Home Visit Weekend

This past weekend was our home visit program. Each American student was supposed to go home with their roommate so that we could experience a Chinese family. Well, most of the girls' roommates lived too far away, and all of the guys have American roommates, so everyone actually ended up going to someone's house in town just for dinner. But my roommate, Lu Ye, only lives 30 minutes away so I went to her house for the weekend.

On Saturday afternoon I left the dorm to head to the train station. I first had to stop and buy some fruit, because it's considered very rude if you show up to someone's house empty-handed, and the typical gift is fruit. So I head to the fruit stand and told the fruit lady I wanted something good, but not too heavy because I had to take it on the train, etc. She suggested leechee fruit, so she filled a bag and I'm pretty sure she ripped me off but oh well. Next I got a cab and rode to the train station. I hate the train station for several reasons: 1) It is one of the most likely places you will get robbed 2) There are so many people everywhere it's constant chaos 3) Many of the people are from the country coming in and haven't seen many foreigners, so they stare like whoa 4) Chinese people don't believe in lines so you literally have to push and shove your way to get on the train. So I was pretty anxious about going to the train station by myself and getting on the right train. But I left in plenty of time (mainly because I wanted to get some KFC first). So I got a little lunch and then went to eat it, and this beggar woman came up and was all up in my space begging and I was just trying to eat and everyone was staring. I got so frustrated so I just left and went into the train station. Thankfully my waiting area was near the door, but almost all the seats were taken up. Finally I found a seat and sat down to wait for my train. Everyone is staring at this point at the lone foreigner in the train station. And kind of rightly so, because I'm wearing my backpack on the front (less chance of someone slitting it open that way), holding onto my purse with both hands, toting a bag of leechee fruit, and trying to drink my KFC cup of Sprite without a straw. But I mean I was just trying to not get robbed.

After a while it's time to "line" up for the train. Basically it's a mad push and shove game to see who can get to the platform first. Then once we get to the platform, everyone is rushing around trying to figure out where they should stand so that when the train arrives you are in front of your right car. Everyone knows there's only about 2 minutes to get onto the train, so you'd better be fast about finding the right spot to wait. I was in car 10 so thankfully I didn't have to go too far down the platform. The train came, I got pushed on and landed in my seat for the 30 minute ride to Chang Zhou.

Once I got to Chang Zhou my roommate was meeting me at the train station. Walking out of the station I was just laughing because it was a sea of Chinese people and I didn't even know where to start looking for Lu Ye. But then she broke out of the crowd waving, holding a bright pink polka dotted umbrella and ... wearing a WIG!! Her chosen hair style for the day was long curly hair with a tint of red. It actually looked really good. She was really excited to show me her town on the aboveground subway ride to her house.

Once we got to her house I gave her mom the fruit then the three of us sat down to eat some watermelon and talk. Her dad works in another city so is rarely home. After a while it was time to make the jiao zi (dumplings) for dinner. They taught me how to put the right amount of filling in and then wet my finger to seal the skin of the dumpling and then fold it just right so it looks like a flower. (Actually I didn't think it looked like a flower at all but that's okay). So we made about 60 of those and then her mom went to the kitchen to make dinner. I assumed we would just be eating the jiao zi...wrong. Her mom brought out one plate of food and told me to come eat. I went to the table and it was this steak-ish type thing and some kind of egg. If you don't know me well, I am not a fan of eggs and I am very picky about meat. But what can you do? I said a prayer and took a bite and it actually wasn't too bad. I don't think it was all the way cooked but that's okay. They also didn't have a knife so I just did my best with a pair of chopsticks and a fork. It was really considerate of them to try to cook something Western for me. So after I ate all of that meat (I still shied away from the egg), they brought out all of the jiao zi. I was already kind of full but kept eating. I had about 15 jiao zi and they were still insisting that I eat more. That is another cultural thing I have a hard time with: if I say I'm full, it means I really am full, not that I would like to eat 12 more.

