First Impressions

Apartment

By 1am on January 18th, we finally arrived at our cute new apartment, tired but excited! We are on the 6^th floor of a 12-floor apartment building, and the apartments are in a square, with a courtyard in the middle. When I think of an apartment, I tend to picture a series of rooms: a bedroom, a living-room and a kitchen. We have a kitchen-bed-living-room apartment. We do have a door between the bathroom and the rest of the apartment though, which we have been told is extremely rare and we are lucky to have. Even though it is small, it is comfy and cute. I love it! Though if we had a big fight, we couldn't exactly stomp from one room to another and slam the door. All-in-all though, the apartment is perfect!

Our landlord is a sweet old man named Mr. Zhou who is eager to teach us Mandarin in exchange for English lessons. He stops by every few days with his Mandarin-English translation book and teaches us some basic Mandarin. We point to things such as ear, mouth, table, map, cup and say them in English, and then he says their Mandarin translation. He also asks us a few questions in English, such as how old we think he is, so that he could practice his English. So far we've picked up the basic greetings, a few phrases for food, some pronouns and verbs, and can form a few very basic sentences. We still have a long way to go though before we will be able to even carry on a simple conversation.

Nanjing City

I love Nanjing! It is basically just a gigantic city, not unlike Toronto, with skyscrapers, a plethora of restaurants and shops, and LOTS of people. It does contain the questionable fashion choice of teenage-boys-sporting-uggs though. There are other minor cultural differences of course, including that it is culturally acceptable for a man to walk down the street and hock a giant loogie directly in front of you. Its also commonplace to be walking along and then see a small child pop a squat on the sidewalk and pee. Once, while trying to take a shortcut around a throng of people, I found myself face-to-face with a stream of pee coming from a little girl. Stuck between a row of cars on one side, a row of tightly packed bicycles on the other, and a long line of people behind me who had the same shortcut idea as me, I had no choice but to step over the pee.

People also tend to be aggressive and pushy here. If someone is in your way in the supermarket, you don't wait patiently for them to move so you can get past, or try and catch their eye to give them a get-out-of-my-way look, instead you just push them out of the way. You also have to always be on the lookout while in lineups as people will spot any small opening in the line and push directly in front of you. Coming from a country where we apologize when someone brushes against us, constantly being pushed around by people is a bit of an adjustment. After being butted in front of quite a few times in the last week, I've finally learned how to hold my ground and push back if necessary. People also drive the same way they walk, meaning aggressive, pushy and sometimes quite scary. They cross 3 lanes of traffic sideways without blinking an eye and drive by sound, by beeping their horns.

People on the street also have no qualms about grabbing things out of your hand if they feel you are using them wrong, which can or cannot be helpful. For example, our boss has a 4-month old son that he carries around strapped in a frontal carrying pouch. Many people here disagree with this method of carrying around a baby, so they will come up to him and grab his baby out of the pouch to try and show him the appropriate way to carry it. We've also had this happen with our bike locks. We were tying them on a certain way when a lady came up to us, grabbed the locks out of our hands and re-did them for us.

Language

The language has also also been an adjustment, as basically everything is in exclusively Mandarin. Pinyin, Mandarin written in the Roman alphabet, is also common. But since we don't know Mandarin, seeing it spelt out in our letters doesn't help much. A supermarket holds much guesswork, attempting to determine whether the product that we are holding is in fact what we are looking for. The average Nanjingite doesn't know a word of English either, so asking employees is out. I even found out that trying to ask employees will just result in apprehensive stares for the rest of the shopping trip. If we want to buy anything that involves either asking questions or be given directions for use (such as a cell phone), our boss sends a translator along with us. Without the translator, we just point to stuff we want to buy and hope that it is actually what we think it is. Instructions for everything is also in Mandarin, such as the washing machine, microwave and oven in our apartment, so again, the translator has come in very handy.

Food

The food here is delicious and cheap! You can get a bowl of fried rice or noodles, which makes a fantastic meal, for 5-10 Y ($1.50 CAD or £1). Being vegetarian in China has proven to be difficult as it is practically unheard of here. The first restaurant we went to was Muslim. When Ami tried to order me a dish without meat, they didn't understand and thought I wanted duck. It took him quite a few minutes to explain that I actually wanted no meat at all. By the time he had gotten them to understand what I wanted, the entire staff was there, kitchen staff included, laughing and staring at me like I was insane. When the veg-rice and veg-noodle dishes came out though, they were surprisingly good.

We have also both become bubble tea addicts. For those who haven't tried it, bubble tea consists of a cup of milk and tea with jelly tapioca pearls at the bottom. It is delicious warm or cold, anywhere, at any time. James, whose first bubble tea experience was here in China, has quickly become as avid a bubble tea drinker as me.

All-in-all this has been a fantastic experience so far and I can't wait to see what else there is to come!

**I can't seem to load pictures onto this site, so here is a link to a flickr account with the photos that go along with my post. Hopefully this will only be temporary until I can figure out how to load them onto here. http://www.flickr.com/photos/75304312@N04/