America

America - that is the best word I can think of to describe the day today.

Hot Pot Skewers

But first yesterday. We were all reminded of the lovely Seattle when it decided to rain ALL day here. Literally all day. Wind included - a small taste of the fall at home. We all took it as a lazy day and everyone slept for most of the day or just laid in bed being lazy. A few people went to the bookstore for 15 minutes or so, just to get out of their rooms! It was that bad. For dinner we went to the infamous hotpot once again, but this time instead of throwing everything in the pot, you cook it on skewers. Big skewers were .75 kuai which works out to be about 12.5 cents in USD and the small skewers were .20 kuai which works out to be about 3 cents in USD. While that sounds cheap, if you're one of the boys it sure adds up. (54 skewers for one of them!) I also managed to get a bowl of rice for 1 kuai, which works out to be 15 cents. Needless to say food here is CHEAP! At least Chinese food is, local food. I then wandered around with two of my Chinese friends and almost got hit by a car while on the sidewalk... Tell me how that works?? Many people park on the curb, it's technically illegal I've only seen once police officer write a ticket so far. The cops here just don't care it's crazy! Once again my cold kept me in last night, so while many of my friends went out to Jellyfish, the foreigners bar, I had to stay back and ended up hanging out with some other people. I am so over this cold!!! The stuffy nose is gone, but the cough is now here and knowing my luck, it's here to stay for a while.

Brain and Blood.... The boys are crazy!

Anyways today! The day began with football, ended with Mexican food. That should say a lot right there. Let me start from the beginning.

Our friend Teddy, aka T-Money, is a friend of our resident coordinator and works in advertising and marketing I believe somewhere over here. Anyways, he decided to try to start an American football team and it quickly became a hit with some guys at our University. So he invited the American boys to come and play American football, imagine that? So he got a van and took all of us over there, Americans and Chinese included. We went to a school outside of the city a bit to another university, a really nice one at that. Apparently they usually practice right down the street from Sichuan University but it's under some construction this week. But getting to venture out and see the suburb areas of the city was fun! And just getting out of the dorm since I was sick for two days. The guys have the padding, the helmets, and everything. It was hilarious and awesome all at the same time.

The Football Team and Cheerleaders

So then where do us girls fit in? Well what would football be without cheerleaders? (Que the laughing... now!)  Our cheer coach is a coach from Germany. Her husband works for VW and had to move to Chengdu for work, so she picked up and moved with him, along with their two adorable little kids. She ran across an ad or info or something in the magazine "Go Chengdoo" which is an activity magazine for Chengdu and now she is the cheer coach. Funny thing is, I've never cheered, my roommate Texie has never cheered (though she was a gymnast), and T-Money's friend July has never cheered, yet there we all were. We are two of the least girly-girl girls here, so the fact that we were cheerleading was hilarious all in itself. The first thing she had us do was an elevator lift. July was the smallest so she became our flyer. We got a two minute tutorial on how to lift her securely and safely, then we were off and running. Oh and the best part was, it was all over cement! Not only were we trying stunts on the first day but we were doing it over cement. Texie and I just couldn't make eye contact because every time we did, we would bust up laughing from how crazy it all was. We also threw July into the air and cradle caught her, and fully extended our arms up with her standing on one foot. It was interesting to say the least. We also all got interviewed and got our pictures taken by the local newspaper, so us and the football team are going to be in the paper next week.

Cheerleaders!

After all of this, a few of us wandered off to go find food while the boys were all playing football. We found a couple food shops after accidentally walking into the Muslim cafeteria in which you had to have a student card, whoops! Texie and I shared some weird noodles and rice, while the other two had fried rice with eggs, it tasted just like the kind you get in the takeout section at the grocery store, like Safeway takeout. SO GOOD! While I was eating I could see into the back room/kitchen, which turns out is also the butcher shop sort of. I saw a plucked chicken laying over an older ladies lap and then heard a lot of pounding and cutting, I'm sure it goes without saying, I'm really glad we didn't order chicken. I don't think I could have stomached it.... We were going to order chicken too, but changed it at the last minute! It was definitely an experience to say the least.

The courts and the boys I played
basketball with!

While we were waiting for the van, we had an hour and a half or so to kill, so me and two of the other guys decided to go join the Chinese students on the basketball court. There were at least 50 or so courts, they went back as far as I could see, who knew it was such a popular sport here! We convinced them to play a full court game and when they needed a 10th person, for some weird reason they turned to me. So I played pick up basketball on a team with 2 Chinese students and two guys from our group against 5 Chinese students. I don't think girls really play sports here, so slowly a crowd began to form. Not only were there Americans, which always draws a crowd here, but there was a girl playing... an American girl. It also didn't help that it was New Student Orientation so many students were taking campus tours and stopped to watch our basketball game. I can tell you, those boys underestimated a girl though. I scored 3 out of our 5 baskets, we played games to 5 points so that we could rotate out, and one of my shots was even a 3 pointer. I got lots of cheers and claps from the audience watching which was funny. They didn't underestimate me for the next two games after that. It was pretty fun and quite hilarious as well.

Our bus finally showed up after us being there for four hours 15 smelly people, football helmets and pads included were stuck in this van. On the drive home we got stuck in city traffic, much worse than Seattle. There are 14 million people after all And why there was so much traffic on a Sunday, I have no idea. The best part of the traffic we saw was the guy driving on the wrong side of the rode in traffic. One wheel was up over the curb in the grass, the other on the road, going against traffic. And it was right in front of a police officer, who by the way, did nothing!!!! But once he got to the spot he wanted to make a u-turn at, there was a sign and he was stuck and couldn't go anywhere. That is something that we would see on COPS or something back in the states. There were also people getting out of their cars and walking because it was faster than driving. It was an experience all in itself.

After the bus ride, we all caved and had American/Mexican food for dinner. We went to a restaurant called Peter's Tex-Mex - a Texas style American restaurant. They start out giving you a small bowl of kettle corn as the beginning of your meal. They had cheeseburgers, french fries, wraps, salads, jalapeno poppers, enchiladas, steak, etc. I had enchiladas with beans and rice. The weird thing was, all of the food had a

The Restaurant!

Chinese twist so it all tasted a hint like Chinese food. The cheese was weird on the enchiladas, the beans were spicy and we weren't sure what was in them, even the bacon on the club sandwich was a little bit odd. The french fries were amazing and according to the boys so were the poppers.  Most of the boys got over excited with their food and ate wayyyyyy too much! Eating greasy American food is just strange and hurts your stomach a bit after eating Chinese food for two weeks straight. The meals are smaller and it is all noodles, rice, meat, and dumplings. We are definitely planning on going back there in a few weeks, but lesson learned - don't eat so much!!!!!!

Sun and blue skies!

                 The weather though was beautiful. Apparently Chengdu only gets a few days of blue skies a year, and today was one of them. It was beautiful. Most of the guys got fried and were crazy sun burnt, all looking like tomatoes. The blue skies were nice and refreshing, reminded me a little bit of home!!

The rest of the night we took to shower and relax, we were all exhausted from the days activities and some people had classes on Monday. Overall it was a great American day!

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We also met our Taiwanese neighbors that live on our floor, there are about 8-10 of them and they are all so cute and nice! All of their "English names" range from Hank, Judy, Jimmy, etc. The names that people here choose aren't common American names, they are all slightly old fashioned in a sense, it's kind of funny. Anyways, off to dinner.

Entrance to the bathroom!

Adios