After dinner we took the subway to the other side of town to visit a park. Once we got off, Lu Ye decides to tell me it's not very safe so a friend is meeting us to protect us. But he didn't have a cell phone with him so we were just kind of hanging out for 10 minutes hoping he showed up. He finally did, and we walked to this really pretty park with pagodas and bridges and water and old buildings. I hadn't been feeling well that day, so I was really tired but it was nice to just walk and talk. At first her friend was speaking really, really slowly which was kind of annoying, but he finally got the hint that I can understand pretty much all of normal conversation. I also found out that he was the guy whose parents would not allow him to date Lu Ye because she has hypothyroidism. Weird, I know. Everyone at the park was staring at me a lot again and I was really starting to get annoyed. I don't think it matters how many years I spent in China or how many times people stare at me, I just don't understand why it is THAT weird to see a person with white skin or blonde hair. It's not like they've never seen a Western movie or TV show! So yeah that is one of the biggest cultural things that is grating on my last nerve this time around. I kept asking if I could borrow her wig but she refused to take it off in public. After we walked through the entire park we got a cab back to her apartment. I was still not feeling very well so I decided to shower and head to bed. She showed me the bathroom and for some reason she thought I had a towel in my stack of clothes. I looked around the bathroom and didn't see any towels to use, and felt too awkward to go back out and ask for a towel, so I just got in the shower anyway. I was obviously soaking wet at the end, so I had to resort to using the really rough paper-towelish type things they use instead of toilet paper to try to dry off. It was not an easy process and then I ended up smelling like recycled paper instead of my vanilla body wash.

Sunday after a breakfast of rice ball things, we went to this more upscale mall to window shop. Everything was really expensive, even converted to USD, so neither of us bought anything. I was really dying for some coffee, but I thought it would be rude to suggest we stop in Starbucks really quick, so I refrained. My throat was still hurting and I just felt so exhausted I could've gone for a caffeine kick. But instead we went to this Chinese cafeteria type of place for lunch. I had a huge bowl of fried rice, and some other kind of dumpling things and this round fried bread thing. It actually all was pretty good, but again I was full and was encouraged to continue eating. It was getting too hot to be outside anymore, so we went home to have a rest. We started looking at a lot of pictures of her growing up and trips they've taken, but I was getting so tired I couldn't keep my eyes open. They were gracious enough to let me go take a nap and I slept for two hours! When I woke up we finished looking at the pictures and then went for a walk in their apartment complex. Little did I know that we were going to have a full-blown photo shoot! We just walked around and her mom told us how to pose and then she took pictures of us. Thankfully she also took all of them on my camera. I was laughing so much in each picture because we were doing such Chinese poses. But it was also cute because every time they saw a friend they were really excited for them to meet their American friend. One time this person goes, "Look! An American! Let's give her our child!" I love Chinese babies, but I politely refused the offer. After our walk we had dinner and then it was time to head back to the train station.

This train station was even more crowded and crazy. They announced they were checking tickets for our train and all of a sudden people were coming out of nowhere with tickets and pushing and shoving and jumping over seats. Once we got to the platform and the train arrived, so many people were trying to get both on and off the train, I literally didn't have to move my feet because the crowd just pushed me onto the train. The ride back was fine but once we got to Suzhou the train station there was a madhouse also. The line to wait for a taxi was probably 200 people long, so we opted for the bus. To get to the bus stop though, you have to wade through all the illegitimate cabbies trying to get you to ride with them. They were being super rude - grabbing onto our arms and yelling at us. I was pretty firm with them and we finally made it through and waited at the bus stop. Once our bus came, everyone at the stop had to get on and once again it was a shove-your-way-on deal. Thankfully we both made it, and after a 30 minute ride going like 5 mph in the non-AC bus, we finally made it back to campus.

It was a very long weekend, but it also was a lot of fun. I really enjoy my roommate and the times just walking around and traveling were talked a lot and laughed even more. I feel comfortable with her so I'm glad that it was her I went home with and not someone else. I still felt pretty sick Sunday night, and after talking to my dad and looking in my throat we realized I probably have strep. So that explains why I was so tired and easily agitated over the weekend. I've been taking antibiotics but still have been feeling pretty crummy. My throat hurts really bad and it makes me very unmotivated to speak Chinese. But hopefully the meds will kick in soon and I will be back to normal. We have midterms this week, so it's a pretty stressful and inconvenient time to get sick, in my opinion. But I'm trying to remain joyful in all circumstances!