Shanghai was an amazing time. We saw a lot of differences between the two major cities in China. In Beijing, the traffic is a lot worse. Shanghai truly feels like an international city. On every street corner we heard a different variety of dialects (like Cantonese) and languages (French, German, and English!). I liked the food a lot more in Shanghai, especially the soup dumplings. It’s true what they say about the differences between Northern and Southern cities in China. Southern food is definitely more sweet, and it plays a lot more to my tastebuds.
Being back in Beijing, classes have started again. We switched Chinese teachers and started learning about the Chinese economy in our afternoon class. After Chinese class, a lot of my classmates and I go to the neighboring canteen to eat lunch before our afternoon class. The dining hall is a lot better than any American dining hall I’ve had. The food is all Chinese, but it tastes very nutritious and tasteful. I think it’ll be hard to go back to Northwestern’s dining. I’m still having trouble doing my laundry though since there are no dryers in China. After washing your clothes in the washing machines, you have to air dry all your clothes. So doing large loads of laundry is pretty difficult. Luckily it’s super hot out now.
Socially, I’ve been hanging out with all my new frisbee friends that I’ve met through practices. We practice at Beijing’s Transportation and Communications University. We don’t have a designated field space, so it’s basically first come first serve when people start arriving to do their nightly sports. We share the space with soccer teams, regular citizens taking a nightly stroll, people working out, and other random activities. One of my favorites is seeing a group of older women together in a dance-troupe situation who do synchronize actions throughout the track field. Posted below is a picture of my teammates from frisbee!
