What were you grateful for this week?
A nice lady that helped me find the phone store so I could pay my phone bill.

What was the most challenging part of this week?
Chinese social rules. 

Tell us about a “wow” moment you had this week.
I made a paper fortune teller for [my host family’s son] when he was sick.

Tell us about your week! 
It has been exciting to go to my host families real home 2 hours away in Cixi. Many people live in the summer home. They have a big pond full of fishes, they have a grand staircase I think is made of marble. They have gardens surrounding their house and that is where they get almost all their produce. I found out that they eat their water turtles!!! Ewww. I tried some. It didn’t taste horrible, but I was sad knowing I ate one of the turtles I saw swimming earlier! 

 

Something that has been hard is social rules within the family. Since we have arrived here everyone had been very strict about social rules and it wouldn’t be a big deal except I have no idea what any of them are. Apparently, the child I mostly interact with is a pretty big deal. The way mom host mom said it over translation is that he’s the boss of the house. Which means he almost always eats first at meals which is a big deal here. And he can order a lot of people around. He’s still a kid though so not all the time. He has everything he wants whenever he wants it. It’s hard for me to swallow. And is hard for me to see a child grow up that way. He doesn’t have much respect for anything except his mom. He is such a sweet child when he’s allowed to be normal though! So I broke a couple social rules sure to translation miscommunications and it upset my host family and it made life stressful. This week has been hard. I’ve learned I need to be more grateful.