I’ve been in China for about three days now and so far it has been great. Theride over was fairly smooth. The first leg of my flight was delayed so Ialmost missed the connecting flight to Japan. However, I hurried andmake it just in time.

My host mother is very nice. She wants me to call her “a-yi” (aunt). Theappartment is quite small by American standards. My room doubles as thedining room / TV watching room. There is a small kitchen, a small room(big enough for a bed and maybe 3-4 feet to spare) for a-yi and thenanoter larger bedroom that two other girls share (also tenents). Thebathroom is very different than I am accustomed to. The toilet is awestern style toilet, but attached to one side of the small bathroom isa shower head with a bucket underneath to catch the water. There is noseperate partition in the bathroom for the shower. It is a like a smallamerican bathroom with a shower head attached to one of the walls. Inaddition, the bathroom sink is not attached to the sewage outlets. Itsimply drins into a bucket underneath. Laundry is also done in thebathroom and then hung up on wire streatching the length of thebathroom.

a-yi speaks almost no English, so it has really put my Chinese to thetest

A couple of things about the diet in Beijing have surprised me. Firstly,we consume a lot more milk than I thought Chinese liked. We have about asmall bowl of milk every day. It isn’t like the milk in the states as itis bit sweeter. This morning, aunt gave me something different forbreakfast. The package said cow’s milk and something about a bee ( Icouldn’t fully understand it since it was in Chinese). I’m guessing iteither had honey or nector of some type in it. It tasted like theformer. It was quite strane, but good. Something else that surprised mewas the lack of salt. Usually, Chinese food is really salty, but aunt’sfood isn’t. For example, today we had dumplings and useally we eat itwith soy sauce. However, instead, we used rice vinager. She seems to userice vinager in place of soy sauce in a lot of her cooking.

Also, people don’t think it is strange for me to be in China. Beijinghas a lot of foreigners, and while I stick out, I’m not really unusuall,and people don’t really bat an eye.

I’ve been studying, speaking, and hearing Chinese constantly so I am soexaused every night. In just the three days I’ve been here, I’ve makeflash cards for 50 new words. It is hard as I forget words as soon as I“learn” them. Keeping up with all the new words is really tough. It isreally good that Aunt can’t speak English. She can’t explain things inEnglish and I can’t use any English so I’m forced to use Chinese. Mydictionary has been getting a lot of use.

I’m taking pictures and I will upload them to the website when I get a chance