Day 26

I had a relaxing day today. The morning was a short seminar that one of the students gives every Saturday. They perform it in English but the discussion is in Chinese. I can understand some of the English. They use some wrong pronunciations of the words, which make it hard, but I can follow most of them. Today’s girl had decent English. This afternoon I went swimming at a local hotel that has an open swim. I went with about five other people and the English teacher. It was weird how many people where there but most did not know how to swim. This is something I take for granted. My food is not too exciting here at CAU as it is almost always the same and seems to be just a mixture of the last meal with one new thing. However, they don’t have supper on Saturday or any meals on Sunday in the cafeteria near where I live. So we usually eat at the one of the other two that are on campus, they are a little bit of a trek to get to, or eat off campus. Tonight we had barbecue. It was a Muslim restaurant. They place everything on a cabob stick and grill it over a propane flame. There are a lot of street vendors that do it this way. The place itself was very small. All of the seating was outside as was most of the cooking. We had lamb and chicken wings, along with some potatoes and mushrooms. The food was very good but seemed to all have the same flavor as the dish before it. Although it was very good to have some more meat and potatoes in my diet! It still amazes me how many different site I see here in China. The general public has a different way of living here. As always though I am enjoying learning about it.