Chinese Challenges

Jocelyn Writes:
Over the last couple of days we have been trying to establish a bit of a routine here in Xi'an's High Tech Zone---that's the name of our new neighborhood. Meals in the cafeteria and walks in the 'hood are among the activities that have become routine this first week. Below are Ayden and Gavi's blog entries on some of these routines. Also included are pictures of our visit to our neighborhood tea house with Wen Yi our tutor.

Fondly-Joc


Ayden Writes:

Hey y’all.
When they say hot they mean hot. Let me tell you what I am talking about. Last night at dinner we had rise, soup, pickles, beans, chicken and green stuff. I am going to tell you about the green stuff. It was green with different sizes of lettuce and HOT PEPPERS. I didn’t know what a hot pepper was. I was taking some of the green stuff when my fork came across a something that looked like a black piece of lettuce. My fork picked up the black thing and put it in my mouth. OH NO it was so spicy. My eyes turned red and started to tear, my nose started to drip, my mouth was bursting with pain and my hands were moving like crazy. I ran up stairs and got some yogurt. I was jumping up and down. I had a bad experience with hot peppers. Now I know what a hot pepper looks like I will never eat one again.
--Ayden

Gavi Writes:

Hey all,
I have been assigned the topic of traffic for today’s blog entry. First of all, for the time being, there isn’t a whole lot of it… but it’s Spring Festival so a lot of people are away with family, we will have to see what happens once the holiday is over. But, there is plenty enough to get used to even without a huge number of cars. For starters, unlike in Boston, (usually) the cars don’t stop, they swerve to accommodate you. When crossing small streets without walking signals, waiting for all the cars to stop before you cross is pointless, it will never happen. The easiest thing to do is to just walk into the street and the cars move around you. It is absolutely terrifying but I guess its just one of those things we will get used to.

Along with not bothering to stop for pedestrians the drivers here don’t seem to enjoy stopping at red lights, so a lot of the time they don’t. As my dad was saying earlier today, it seems like traffic laws here are more like traffic “requests” or “suggestions” that often aren’t responded to. However, all of these differences with cars can really be found in NYC and sometimes in Boston as well, the biggest difference is probably the bicycles.

Bikes here are used for quite a few things, from carrying ice from the sidewalk away to who knows where, to simply getting home from school. And in total, there are a lot of them. They are ridden mostly by men with women literally sitting sidesaddle on the back, sometimes carrying children. No one wears helmets. We haven’t actually seen anyone fall off yet, but I have a hard time believing that will last long. There are also a fair amount of bikes with big wooden crates attached to the back that are used to carry different things mostly by street cleaners. They look a little like truck beds, just on a bike. Along with bikes, there are also quit a few motorcycles and mopeds. Seeing as we have only been here 6 days I’m sure there will be more to report on traffic later on, hopefully not including anyone needing to be peeled off of the street.

More later,
Gavi