We arrived one week ago at 1:45 in the afternoon and were more jet lagged than I have ever been in my life. We had no time to rest, though. I was out the door right away to buy groceries for our empty refrigerator, to change some dollars into yuan, and set up the apartment for the four of us. Fortunately we were assigned a wonderful college student named Sherry who is currently on break from her university in New Zealand. Sherry patiently led us through the shopping, money exchange, and endless questions. My friend Xiaowei called us right away too to see if we wanted to attend the Lantern Festival, but we were exhausted and Anna was sick. We fell into bed early and everyone was up again at 2 am. It took us a full 5 days to stop feeling like we were moving every time we stood still.
Chengdu is a city of clouds and smog that is bustling with 10 million people 24 hours a day. Our apartment is right by the Sichuan Chengdu University. We know our neighborhood now and have our favorite shops and our favorite treats. We have all lost weight and find ourselves constantly hungry. Our favorite restaurants include the Bookworm, an expat coffee and book shop where the owner sometimes brings his two kittens, and Peter's Tex-Mex, another expat restaurant that actually has decent Tex-Mex. We have eaten with the locals too when we went to the Lantern Park with Xiaowei and four of his students and slurped the hottest noodles I've ever had! Last night we went to the international student orientation at SCU followed by a traditional Chinese banquet. The students adjusted far more quickly than we did-none of them reported continuing jet lag like we had. Anna started school at the Eaton International School and came home just delighted.
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Odette, in Paideia we are reading a novel by Pa Chin set in Chengtu named Family. Are you familiar with it? I'm assuming it's the same place, but I'll ask Peter. Isn't that a great coincidence?
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