Another rainy day…
For the third day in a row, it was cold and rainy. Here are two immediate problems with that: wet pants, particularly jeans, are very difficult to dry quickly when you don’t have a dryer. Also, rainy weather is very conducive to napping, even in China. So, after returning from teaching another section of the viewing, listening and speaking class, which did not go as well as yesterday, it was time for Skype and a nap. Beautiful. Anyway, so after a sufficient nap, my hope was to successfully obtain a cafeteria card. Nope, the office wasn’t open again today. So, David, Havvah and I decided to venture out around some of the area around campus. We walked for a few miles and pretty much saw a lot of the same things: random convenience stores, hole-in-the-wall restaurants and other odd businesses. Yesterday we finally saw signs of other foreigners, but the majority of Kunming is made up of locals. Such was the case where we walked. It was definitely true China. I will say that sometimes this is not very appealing. For example, small children wearing split pants instead of diapers, in addition to many other sanitation issues makes a clean freak like myself absolutely neurotic and spastic. But, that’s just me. For all of the things that make me cringe in China, I try to be open to them and hold hope that there will always be one awesome moment in the day, either meeting someone new, positively interacting with locals or even seeing something beautiful, that will make up for the not-so-good things. My goal is not to love China, but have an appreciation for it.
In our trek out, we decided to have supper at a place that David tried on the weekend. I will say that this was an amusing dinner as it included the Chinese version of mashed potatoes (mashed, then fried in oil), zucchini fries, Pabst Blue Ribbon and watching American cartoons dubbed into Chinese. Just another day in China 
Tags: Travel
