Travel Blog #11: Another Day

Hello!

Welcome to another glimpse of a day in the life of an American as an international student in Beijing, China.

Day 11: as always, my day began with class. We had another session on language. We learned how to talk about where we’re from, the directions and more descriptive words. We only had the morning class session, so after lunch we had free time for the rest of the day.

For lunch, I had my go-to meal once again. When Veronica and I got back to our room, we realized the lights wouldn’t turn on. Chelsea and Danielle noticed the same about their room. Chelsea and Veronica went downstairs to the front desk to see what was going on. It comes to find out that we’re only allowed to use a certain amount of electricity in our rooms, after that we have to pay 30 yuan (Chinese currency) for our electricity to get turned on! The same goes for WiFi. The desk attendant even made a rude comment to Chelsea about using too much WiFi and how she really didn’t need it. I’m sure she didn’t know that WiFi is how we contact our families back home to avoid charges because we don’t have Chinese phone carriers. Sometimes it’s better to understand someone’s situation instead of judging, especially based on stereotypes. It was probably based on the stereotype that Americans are wasteful or something along those lines. (Chelsea ended up informing her of this.)

After our power was turned back on, I took a nap. I woke up and went to the mall with Danielle and Chelsea to eat dinner. We went to Pizza Hut and oooo was it fancy! It was a sit down restaurant with waitresses, an extensive menu, drinks, desserts, the whole nine! Nothing like at home. My pizza was good, but the menu didn’t say onions came on the pizza, and they were on there. After the fiasco the day before, I just picked them off.

Today is field trip day, let’s see what today brings.

再见 (Bye)!

Kyla