Hello Friends!

I haven't updated in I guess like a week or so, meaning I have a lot to say. haha School has hit full throttle and I now have a Chinese test looming this thursday and a paper due in a week and a half. I started my business class here and it is incredibly interesting. This week our business teacher highlighted Chinese business etiquette. In China, business cards are handed out like phone number, but they are not in any way taken lightly. Business cards must be handed out and received with two hands, and then once you have received a card you must take the time in front of the person you just exchanged with to analyze the card, maybe ask them a question or two about the information on the card, and then store it in a very safe place (not your pocket) in front of them. I've also learned more about two ideas that dominate culture. Those two concepts are guanxi and face. Guanxi means relationship. The concept of guanxi within a business setting is that you are expected to give gifts and even do some things for free in business relationships. This translates into Chinese daily life in the style that they eat. Literally any time the bill comes out, every person at the table fights to pay the bill. I have not really experienced this first hand because when I eat out with my friends from my program we go dutch like all college students do. haha Face is another very interesting concept. Essentially face is like your own pride. It is your image to others, or what others think about you. In Chinese culture, you never want to do anything that will cause another person to lose face as the person that you cause to lose face will remember and your gaunxi with that person has been damaged, potentially permanantly.

I've gotten to know my family a bit better this week. The language barrier is still quite significant so I have trouble communicating, but it's getting better. My older brother is a teachers assistant at a nearby college. My sister is an army doctor, and my mom loves going to the summer palace and is an avid stock trader. She spends at least an hour every day looking at the market. I got to go play badminton and ping pong with my older brother this past week on wednesday night. He said that I should come with him every wednesday night, and I really hope to do so. It was really fun getting to compete a bit with people speaking in a different language in a different country, but unfortunately I was heavily outmatched. Hopefully, I will get better.

On Friday my older sister took my friend Ryan and I out to a bar on the other side of town. The place was really nice! There were couches, tv's, lights, lasers, and all kinds of stuff all over the place. It was there that I had my first drink ever. hahaha So while my friend, sister, and her friends threw back beer after beer I stuck with little sips, finishing two on the night. hahaha It was a really cool experience!!! On Saturday two of my friends and I got our home stay families to go to the summer palace with us. It was so cool to see the parents talk an interact even though I had no clue what they were saying. The summer palace is so beautiful. The old Chinese style architecture is so stinking cool. Later that day my family took my to KTV which is karaoke. The big difference between karaoke here and back home is you rent your own room with whoever you're with instead of being out in front of a bunch of people. Also in between all of this my family tried to instruct me on why not to give to beggars. They apparently found out about me and a friend helping the man from last week get to church and were a bit concerned that I was giving to beggars. It was very frustrating because I don't have the language capabilities to explain my cause. My sister said that the Chinese government takes car of them, but I'm skeptical of that having seen the conditions many of them live in when we helped the get to church last week. I want to do some research on that. After that I watched UGA get they're first win of the year at 12:30 at night here. haha

Today I went to a different church than I did last week. This one was much smaller and worship was ran by a guy who is a student with my program. He had me sing in their choir team! hahaha They need as many english speakers as they can get to sing because there aren't many people who read English very well at the church and they do most of their songs in english.... So there was no pressure for me to sing well, reading English was the only requirement!!! hahaha

So this is the last bit. I'm just going to start listing funny stuff at the end of my posts.

- I've become strangely okay with the Chinese driving motto that other people will avoid me. haha

- A rickshaw driver tugged me and two other friends, a total of about 500 pounds, on his bike

- The use of lines is entirely foreign to the Chinese, cutsies is entirely okay