I met up with Alicia and Baohui downstairs as usual. We had dough stick with soya bean drink for breakfast. A crispy dough stick with a cup of nice soya bean drink is something that was simple and nice.
Rubbish collection
As we were walking to school, we saw the pouring something to the vegetables that were growing outside of the entrance and it should be fertilizer if we were not wrong. So while we were walking to class, we saw the cart like thing that we saw them pouring onto the plants before. I took a look into the content of the cart and found out it was actually waste. I had the puking sensation as the smell was simply horrible.
We had an interesting lesson with Ms Shi which was the first time that she taught us about culture and she was a teacher that likes interacting with the students. Her English had a certain standard that really helped out understand stuff easily and she was really very friendly.
She gave us a brief introduction of China which includes the type, value, basic unit of society and symbol. She went into what is culture and she elaborated it to be a background and code of practice for a group of people; What culture is made of from material (e.g. Tibet – fur, caves etc) which links to society which is the neighborhood community then finally linking to the spiritual which for example for Chinese whereby food is everything. Material could also be linked directly to spiritual. Experience plays a very important role in society, not forgetting position, age and relations are important too.
She tied up her lessons by telling us how to address different people correctly. The lesson was really useful to us as we could really make use of it in Wu Han to address people and not offend them at the same time. For example, for waiter is called Fu Wu Yuan, for waitress in the north side of China is called Cui Hua while in the east side she is called Jing Hua. For children, they are called Xiao Peng You (little friends), and if it’s a girl then she is called Xiao Mei Mei and if it’s a boy he is called Xiao Di Di. For taxi drivers they are called Shi Fu. For people who looks quite old to address them as Da Jie (bigger sister) or Da Ge (bigger brother). And for people around their teens are called for ladies, Mei Nu (babe) and guys, Shuai Ge (handsome).
We skipped the plan of going to view cherry blossom as it seems like the cherry blossom have not blossom fully yet and changed it to another day. We then were brought to a nearby shopping centre near school which Ms Shi showed us.
We shopped first then had lunch at McDonalds.
Alicia, Baohui and I went to do our hair at a nearby salon. We were separated. Alicia who wanted to cut her hair ended up being persuaded to do rebonding and treatment to her hair. For Baohui, she wanted to dye her hair and was persuaded to do treatment to her hair. For me, I did my trimming, rebonding and treatment for my hair. I practically sat there for about 4 hours going through the agony of the hair dresser tugging and pulling on the hair, washing with all their strength that my head scalp felt like it was going to come out and being tired but not being able to sleep as my head needed to be in a upright position. All of us paid RMB 288.
BEFORE
AFTER
After all that, we reached back and headed to buy some food at a nearby fast food outlet near school. Then we went to buy umbrella from the underpass.
Dinner
We headed back to our apartments; I wanted to take my bath but could not wet my hair as I needed to like let the chemicals settle for 3 days thus I needed to avoid wetting my hair. At first, Baohui help me to clip my hair and put a hair band. So when I went back to my apartment, the aunty outside practically stared at me and I embarrassingly said hi and walked away. I was walking pass a group of girls on the third floor which were Eileen, Li Zhen and Yan Khee, but the girls say I cannot do what I did to my hair and took that down the clip and hand band.
I went back to Alicia and Baohui apartment to return clip and hand band and borrowed a Hello Kitty shower cap from Xiu Jin.
The shower cap
So Alicia and Baohui helped me put my hair into the shower cap. While walking back to the apartment, the same aunty saw me again and said this time round “What are you doing?” I just smiled and walked off.
I took my bath and headed to Alicia, Baohui & Xiao Wah apartment as I wanted to do my tutorial there and left to return to my apartment at around 12am.
