I’ve got to be entirely honest. When I first met my host student and her father at the train station in Shijiazhuang, I had very low expectations for how this was going to go. The first thing Shuaiyi (my host student) said to me was that she didn’t know much English, and her father indirectly reiterated the same sentiments by speaking exclusively in Chinese for the entire 40 minute car ride home.
The next day was also not helpful either. We started by going out to breakfast at KFC. Yes, Kentucky Fried Chicken. Now, you may not expect that KFC would have suitable breakfast options, and you would be right. The Chinese KFC also does not have suitable breakfast options. Or at least not for Americans. The menu was in Chinese and besides the information about the price, understanding said menu required a higher level of Chinese than I was prepared for. I had no idea what I was ordering but somehow I’d stumbled upon what can best be described as shrimp porridge. As far as I can tell, the making of this dish involves taking a bunch of shrimp, shredding the shrimp into tiny pieces, and then dumping the shreddings into a bowl of water.
10/10 would not recommend.
But after school let out for the day (which was also thankfully the last day of classes before the Chinese New Year Break because school was its own kind of disheartening but I’ll get to that another time), things started to turn around. Shuaiyi picked me up, and I had told her that I needed to find the Bank of China to exchange my money so she took me on the metro to a different part of the city to find one. The metro was really cool, mostly because of how much better it was than any of America’s metros. It was really clean and orderly and efficient which you wouldn’t think of a city that has a population of almost 11 million people. (FYI: New York City has 8.54 million people.) I’m not even joking, the time between each stop was not even 20 seconds. But so on that ride (we had to go like 3 stops away), she was showing me all of the advertisements that were on the walls and telling about the people on them, and it was pretty cool to learn about all of the things that interested her. Plus, I learned that she is a fellow fan of the TFBoys (which is basically the BTS of China).
Of course because this is me we’re talking about, the Bank wouldn’t take my money because it was the one Bank of China in all of China that didn’t handle currency exchanges so I had to figure that out later (I did, by the way, so don’t worry, I’ve garnered a fair bit of economic power in China now.) but she was really fun to hang out with, despite the language barriers. Plus, I also discovered a delicious Chinese snack that it basically fruit that’s been covered in crystalized sugar. It’s horribly unhealthy (and more than likely diabetes-inducing) but it’s so good.
I also had a lot of fun with Shuaiyi’s older cousin, Luoshuan, who was visiting the family during Chinese New Year. She’s probably in her mid-twenties and works as a primary school teacher in another part of Shijiazhuang. See, Shuaiyi had a really important test that she had to study for (which she took yesterday) so in the days leading up to that, she was stuck at school most of the day so Luoshuan took me out instead. On Thursday, we went to the mall and saw a movie and it was so much fun! The mall was really cool. I swear, it was like an underground city because each stand had its own room but also its own roof. It’s hard to explain, but it was like each shop was its own building.
That’s all I really have for now. See (I use this term loosely) you next time!
Elena's Travel Blog 
Your blog is so beautiful! Love it! Had fun traveling with you, wish we could stay longer though 😦
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谢谢你！I loved traveling with you, too!
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