rafting. I was the main attraction for our fellow rafters. Basically how it works is that a bus takes you up a hill from where you jump into a rubber boat and follow the water stream down to the bottom. It takes about an hour and you get wet and bruised, but it is so much fun! Safety is low, so you either survive or you don't, pretty much. You end up in flat areas where you have to wait to be pushed further down, and this allows time for water fights. Being non-asian I was, of course, targetted by everyone. This girl yelled: WELCOME TO CHINA, where after she splashed water in my face. But I just laughed. I just think they are cute!
The same night we had duck tongue for dinner. At first I was slightly disgusted, but then I tried it and I loved it!
I still haven't adjusted completely to life here. However, the family makes it really easy to feel at home. Michelle has become like my little sister. She takes good care of me and always remembers to ask if everything is okay.
Even though the first couple of days have been a bit hard, I am sure that I will have a wonderful time in China. Especially now that I have my blog, youtube and facey!
peace out
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