Status Report #1

I arrived yseterday! My host family is great! My dad is an engineer, and my host mom is in finanace. Right now there is a three day holiday in China, it's called the moon festival or the Mid Autumn Festival. When I arrived my little brother helped me unpack all my stuff, all the while commenting on the stuff I brought. Their Chinese is hard to understand, so now I realize how much I have to improve. But when they speak slowly I can definitely understand most of what they are saying. My host mom made a huge dinner for me, and I have attached a picture of this. She was very proud of what she cooked and I was sure to complement her cooking. Because if you don't eat alot and comment on how good the cooking is I could have been considered rude. After that they said that they wanted to buy me a cell phone, so we walked to the cell phone store...it was about a 10 minute walk and it was night so everything in the city was alll lit up. I got stares from people but you just glance at them and they quickly turn away. As far as I could tell I was the only foreigner on the streets. There are police boxes everywhere! China really is a police state. There is even a specific one for our apartment building. And at the hotel in Shanghai guests have to check in specifically with the hotel's police informer so the police can know of your location. I think because we were a big group they already had something prearranged. I was in Shanghai before I met my host family. It was an orientation for the exchange students from all the 22 countries that came to China.
Anyway, almost everything that is sold commercially in China has the seal of the Beijing olympics on it! Even the boxes of milk that my host family drinks! Many advertisements show Chinese Olympians holding something and smiling, you can even buy Olympic tracksuits that are supposed to be replicas of the athlete's uniforms! Oh and if a company want's to make their product sound ultra spiffy they call it a "Gold Metal [Product Name Here]" It's very interesting.
The bathroom that my host family has told me to use is particularly special. It has a squat toilet and a shower with a drain that should be down hill, but is up. The shower is in the room and not seperated by anything so sometimes the qater flows into the squat toilet. The squat toilate is basically a porcelain bowl in the floor that is flushed by a button on the wall. I am scared to use it, but I am sure I will adjust. Also my host family has a special sink for washing socks and underwear, but everything else goes into the washer and is hung to dry on a rail outside the living room window.
It's funny because you'd think that the place I am living is a dump from the outside but the inside of the apartment is actually really nice, the floors in the living room, hall, bathroom, kitchen, and dinning area are marble, while the rooms have shiny dark wood flooring.
Tomorrow school starts and this morning my host dad took me to buy a bus pass and took me on the bus to and from school to get me ready for tomorrow. Chongqing has the craziest drivers! Ah! Let's just say pedestrains don't have the right of way, and drivers love horns more than they love their turn signals. And there are hardly any street lights so sometimes crossing the street is a bit like frogger. Last night crossing the street was the scariest thing of my life!
Public places are filthy, while private spaces are pristine (because it reflects character if they aren't clean). Buses are particularly dangerous because they go a bajillion miles an hour and they are kinda gross.
But so far I am having a really good time. The language barrier is difficult but my host parents and brother make an effort to get their point across, I do to. We use drawings, gestures, sound affects and the little English that can be mutually understood.
I wonder how my fellow exchange students are doing (118 in all of China, 11 in my city, 5 at my school). Supposedly I knew the most Chinese out of all 118, some didn't even bring phrase books or dictionaries! I can't imagine how they can even get by!
Anyways I just helped my brother with is 3 sentence English "essay" which wasn't so bad