New Digs

If you should happen to be walking south on Yiheyuan Lu, and you pass the KFC outside the southwest gate of Peking University, go around behind the bank with the big red 24-hour-ATM sign, climb the fence, and cross the parking lot to the little alley in the back, you'll find yourself in a completely different world. This is a world populated by small dirty children gleefully eating food on a stick and shirtless men with dark leathery skin, incomprehensibly thick accents, and few teeth. The street is full of fruit stalls and vendors selling all manner of delicious street food. At night, it seems that the entire population comes out to congregate, chatting and relaxing together in the smell of roasting lamb. The sides of the street are lined with crowded little convenience stores and sketchy little restaurants, and if you walk down a bit, right before the slightly larger convenience store across from the print shop, you'll find one particular restaurant with a few dirty plastic tables outside. It looks sketchy, but you'll find that the food is not only harmless, but in fact amazingly delicious.

I would know, because this is the street where I live.

It is quintessentially China, and I am, to my knowledge, the one and only white person who lives there or even goes there at all, even though it's within spitting distance of the University and its many foreign students. Consequently, when I walk down my street, people tend to look at me as if I had two heads. When I ride my bike, they look at me as if I had two heads, tentacles, and a grapefruit for a nose. Who knew those wacky foreigners were even able to ride bicycles?

I've been spending a lot of time in my new digs since the rest of CIEE left, mainly because the last weekend so thoroughly exhausted me that I've been spending a lot of time in recovery. My new apartment is highly satisfactory, especially the GLITTERY BLUE SINK, which is without question the awesomest feature of the place. I'm also really excited to have a kitchen and a washing machine, although neither of them is blue and glittery. My apartment is further spiffed up with the light-up speakers handed down to me by Paul when he left, which are being put to excellent use in fueling my personal singalongs and dance parties, and which I plan to pass on to the new CIEE summer students when I leave. Share the love!

It took me a little while to get the hang of certain things...opening the confusing lock on my door, knowing where to put the trash when I want to take it out, remembering to turn on the hot water before I go to take a shower...but I'm living quite comfortably now. My roomie is in the states renewing her U.S. Permanent Residence Card, so I've grown dangerously accustomed to my solitary lifestyle of constant singing, silly dancing, and loudly talking to myself. I might have to tone some things down when she gets back.