Simple Living
Life in Kunming is rather simple and straightforward. For me, day to day life is made up of classes and finding food. Personally, I’ve found that visiting restaurants and street vendors is the best way to meet the locals. Interestingly enough, there is one street vendor who sets up shop right outside of our hotel every day, and as a result he knows almost all of the students really well. We have decided to call his food Chinese Pizza, because it reminds us of pizza a little bit. However, it’s very spicy and it’s all wrapped up so it’s easy to eat and portable. Since we started eating his food in a rush he has started saying hi to us whenever we pass by. A couple of the students even go so often that the man knows exactly what they order and starts cooking it when they approach. I think it’s pretty fascinating that foreigners can be considered regulars at a restaurant so quickly.
I have not bought much so far abroad besides food. I do plan on buying souvenirs in the near future, I have just been waiting until I was closer to leaving so I didn’t have to travel around with too much extra luggage. So I guess so far, the most interesting thing I have bought has been traditional food for a meal. I will say, as I’ve said before, everything in China is incredibly inexpensive. As a result, the currency difference is very strange and hard to get used to. I often feel like I’m carrying around too much cash because I need so many bills in China to carry around the equivalent of about $20 USD. However, even with everything being so cheap I run through my money quite quickly. I think this is because I am required to pay for all of my own food and that racks up the bill pretty quickly. That being said, I definitely have used less money here than I would if I had been paying for my food in any of the European countries. So in the long run I’d say I’ve been pretty good about not spending too much. Pretty soon I’ll have to go back to the ATM though and get money for the souvenirs I want to bring back for my family. The price of traveling I guess.
Well that’s all for now. Time to continue the eternal struggle of even finding wifi in China. I have to say, this blog has proven a lot more difficult to maintain that I was expecting, but I blame the Chinese Internet restrictions for that.
