First Full Day!

This morning after the housekeeping incident, I couldn't go back to sleep so I hopped in the shower, desperately trying not to get water everywhere while still maintaining water pressure. Dressed, journaled. We went downstairs at 11:50 for lunch, which was in another hotel.

They totally serve meals on lazy susans.

Gigantic ones! At least that's the way it's been at the 2 restaurants we've been to so far. It's family style - our dishes included fried mystery meat that tasted like chicken, tofu, more mystery meat that was really good, delicious fish (however, they like to leave the bones in the meat, so we had to constantly check for those), potatoes, soup, rice and something else. One drink is included with every meal, but that drink is an 8 oz glass with no free refills. The plates are the size of soucers, and you get one or two little bowls for soup and rice, one with a spoon. To drink we could usually choose from water, tea, Coke or beer. I think several people would have gotten beer if we didn't have rehearsal right afterwards. Sluggish musicians aren't good! A little ways into lunch, people went to the bar and got some water for 10 yuan - I keep wanting to say yen - which is about a buck and a half. One guys almost got beer because apparently the bottles are rather large. I don't know much about beer, but their bottles looked about 2X the size of ours.

It's interesting how full I felt afterwards. It's really hard to gauge how much you eat off that tiny plate when you keep refilling it, plus you have to account for what you lose off of the chopsticks. Ha. Oh, and we've told to try KFC, it's supposed to be good.

After lunch we went back to the hotel to get instruments. Jenna and I made a stop next door at the Construction Bank of China, or China Constructions Bank or something like that, since I can use that one without any fees. At 2 pm, we all left to drive to Fudan University.

Fudan University apparently has about 50,000 students. The campus is incredibly large, and has high schools (at least one) there too. From where we rehearsed, the campus extended at least another 2-3 kilometers, Alex said. We rehearsed in a classroom-turned-orchestra room, which was very cramped. They're used to getting closer to each other than we are. Most all of the kids speak English, so that's a relief!

Rehearsal went pretty well - Mr. Li basically did the first half. He doesn't speak much English at all, so he would sing the wrong way of doing something, the sing the right way/how he wanted it, we would play it, and that was that. We went to dinner (not sure when - I sort of lost track of the time) with the students, some who rode on the bus with us. There I met Hower and Violet, both violinists. At dinner, me, Jenna (both violinists) and Hannah and Nick (cellists) sat with Maggie, Tiffany, Eysen, Adolf, Hower and Violet, all violinists. It was fun - we compared differences between countries and asked various questions. Also, they showed us the correct way to eat the food (bowl vs. plate). I didn't feel so bad the rest of the trip when I dropped food with my chopsticks because they did it too! They also put what they don't want on the tablecloth, while we just tried to keep it to one side of the tiny plate.

Back to rehearsal. Anderson did most of this one. He figured out most of them spoke English, so he talked a lot more than Conductor Li. I keep wondering how much of him they actually understood. I don't know, but we all came in at the right places. Li did the end, then we headed back to the hotel.

I often crave sweet foods at night (ok...well all the time) but I was in the mood for ice cream. A few of us went down the street to a 24-hr C-store to get snack food. Now, Alex had cautioned all of us to cross only with the locals and/or only with the green lights. Well, we did the first leg, with the green because there weren't any locals, to the middle of the road under a bridge. The other side was red, so we waited...and waited...and waited...it definitely never turned green, so we just went. Got a bunch of food for 18.80 yuan, which is less than 3 dollars. woot!

Came back, slept, day over.