Wanderings

Last night most everyone was either tired or already out, so I decided to go exploring. I walked north of campus for about half an hour without encountering much other than bus stops and a few fruit vendors, so I retraced my steps and then went east. There were a bunch of small shops, which I got to leisurely explore. One of the things I have noticed is that the minute a salesperson notices that you might be slightly interested in a product, they come over and try to sell it to you. While that might be nice if you have questions about what you're looking at, it makes window shopping extremely difficult. I always felt slightly bad when, after being asked some question in Chinese along the lines of "Do you like it?" or "Look how nice it is! Do you want to buy it?", I inevitably had to tell them I was just looking.

Since I was by myself, I definitely noticed that people stared a lot more. Normally when we are out in a group I blend in a little bit better (people usually just notice Desmond, who is from Kenya and about 6'4"), but since I was by myself I stuck out more.

Oh well, the cultural acceptance of staring goes both ways... at least I can stare at whomever I want :)

This afternoon several of us stayed on campus to do homework. Today was the first day since we got here that you could actually see the sun, so we went to the lake to enjoy the blue sky and try to get some work done.

Lake with water tower in the background -->

Apparently not many people do schoolwork at the lake, because we kept having people come stand beside where we were sitting, peering over our shoulders to see what we were doing. There were also several groups of school children wandering around, and one group stopped to talk and take pictures with us.

<--Some of the kids clustered around Matt and Ryan

It's always fun to interact with children here, because they have a very honest, open curiosity. Even if they are shy, they often want to take your picture, speak a little English with you, or even just wave hello. That connection extends to parents; if I smile at a particularly cute child, their mother or father will almost always notice and smile back at me. One of these days I should pull a Rachel and happily squeal "Baby!" and see what happens.