So, the cutest thing EVER happened...the grad students and some of the professors threw us a surprise Fourth of July party! They had Chinese and American flags on the table and they tried to get us food they knew we liked (i.e. corn, green beans, potato chips, cake)...the most "American" food they could find, I think. They asked us to sing our national anthem for them and then they sang theirs for us, which was beautiful but I have no idea what it was about. ;) One professor told me how when she was a child they were taught to be scared of America but now she is so glad that our countries are friends. I am, too, and hope they stay that way!
During the day on 4th of July, we went to a workshop for bar waitresses (who we thought were sex workers but we were wrong). Professor Zhang included us in a lot of things with the group and translated to the group for us, which was really helpful. There was also one girl that majored in English at university, and she helped, too. Not this coming week but the next, he wants me to teach them about how to communicate effectively (because of my counseling degree). This will be for about an hour and a half and I am super nervous about it because I have no idea what I will say and I don't like public speaking. It will be good experience, though, and he wants me to make it very interactive. I will just be really nervous because I hope he will think that I did a good job.
The night of the 4th we went to the Shamrock Pub, where there was supposed to be a 4th of July party but the only really festive thing they had was red, white and blue shots; I thought they were actually pretty cute! We made friends with this group of students from University of Washington (undergrads) and hung out with them until a little after 11...the party was probably just getting started but we do so much during the day here that we're usually exhausted at night.
On Thursday, we went to Renmin ("people's") Park. It was beautiful there and we spent a few hours reading in the teahouse. What we were not expecting to see was random groups of people doing karaoke and dancing...I have some videos that I can hopefully share later. The Chinese people were so happy to see foreigners (I guess!) there that they pushed us and 2 other girls to the front so we could have a good view. I was pretty scared at first because I didn't know what was going on and I was afraid they were pushing us in the middle of this huge group of people to sing or dance or something!!!
Crystal is leaving today because she was accepted to a German (English-speaking) summer school program in Shanghai. We are very sad to see her leave because she has definitely been the most helpful person to us. Yesterday we took her and one of her friends to her favorite hotpot restaurant. She was giving us a lot of advice at lunch, which basically boiled down to this: if we want to be more involved in projects, etc., we should casually bring up the topic and then wait to see if we are invited to join in. Because they are our superiors, we should basically follow their lead and be respectful. Good advice, I think, because we already got the sense that if we pushed for something or tried to re-direct a conversation, the professors were a little annoyed. It was also very timely advice as we are leaving in 45 minutes to go away with Dean Ma to Zingong (a city famous for salt?) for the weekend. We have no idea what we are doing there or how long we are staying (as usual, haha). We never know what we're doing really until we get there, just that it's "all been arranged"...another student/teacher cultural thing I think. Crystal also took us to another traditional Chinese road. We had met one of the store owners last weekend at the bar we went to with Professor Zhang and he gave us 50% off everything in the store, so that was really nice!!!
I have to go pack for who-knows-what...I hope everyone has a nice weekend!!!
