DaJia Hao!

So my host family is amazing. Eric and Xiao Kong are awesome people who happen to speak pretty good English. My room is HUGE, possibly bigger than or comprable to my room at home, PLUS with a very large (i.e. width of a twin bed) window seat. Oh yea, I also have a more American mattress (the ones here are comprable to the hardwood floors they have) and a full size bed. Yes, and wireless internet. Woot. Also, I have an 8 year old little sister, whom I haven't actually met yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

Tonight my host father (Eric) invited me out for drinks with his friends. And while I couldn't understand them AND was the only American for miles, it was well worth the trip. First, I ate interesting Chinese food. And by interesting I mean cow tail, frogs, duck cheeks, and several things that resembled innards. Believe it or not, they were delicious. Second, I have learned how to parse. Parse is linguistic jargon for "tell where one word ends and another begins in speech". We say things as one continuous stream of sound, parsing is very important, even if you don't know what each sound means. Thirdly, I have had BaiJiu. BaiJiu is hard alcohol and is 56% liquor. Um...don't cheers the beer people like I did. Anyways, it was fun, and the alcohol was good because I loosened up and had a great time.

Tomorrow I have orientation. My house is 2 km from my school, so I intend to walk (or bike) it every day. That gives me 4 km of walking a day, plus Nanjing U is so pretty, I intend on walking around that a lot, plus any trips to XinJie Kou (shopping center) because I need a dictionary and bath towels. So I'll probably get a lot of excercise. And it's easy to eat less here since I suck at chopsticks!!

Ok, sleep time since I'm still pretty jet lagged!

Zhen ai,

MeiLi