Studying and Food

Studying and food.  During my years of college I learned quickly that if you have the first, you're going to need the second.  I found that to never be more true then here.  Actually, if you want the second, you better do the first.  Well the past two weeks I have spent a lot of my time studying the fascinating...and frustrating language they call "Mandarin."  I am now to the point that I can walk into a restaurant, greet the person, ask them how their days in going, order, pay, and tell them I'll see them again all in Chinese.  This isn't the extend of my language learning, but probably the most important part.

I just had to take a picture of this...outside of our tutoring building we found notes GLUED to our bike seats...like using Elmer's glue...who does that?  The best part is that the notes were in Chinese characters.  Remember, I said this was outside the building where we get tutored.  We later found out that it was telling us we couldn't park there, but the owner said just to ignore it.  We came out the next day to find the same scene...oh well.

This is where all the mental sweat takes place each day.

Here is the wonder worker herself, Sherry, or as we call her 神秘的瀑布 (which means Mystic Waterfall).  We gave ourselves nicknames too.  I'm 红龙 (Red Dragon) and Andrew is 小猫 (Baby Cat).  Hey don't judge, you have to do something to make it fun.

Speaking of fun, I have some pictures from one of our study breaks.

We went to an 8-story electronic store called, "Computer City."  Of course inside that "electronic" store we found a military surplus section.  What electronic store doesn't have one?

We worked ourselves up an appetite while scaling up each of those floors so we headed across the street afterwards to grab some KFC.  Yes, this Kentucky born man was pretty excited that his first "foreign meal" was going to be from Kentucky Fried Chicken.



We decided that we would get the "Family Meal" since those were usually pretty big back in the states...not so much here.  Families are quite smaller here, both in amount of members and size of members.  It came with 3 drinks (good there were 3 of us), about 10 tiny pieces of chicken (which isn't TOO bad), 2? tiny rolls (huh?), and one very small piece of corn on the cob (ha ha, no seriously what?). Needless to say I was in need for a little more substance.  So, I ordered myself a side of mashed potatoes with gravy.....

Yes, I do have big hands...but no THAT big...

The worst part, that was the most expensive meal I've had since arriving here.  Here are some more familiar faces that I am a little apprehensive about investigating. 

We also have a good number of Starbuck's.  You can easily pay between 1 and 3 US dollars for a big meal around here, but somehow Starbuck's is selling coffee for 4 and 5 bucks a cup? Go figure.