A couple things that have been nagging at me for the past couple days:
- Mandarin: lots of gwailos (ex-teachers?) speak it here. I know I felt good about my street navigation ability a couple posts ago (and it’s really not anything to brag about in Xi’an), but these people make me feel bad about not having really learned much in my Mandarin classes at Lingnan. I feel like I got a good foundation but very little precious content/vocabulary/what have you.
- Showers: being in China does not exempt you from having to take one once every, I don’t know, three or four days. If you’re in some far-flung part of Tibet, OK, you get a pass (and my countrymen are no doubt sorry for messing up your holiday plans with their foolish idealism). If you’re in Xi’an—and you, French guy in my room and on the tour today are—NO FREE PASS. The guy from Oz and I thought you might take a hint when we both loudly talked about the showers we were going to take this afternoon, but no dice.
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