Arriving in China
Woke up this morning at 5am because I am still not use to the time adjustment. It was bustling already outside our hotel room. At around 7am I tried to get some breakfast in the hotel but I could not understand the Chinese so I returned to my room to get ready for the day. Later that morning Leon brought me to a McDonald's down the street. I ordered an orange juice and a hashbrown. My hashbrown was only 60cents. On the the walk back I was almost taken out by a full size bus (like DTA size) because traffic does not yeild to the pedestrains, other cars, or bicylcers. It scary trying yo cross the street even if you do have the right away.
After returning from breakfast we took our first trip to the business school for lecture and to meet some Chinese students. The first lecture was given by Jason, the assistant director of International relations. He spoke to us about the area of Tianjin and how to get around. We found out there was a TGIFriday's restuarant. Which we ended up going to for dinner later tonight. Next Dahui Li spoke on the cultural differences between the Chinese and American cultures. I have learned about these differences in several of my business classes but it was very interesting to actually experience the differences.
After lectures in the morning we returned to our hotel for lunch. It was very a good lunch with American style chinese cuisine. The fruit salad had tomatoes in it. We had fluffy white rice, and different meat and veggie mixes to put on top. They served cold orange juice and milk, an opposite of what I heard the breakfast was like today. At breakfast it was hot orange juice and hot milk.
Lunch was good but the tour we took of Tianjin today was great. We all took a bus around town to tour the different parts of the city. The new parts are developing so fast that many buildings are under constructions. They are building huge high rising apartments for housing. On the sides of the street we saw many lower class farmers who came in from rural China waiting on the street for jobs. We also saw some working building sidewalks. From their our bus took us into the old Italian looking part of China. We stopped at a rose garden, like the one in Duluth. There were three couples getting married and group of people from Guam that were here in business. The brides were dressed very uniquely and different from brides in the US.
After the Rose Garden we hopped right back on the bus to check out a shopping center. The shopping was beautiful with a whole floor of shoes. There was a very wide variety in shoes sold, they were all colors of the rainbow with bows, polka dots, strips, and bling. It was really cool. We then stopped at starbucks to get coffee. I tried to order coffee and I ended up with blended cream. It was good and tasted like a vanilla malt. After the shopping mall we boarded the bus again to go to dinner at TGIF. It was exactly like the states. The food was really good. We had to take at taxi back to the hotel. The taxi drivers are crazy, we could have gotten in a accident any second. After the taxi ride back to hotel we walked to a local market called the Carrefour. The store was packed with people and to check out it took about 20 minute wait to get to the register. It seemed to be normal for everyone else to wait but we were impatient and extremely hot because there is no air conditioning in the store.
It was great day, full of many experience!!