welcome to china

Sunday, July 1
First day in country after what seemed like forever on a plane. The only thing worse than a plane ride to China is a plane ride to China in a center seat. The picture is taken in front of the hotel we are staying in in Chengdu for the next five days while we do PST (Pre service training).
If my stomach does forgives me for today, well, I promise to try to take better care of it in the future. For breakfast there was not much to be done. There as a buffet laid out. About the only thing recognizable was some greasy fried eggs. The rest was pretty much anyone’s guess. Let’s just say it was not Grape Nuts. At the morning meeting we were greeted by the country director for China, who noted among other things that the National Director of the Peace Corps was stepping down and a new one was to be appointed. Let’s just hope it’s not Michael Brown.!Lunch was incredible. Eight of us at a table with a Lazy Susan and they just kept piling dishes onto the table. We must have seen about twenty of them before it was over. My favorite was eggplant just soaked in oil and a couple of different dishes of greens. There was nothing too terribly hot. They are probably trying to lure us into a false sense of security. The afternoon session brought us back to reality as we were given our medical kit an overview of all the things that can go wrong with the body while on duty out here. It seems we are going to get a whole week instructions on diarrhea, but I think I already know how to do that.
Got out a little bit in the afternoon and just got stuck in a pouring rain. The weather in Chengdu I gather is cloudy most of the summer. I asked one of the pcv’s (peace corps volunteers) what he would think of being based here and he said that if he wanted Seasonal Affective Disorder he would move to Portland. So those four years in Seattle may come in handy. Air quality wise, the health officer said we are at the base of the Himalayas and so air masses tend to get stuck. Hence, the air quality is not as bad as it looks for a lot of the mess is low lying clouds mixed in with particulate matter. Well, I’ll know more when I get my first run in. At the evening banquet I found out that we were doing it all wrong at lunch. In brief, you are given a little bowl and a little plate at these banquets, and you are supposed to put the good you eat in the little bowl (or else just grab it from the lazy susan with chopsticks). The plate is for stuff you don't eat, like fish bones. It also seems that the no-double dipping rule is not followed (despite my attempts to enforce it at lunch), as people readily take the chopsticks that have just been in their mouths and stick it in any old plate).