Tuesday, Sept. 30th

I had gotten in contact with my soon-to-be Chinese teacher and made plans to meet at 1:00 at the bus station near the hotel. I Skyped with dad when he got home from work and at 11:00 am here we all went to track down Papa John's. Anna, Samuel and I had tried locating it a week early and had not idea where it was. We were looking at night and didn't notice that we passed right by the building it was in. While most of the food places: Pizza Hut, McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks all have huge illuminated signs, Papa John's does not. We finally figured out that B1 means basement, i.e. food court. This time we called ahead only to find out that we had gotten off of the subway one stop too early. When we heard this we were completely confused! The next stop would take us way out of the way. Or so we thought...
We had Kyle and Charise with us this time Kyle suggested that we try the Exchange Mall across the street. Sure enough, written in characters with a Chinese translation of baba (papa) John's down in the basement, was Papa John's!
They have a window that you can watch them (an assembly line) make pizza. Struck me odd that they needed four people in an assembly line to make pizza, but why not. If it works for them.
I guess our order was too difficult to figure because the assembly line got it wrong, lol. We ordered two pizzas, one Pepperoni and one with Sausage and mushroom. Not only did they combine the two pizzas into one, but they also added bacon. A deliciously greasy pizza, but not right. When we told them what had happened, nothing was going to be done to fix it. Finally we decided it was just easier to eat it and order a second. However, it long us literally an hour to get the first pizza and nearly 45 mins for the second. I realized we weren't going to have food in time for my lesson, so I pushed it back to 2:30. My goodness!
When we finished up there, Kyle and Charise went back to the hotel to relax, and Anna, Samuel and I went over to Starbucks for a quick drink, then home.
I barely made it to the bus stop in time. I wasn't going to catch a bus, I just didn't want to be any later than I already had made everything. My instructor Zhang Jing Ming, who goes by the English name Amy, promptly turned me around and took me back to the same bookstore I was at that day before. We still couldn't manage to find a dictionary that would work for me, but Amy was able to find a little Chinese workbook to start teaching me from. After that we went over to the Foreign Bookstore to check if they had any dictionaries that would work for me.
Most of them had the exact format as the ones in the first store. Eventually we stumbled upon one that would work for me. As we did one last check for the other books I'm (still) trying to find, I noticed the store had an old edition of Princeton's Top 40 liberal art schools... I think that's the one they have. In any case, Knox was in it! So I showed her the little info page on Knox. She wasn't very interested but I thought it was pretty cool.
Once we left she took me a few stores down to try a popular drink here in China. All it consists of is Tea and Milk. Pretty tasty but I don't think I could drink many of them.
I didn't want to ride the bus back, and thinking the distance was less than what it was, decided to walk back. We had a nice conversation the whole way, but when we reached the hotel, it was Chinese time. I always forget that the Chinese are so polite that they will never enter your home unless invited in. Makes sense, I just need to remember to invite. Basically, I turned around and Zhang Jing Ming was still in the door way.
After we got settled in, I had 2 full hours of lessons. I couldn't believe how sore I was by the time I was finished! I was told that my inflections are good but my pronunciation needs quite a bit of work. Go figure. I'm trying to doing things I haven't been able to in either French or German in the past four years of voice lessons! Hopefully this will help :)
I made quite a bit of progress, considering I started with next to none, and by the end could barely function. I have no idea what I had for dinner, or if I even had it. All I know is that I was tired.

Speaking of which, it's pushing 10 pm and I have work tomorrow. Bleh. I haven't even started my lesson plans. This could be bad.... lol. Oh well, life will go on.

I'll try to get caught back up as soon as possible. Happy reading!