I'm feeling much more cheerful this morning, though I'm still having difficulty with everyone's name. Today is Erik's birthday, so Alice is taking all of us out to lunch. Until then, it looks like I'm heading to the department store. Case is going to find out the name of the biggest bookstore in town -- I can't wait to see what it's like.

It's finally starting to sink in that I'm in China.

--

I ended up not going to the hot-pot restaurant, because Professor Norton had ordered lunch in the dining room. Rightly, of course, since no one but three or four people had told him directly that they were going. Still, we all had cake together in the lobby; Alice bartered the price down from 30 yuan to 14, which is roughly $2. I can't believe you can haggle in shops here -- it would be a nightmare for accounting in the U.S.

"Happy Birthday": Zhù nĭ shēng rì kuaì lè.

I've been hearing whispers about going out to karaoke tonight, but should really be going off on my own and planning things. Professor Nelson called me a "wilting wallflower" late last semester, which is a painfully accurate description, really.

I should have brought a few pencils along, but maybe I'll just take a pen and my sketchbook and go draw for a bit.

--

Must. Not. Get. Sunburned.

Creo que voy a carry my umbrella around from now on.

Alice took us on a walking tour of campus, covering most of what I hadn't already seen. She even got us into the library, which wasn't strictly kosher. Hearing her speak to the security guards really made me want to learn Mandarin; I'm sure that she is going to a lot of trouble taking us places like that. She is very outgoing, but we are learning to watch her closely for signs of discomfort in certain situations -- entering buildings, going places off campus, and so on. In China, you don't say "no" so much as you try to change the subject.

Alice herself is just amazing. She knows a ton about Western culture and has an amazingly quick sense of humor. When Erik showed her to photocopy of his passport photo that serves as an ID on campus, she said, "Aah, a ghost!"

Students seem willing to approach us, but generally only in pairs of groups. Some girls asked to have their picture taken with all of us; I can only imagine how they'll explain that photo to their friends and family. "We had just finished our English final, and we ran into this huge group of foreigners just walking around!"
Later, a few little boys pestered Alice about speaking English to us:
"Is she Chinese?"
"Yeah, she just has to speak English for them to understand her."

The area around Gugong, the imperial palace, is filled with shops and vendors -- how odd it is to see souvenir shops mixed with such old architecture. The vendors themselves are fairly aggressive; the moment I walked into the shop directly opposite the palace entrance, a woman pressed a small folding screen into my hands. Another woman was selling bottles, handed painted inside and out by her father. They were lovely, but I'm trying to keep from overloading myself with trinkets.

I've already spent 39 yuan on a calling card, another thirty on cab fare, some 150 on groceries yesterday... $42 in all.

I took a walk around campus and may or may not be sunburned all to hell. Unlike Kenyatta, I'm ordinary looking enough not to attract much attention. The only two people who talked to me wanted me to take their picture -- probably singling me out because I was carrying my honking Touristy Camera over my shoulder.

For my jaunt, I took a left from the dormitories and followed the tree-lined roadway to the Confucius statue. Then I circles around the pond and headed toward the stadium in the distance, with its strange ring of classical arches. I was distracted, however, by a decidedly Western looking building on the right, and then by the building next to it -- from which the strangest mixture of noises was coming. It sounded like an opera had collided with two symphonies in major and minor key. This turned out to be the building that houses the practice rooms used by some of the music students. Each room has a window that opens out into a bare quad. As I walked past, the sound from each room separated from the eerie mass, revealing a surprising variety of styles and periods (as far as I can tell, which isn't very).

I sat in the bleachers of the stadium for a minute after checking out the duck pond, which had more geese than ducks, and now here I sit at the fountain.

Dinner is at 5:30, then... what? Hm. I hope I sleep better tonight, not waking up gasping at 2 AM. I also hope that my feet are red from walking, not from what appears to be a second-degree sunburn.

Oddly enough, I've seen a lot of couples around campus. I wonder if the majority of them are with their first girlfriend or boyfriend, and whether most will end up married to who they are with now.
Last month I read a book called China Doll, which painted a very different picture of love in China than what Professor Norton has described.

I am having the worst time remembering names: Sandra. Erik. Blake. Case.

--

Professor Norton gave a fascinating impromptu lecture at dinner -- self-reliance and self-discipline and the perils of drug use: not "they'll kill you", but "they'll keep you from having a productive life".

I met another Chinese student, Katie, but am sitting in my room writing. Woe. Maybe I should just go out and talk to people.

Took vitamins on an empty stomach -- not smart.

There's so much that's different here. SO MUCH.

Shenyang has more buildings under construction than finished. It's smoggy and sprawling and filled with people on bicycles and scooters -- and even a mule or two.

Am predictably having trouble opening up to my classmates, alas. The Chinese students are quite nice, though, and seem to... like my skin? Hooray, paleness? Agh.
I've found a kindred spirit in my roommate, Sandra, a fellow vegetarian with whom I hope to battle many a clogged bathroom drain.

The bathroom... is. It's so wonderful to have one in the room, but the shower is going to cause floods daily.

The language barrier is a problem already; we went to Tesco to buy essentials this afternoon and ended up in the line of a cashier who spoke no English. For my part, I couldn't even decipher the total she asked for. Another cashier came to our rescue, but it was an uncomfortable feeling, being so useless.

(I have no idea what time it is.)

There's something interesting about not being able to read half of the signs. I should take this opportunity to test out my dictionary-slash-phrasebook.

Fourteen hours on an airplane is considerably worse than eight. For the first bit I was shaky and sniffly and homesick, but I settled down to a movie and a chat with my seat-mate, an occupational therapist visiting friends in the Philippines.

Can't think, therefore, not much to write. Am feeling slightly inadequate and fish-out-of-water-like, and not only because of my location. Am also not yet settling into the habit of writing in a journal.
I mean this in a completely open-minded and open-ended way, but --

Why did I come here?
What do I want to learn?

Something I've noticed: Everyone I've told about my trip has been encouraging: hairdressers, bank tellers, relatives. A xenophobic culture we may be, perhaps, but there's no negative stigma attached to traveling a'tall.

Well, like I said, it's something.

Note to self: Buy pen at airport.

A rainy start to the afternoon. Not evil, dark, malignant rain, just a benevolent sort of downpour.

I'm obviously running around like a headless chicken in search of leggings, velcro, and money. God knows if I'm actually ready or not, but I'm certainly well supplied enough.

If Saint Christopher is the patron of travelers, ten maybe he's also the patron saint f dithering and last-minute second thoughts. The rain has made me wonder whether I ought to bring a jacket. A mundane detail, but one that has been nesting in the back of my head for the last twenty minutes anyway.

My mantra:
I must not over-pack.
I must not over-pack.
I must not over-pack.
I must now.

Must channel my inner Jeeves, who goes from job to job with one valise. Fictional though he may be, his is a good model to follow.