Closed Weekend

On Saturday, my mom took me to Tiananmen Square Park on the bus and we did this form of tai chi where you have a sort of tennis racquet shaped object with some stretchy stuff on it, and you do things while balancing the ball on the racquet. This, of course, was at 7am. I got to sleep in till the ridiculous hour of 6:30am. I discovered I have zero proficiency for it, despite my host mom's encouraging remarks as I struggled to do even the simplest moves. After, we went home for lunch. I forget what we ate at this point, but it was most likely vegetables; one of the first things my host family told me was that they rarely eat meat. I guess this year will be a healthy one for me. I then managed to take a nap, which I nearly never do. However, I was worn out from my failures as a practicer of tai chi. After I took a nap, my dad and I went to the cellphone store where he and the employee had a long conversation about something and I found out that I wasn't supposed to use the card until the next month. Following that second failure to accomplish something, we went to the bicycle store. The bicycle store, luckily, was a success. I bought a bike for around $50 with a basket, bell, and lock. The bike store, oddly, did not sell helmets. Another failure for the list! We then went home and ate dinner or something and I went to sleep.

The next day was some sort of Chinese school ceremony where they raise the flag and give speeches and give students awards. I understood nothing, but I had fun talking to the girl next to me. After that, since my host family wasn't picking me up later, I hung around with some other SYA kids for half an hour or so. I purchased some snacks to stash in my suitcase; I'm used to being able to grab a snack whenever I want it. I bought these Korean snacks that are like short Pocky with a mushroom cap of chocolate and some small mini boxes of raisins. I then went to the cellphone store as instructed by my host parents; I wanted to get 3G on my phone. Unfortunately, that required me registering my SIM card, which is a more painful process than you might think. After a two hour wait and communication issues (I had to call the Unicom English help hotline to translate) I finally procured 2.5GB a month for only 100 RMB, about $16 USD! That's pretty cheap, I believe. I also Skyped one of my friends at home while in line; it was awesome to catch up. I then got very, very, very lost trying to go  home from the store; I went all the way past my house and biked back and forth in the area for about an hour trying to find a familiar storefront. After deciding to go back to the school and start over, I realized where I was and made my way towards home. After I got home, my mom and I went to pick up some medicine for my father (apparently some body part of his is cold because he doesn't drink enough water...? My translation may be off) and to buy shoes. Unfortunately, my host mom slightly misunderstood what type of shoes I wanted. I wanted house slippers because you're supposed to have them in Chinese houses, but she thought I wanted Nike running shoes. Luckily, it was a big mall and we managed to buy the ugliest pair of shoes I've ever owned for me to wear around the house. That one can go on the success list!

I have no clue what we did after that. That was essentially all we did during our closed weekend. Not really much bonding, but the effort was there. Hopefully it will get better as my Chinese gets better.