Wednesday started off great because I was finally able to
figure out how to get breakfast in the guesthouse! The first few days here, I
ate the little food that I had brought from home, but eventually I needed to
figure out how to get the breakfast that is provided. On Tuesday I attempted to
figure out how the system works, but I was unsuccessful. The woman serving
breakfast in the morning doesn’t speak English, so communication was difficult
when she
was talking to me in Chinese and I was speaking to her in English. Neither of us understood
what the other was saying. Eventually, I gave up and decided to try
again another day. On Wednesday I went down stairs, but when I was faced with the same
problem a nice man came up to me and the lady serving breakfast and translated what
we were saying. It turns out that I need to stop at the front desk to get a
pass for breakfast every morning. I am so glad I have finally figured it out! On
Wednesday I began working more on creating a PowerPoint presentation for the
first two chapters in the book, Essentials
of Writing Biomedical Research Papers by Mimi Zeiger. In the afternoon,
Jiaqi took me to USTC’s English Learning Center to meet some other native
English-speaking people. I did not think this was necessary because I have been
communicating pretty well with the other students in the lab, but I went anyway
because I know that having another English speaking contact is a good thing for
me. Professor Xu and the other students in the lab have gone above and beyond
to make me feel comfortable and I have been so appreciative of all their
efforts! When we reached the English Center, we learned that we are unable get the contact
information of the faculty. Instead, Jiaqi and I waited in
front of
the office for one of the teachers to walk by so that I could stop them to talk. The only
American
teacher I saw walk in was an older man named George. After talking about
it, Jiaqi and I decided that we felt uncomfortable stopping people to find new
English-speaking
friends, so we went back to the lab.
On Thursday I woke up early
for the microencapsulation group meeting. During this meeting most of the
students give a brief description of what they have been working on in the past
week. There are 3 students chosen to give a detailed presentation of their work
for the 2 weeks prior. This meeting lasted all morning, and was difficult for
me to understand.
Though many of the slides were in English, there was a lot of discussion
throughout the presentation that was all in Chinese. After this meeting the
group went to lunch. Instead of getting rice and veggies like I normally do, I
decided to get noodles instead. The way lunch and dinner are set up I am
generally able to point to the dishes I want, and scan my card to pay for them.
I am so lucky that this process doesn’t require me to speak, because that would
make getting food a more difficult process. Unfortunately, getting noodles
required more communication with the individual working the station. I again
was faced with the situation where I was speaking to someone in English who
didn’t understand the language. I tried to motion what I wanted on the
noodles, but when the people around me started laughing, I took my food
and tried to find the other people from my lab. The other individuals were
saving us seats, and I had a lot of trouble finding them. When I finally did, I
was walking between tables to get to my seat and I spilled my food all over the
floor. Unfortunately, the embarrassment did not end there because
it is
much more difficult to eat noodles with chopsticks than it is to eat rice. After
taking a lot of pointers on how to eat my food, I finally figured out a method
that worked for me. Overall, it was a humbling lunch experience. After lunch I finished up my PowerPoint
presentation for Friday!
On Friday I spent my morning working on a BBS post. BBS is a
forum for all the students to give short updates on what they have been working
on. Since I had done a lot of reading throughout the week, I had a lot to
update the other students about. I went to lunch with the lab and afterwards went home to
rest before going back to the lab. Unlike students in the United States, Chinese students
generally take a nap after lunch until about 2:00pm. I have not gotten used to
this difference yet, and usually go back to the lab much earlier than the other
students. I also leave much earlier than the other students do at night. Some people
will stay in the lab until around 10:00pm. At around 2:30pm, I
had my presentation about word choice and sentence structure when writing
research papers. I think this book is very interesting because it has shown me how
many mistakes I make in my writing. There are a couple of students in the lab
who plan to study abroad in the United States and need to take the TOEFL (test
of English as a foreign language). I think that the presentation was very
beneficial for these students. Overall, it lasted about a half an hour and went
very well! I will be giving another one next Friday about paragraph structure
and writing an introduction. For dinner on Friday I went to the mall with a
couple of students I have met from working in the lab. This was the first time
I tried eating the marrow from a pig bone. As shown in the photo below, we were
given gloves to hold the bone, and a straw to eat the bone marrow.
During my stay in China I have seen a lot of food that I
would not see in the United States. Some of the different foods I have seen so
far are solidified pigs blood and chicken feet. There are also bones in most of
the meat that is served. The other students think that don’t like meat, but I
actually haven’t figured out how to eat it yet. Most of the other students are
able to eat the chicken meat and spit out the bones. Hopefully I learn how to do
this soon!
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Above is a photo of Kang Lin Lin and I at dinner on Friday
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This is a photo of Gan Qi and Ren Wenqi from dinner on Friday
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