I'm not in Kansas anymore . . .

Today was discouraging. I was hoping to be settled and I’m not. The hotel feels sub-par and my discovery of vegetarian food is hindered by my language skills and unfamiliarity of the city. So I’m just making do! (I guess it counterbalances my business class treatment of the past 24 hours.) And man is it hot. 33 degrees Celsius. That’s 135 degree Fahrenheit. (okay so I exaggerate). I think Celsius was invented by people in warm climates so they can fool themselves into thinking it’s not really that hot.

I went to scope out an alternative hotel and, without realizing it, took off in the completely wrong direction. Sun beating down, and no water in hand, I began to worry when I couldn’t find any of the streets on either of my two maps (I HATE looking like a tourist). No one could understand my Chinese and I couldn’t understand their English. So I pulled out my trusty map, showed it to a policeman and asked where I was. He couldn’t tell me! It slowly dawned on me that the map was made for an English speaking tourist – all the street names were written in the phonetic pronunciation and not the Chinese characters. He couldn’t read the phonetic spelling and I so completely bastardized the sounds that he didn’t understand what I was reading off the map. (It would be like us trying to read a Seattle map written in Chinese characters.) So I wandered around some more until I happened upon a “you are here” map affixed to a touristy building, got my bearing and hopped a cab. When I finally got to the hotel that I was considering, the manager saw the desperation in my eyes and quoted an exorbitant price. She wouldn’t budge so I’m staying the night in my original hotel. Tomorrow I’m checking out yet another hotel and trying the subway. That will have to be it, as class starts on Monday.

The highlight of the day – seeing Sharon. Skype – what an application!! (and it’s free). The windowless hotel room didn’t seem so dingy as I sat in front of my computer with Sharon filling the screen in real time – voice and image (gotta love those Macs and their cameras)