The Switch

I switched host families on Wednesday, December 29. My last host family was not working out, so I moved into a new family with two parents and a sixteen-year-old son. I no longer live in Tianjin’s Hexi District; I’m living in the Nankai District. So far I can tell that my new family is really nice, and I’m very happy here.

This family lives in a pretty neat part of Nankai District. I’m really close to Tianjin’s largest park, the Tianjin Water Park (it’s just a big park with lakes and nice views), the Tianjin Library, and there are many buses that come to the bus stop right in front of our apartment, so I can pretty much get to anywhere I want to go. I also live relatively close to the Tianjin Olympic Stadium, which was used to host the 2008 Olympic Games’ soccer matches. My school is only five bus stops away, so I can get to and from school pretty quickly. The only downside of this location is that the closest subway station is pretty far away. Tianjin’s subway is pretty bad though (as it’s unfinished and only has one line) so this isn’t a huge issue.

My host family has a cat named Mimi. I’ve never lived with a cat before and am not a cat person, so it was a little hard for me to get used to at first. The first night I slept here she climbed into my bed and scared me unbelievably much. I have no idea what breed (do cats even have breeds?) of cat she is, so I’m sorry if any of you cat-lover readers are curious. I’ve slowly gotten used to living with Mimi, but I’m pretty sure that she doesn’t like me very much.

My host family isn’t from Tianjin; they’re from Shanxi Province, where we will be visiting in a few weeks for the Chinese New Year! Because I just switched families, my new family is constantly feeding me to welcome me (of course they are). Everyday we eat Shanxi cai, or food from Shanxi Province. It’s pretty different from the food from Tianjin. We don’t often eat rice. Instead, we eat mantou, which I actually prefer. Mantou is translated into English as steamed buns, but other than that I don’t know how to explain it, so I refer you to Google or Wikipedia (or Baidu if you’re feeling brave enough to figure out Chinese characters!). Shanxi cai has a lot of vinegar in it.  I’ve also been told that it’s fairly common to eat donkey, and we’ve been eating that sort of frequently. There’s been a lot of soup, too. I’ve started eating these dumplings in a soup called Tangyuan (汤圆). While I’m almost positive that the soup part is just boiled water, these little dumplings are made out of rice flour and are filled with a type of peanut or red bean puree. They’re really sweet, fluffy, and taste great; however, China has changed my taste buds quite a bit. I am no longer able to eat that many sweets.

Today I went shopping for shoes at a mall. I apparently bought fake Nikes (when in China, right?) for the equivalent of ten US Dollars. My feet must be really big by Chinese standards because my shoe size was the largest one the store had. I think I tried on three different sizes. Anyway, as I was finishing trying on the largest size, the shopkeeper started telling me to go quickly because something was happening that I didn’t really understand. So I tried to start going faster but wasn’t absolutely rushing to my maximum ability, and then all of a sudden this woman completely freaks out. She was running around the maybe twenty square meters of the shop (“shops” in this mall aren’t really separated though, as there aren’t really any partitions between different sellers’ merchandise) talking extremely quickly, and so the only thing I could understand was “QUICKLY QUICKLY QUICKLY QUICKLY QUICKLY QUICKLY QUICKLY!” Then out of nowhere this man runs over and starts throwing these blue sheets everywhere trying to cover all of the shoes. The lady started freaking out even more (which I didn’t think was possible), so I just handed my money to her, and my friends and I quickly tried to leave. As we were leaving, we had to jump over one of these blue sheets and accidently knocked half of the shoes over. Woops. Luckily I was with a Chinese friend, so she explained to me what was happening. Apparently the female shopkeeper received a tipoff on her Walkie-Talkie that some government type person was on their way, and so she had to randomly just start hiding everything. I don’t understand why her neighbors didn’t hide their merchandise, considering it was all equally illegal. Regardless, it was a pretty hectic but interesting situation to experience.

Last Friday was my last day of school for the semester. My class has exams this week and class next week, but I won’t be in school for those two weeks! I am going to Shenzhen tomorrow for a YFU orientation, so I will try to update when I get back!