I have been in China for over a week now! I left for the flight to China on May 26th and arrived on May 27th. During the airplane ride, I wore a mask as a precautionary measure for preventing the spread of Swine Flu. I hated wearing the mask; it felt like putting your head under a blanket for an indefinite amount of time. But everyone else seemed so hardcore into wearing the mask so I kept mine on too. Also, my parents had pushed for me to wear the mask at all times.
The airline I took was Cathay Pacific. I’ve taken their planes in the past on my flights to Vancouver and I have to say again that I love their planes! Not the food on the plane–I took pictures and it makes me a little sick to look at what I ate. But the entertainment was good. I could choose what I wanted to watch during the airplane ride. I didn’t know airplanes had that feature now. I chose to watch a few episodes of Friends and then A Beautiful Mind. Ah…I cried at the end of the A Beautiful Mind (I had to take off my mask to wipe away the tears).
In China, I’ve lived the first seven days with my aunt’s family in their apartment in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. Their house is really clean and I like it. However, even though they live on the ninth floor, mosquitoes always manage to get into their house. Apparently, they didn’t come before and it was only after I came to their house that there have really been any mosquitoes. I always wake up to two new bites now.
The past week, I’ve mainly been doing shopping. Shopping was fun for the first two days but on the third day, in one store that had no air conditioning, I managed to get seven mosquito bites in a ten-minute time frame. My left leg looked like it broke out in major hives because of how swollen the bites got.
My cousin then gave me a formula to put on my skin so that mosquitoes won’t bite me any more. Guess what happened? My arms actually broke out in hives afterward. I still have the hives now and the bites are terribly itchy!
But now, I’m visiting my other relatives. I’m now in Meixian where I’ve just met my maternal grandparents. As I walked in and greeted them, they smiled and then patted my face. Unfortunately, they speak in my home dialect, Hakanese, which I can only sometimes understand. I can largely understand my grandmother’s mixture of Mandarin and Hakanese though.
I’ll be starting my advertising internship next Tuesday or so!