I seem to be having trouble posting pictures on Blogger, so I'm posting them all on my windows live account.
Chongqing is famous for being one of the hottest cities in China. It was 37 degrees yesterday. Thankfully, it hasn't rained in over a week, so the humidity was bearable. Sometimes the climate here is practically tropical. My skin reacted pretty badly to the humidity and pollution at first, but it seems to be calming down now. And, thankfully, nearly all the buildings and dorm rooms here are equipped with a functioning air conditioner. We also have a private bathroom with a flush toilet, which I'm quickly realizing is a real luxury here.
I really like the campus. It's quite large and has all the amenities - there are a few cheap restaurants and snack bars, several markets and shops scattered around where we can buy pretty much everything we need, a post office, two libraries, three banks and a hair salon. It's also really beautiful here - there are plenty of trees and they let them grow out a nice big canopy to provide shade during the hot summer months, so the effect is quite lush and exotic. There are gardens and courtyards around the campus with cute little stone tables and stools to sit at. The campus has a fleet of small, open-sided electric buses that ferry people around at a cost of one Yuan per person, or about 17 cents, and zipping around the narrow, winding streets through the dense overgrowth feels like some kind of safari. The surrounding scenery is beautiful, too. Chongqing is surrounded by lumpy, green, mist-shrouded mountains, exactly like in the classical Chinese paintings.
In the next month we'll be having one three-day holiday and one week-long holiday, and I'm thinking of hopping a train to do some sightseeing. People tell me that Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) is typically a four- to six-week vacation, so I'm making some travel plans. I've got a friend in Tokyo I really want to see, so that's the priority. There are also loads of students here from Vietnam and Thailand and I'm getting to know some of them, so hopefully by spring I'll have an invitation or two to come visit with them!
Anyway, here are the highlights of my trip so far: on the first day, I woke up to find a spider bigger than my hand on the ceiling above my head. Last weekend I tried Chongqing's famous signature spicy hot pot for the first time - tasty, but it's just so much oil! The supermarkets here are amazing and shopping for food to cook at the dorm is actually more fun than eating in restaurants. The dollar goes pretty far here, and I can fill a shopping bag with tasty eats for under five bucks. In the "leisure foods" aisle you can find a variety of potato chips with flavours like blueberry, lemon tea, cucumber, sour fish soup, and "vigorous and refreshing numb and tingly hotpot." Yesterday I ate fresh durian (I'd had durian before, but it's shipped frozen and tastes different), which, for those who haven't tried it, is a truly phenomenal fruit that has a rich, creamy texture and a complex flavour that tastes like a combination of avocado, pineapple, cheese, and onions. Everyone here is super friendly and curious about foreigners, and it's really easy to make friends.
I am a little homesick, and I'm experiencing a bit of culture shock, but I'm having lots of fun here and I'm adjusting fine. The three things I miss most (besides my friends and family, of course): my bike, privacy, and electric dryers. We're lucky enough to have a washing machine in our dorm, but hanging things to dry really sucks in this wet climate.
Chinese word of the day:
旅行 Lǔxíng
To travel
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