24 Hours in Chengdu

So I guess I’ve officially finished my first 24 hours here in Chengdu. It should be noted that I spent a full 10 hours of that sleeping, since I unwisely decided to stay up all night in Bangkok. Or maybe it was wise and I will magically synchronize to China time with no jet lag effects (though common sense tells me that won’t be the case). 

I think the most important part of the journey for me, so far, has definitely been eating free food. They stuffed us full on the planes and we’ve eaten like crazy since we got here. The spread they gave us as a welcome dinner last night seemed to be calibrated to meet our sensitive Western palates, since everything was familiar and mild. It’s either that, or the gulf between Chinese and Chinese-American food is not as vast as is claimed. I am betting heavily on the former.

The first day is nothing if not a whirlwind. First we run through a course of Peace Corps staff, who are staggered in such a way as to lead us to the place where we will deposit our bags. As you can see below, 73 volunteers can manage to pack a LOT. 

 

They then ushered us on to two busses, where we were given a run-down of what would happened when we got to the hotel: go to the conference room immediately, have a quick training session, go pick up bags and a room key, get our first allowance, and then go grab a few quick immunizations. Wait, what? There is not one thing worse than surprising a pack of jet-lagged volunteers with shots. Hepatitis, Japanese Encephalitis, and Rabies. Those playing along at home will note that this isn’t the first time I’ve gotten the rabies shots, and let me tell you – they still hurt every time. 

 

After the fun of the shots, we got a chance to go back to our rooms and relax before dinner (the view from which you can see above). I’m sorry, did I say relax? I mean read through some pre-training materials. One again, they remind us that washing our food is a wise idea. They also left us some bottled water and bananas to snack on.

I mentioned the great banquet we went to – many, many familiar foods accompanied by the world spinning around me. I ducked out early and went up to the room and slept. I will never, ever feel bad about this decision.

This morning, we woke up and got our first Chinese breakfast:

Starting with the cauliflower and moving clockwise: green beans, eggplant, lotus root, some type of pickles, pork filled steamed bun, plain steamed bun, scallioned steamed bun. And yes, I just made scallion a verb. I could not be more delighted about the breakfast scene here – years of working restaurant bunches have rendered me reluctant to willingly eat any sort of traditional breakfast foods. Also: steamed buns. Who doesn’t love those?

We then got to go to six hours of class. Today was a little bit more centered around orienting us to the general policies and practices, and I think tomorrow is more of the same. I did find out where I will be completing my eight weeks of training though – Sichuan Normal University (SNU). It seems like they grouped us by our resumes – and somehow I am with the group of experienced teachers. It’s hard to believe that my year in my MA program even begins to qualify me, but I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe they’ll trade some of the TEFL training for extra language classes?? I move out to SNU and in with my home stay family on Thursday. I am really excited to get a chance to practice my fledgling language skills on them. 

For our lunch break, we went out with our language trainers, and I got to practice saying the only name of a Sichuan noodle dish I know – dandan mian. I’m just lucky that it’s delicious as well. So delicious, that a took this photo mid-stir, so it doesn’t look as lovely as it did when it first arrived. This is just noodles, pork, peanuts, and scallions luxuriating in a chili oil sauce. 

Then we got our first language class – mostly just practicing the phonetics of Chinese (we didn’t even get to the consonants today) and some introductions and greetings. My Chinese name is Jiang Yahan. It sounds suspiciously like a transliteration of my last name, Johnston. 

This afternoon then we spent some time wandering around – one of my fellow volunteers (and my name twin) had spotted a cute park earlier in the day, and so she took us there. The proliferation of lily pads did not help to make this move seem any less surreal, I have to say. But now I’m back in the room relaxing and getting ready for some evening explorations with my fellow volunteers. There have been rumors that karaoke is going to happen – so this could turn awful and/or hilarious. It remains to be seem.