I will not be missing my tiny dorm room and community bathrooms!
Today I woke up extremely early at 5 am because of jet lag. I was starving, I hadn’t had a decent meal since leaving Atlanta. So I decided to go out for a walk and maybe visit one of the university’s dinning halls. There were lots of people doing Tai Chi in the streets and nice calming music everywhere.
Figuring out how to buy and order food was quite a task! I must really improve on my Chinese. First, I couldn’t figure out how to pay. I saw some people paying with tickets and others simply swiping their TJU cards. After trying to tell the sales lady I wanted to recharge my card I finally figured out she was trying to tell me she wasn’t working until 9:30. So then I decided I would buy tickets. I gave her a 100 and she looked at me with a face and kept pointing at a sign. I thought she meant they didn’t accept 100 so I gave her a 50 instead. She kept asking “how much?” I told her I wanted 50 since I assumed I would be eating there often for the next month. However, she kept asking “how much?” so I just said 15. She asked, “15? Really?” and I said yes so she finally gave me some tickets worth 15 yuan. Later a Tianjin student I met at the dinning hall who helped me order food told me you can only use the tickets the day you buy them and when I told her I had tickets worth 15 yuan she looked at me with a surprised face. Apparently 15 yuan is too much for food even though the equivalent of 15 yuan is about 2 USD. No wonder the woman wasn’t accepting my 50 or 100! She must have thought I was crazy. I find it amazing that 2 dollars for food is too much. I met two other friends and told them not to buy tickets that I would share. With 15 yuan, the three of us bought food and drinks and I still have tickets left!!!!
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