Fa Piao, KFC and Michael Jackson

Friday, June 22, 2007
We didn’t have anything to do until 7pm at the New Oriental School so Abrahim (another intern from Baruch) and I decided to go to Computer City to get some things that we needed. We took the bus to Computer City, but first we had to go to the atm machine, which was an experience because our cards do not work in a lot of the Chinese atm's. A lot of their atm’s require a six digit number. Finally we found one that would give us money and we walked over to Computer City. This place was huge! It was like five floors of computers and other electronics and everyone wanted us to buy from them. We walked all around the place pricing the items that we needed to buy and after figuring out what a good price was, we settled on a place to buy the items. I bought a flash drive, memory card for my camera and a memory card reader. Before we left, Abrahim said do you think we should get a fa piao (receipt) and I was so hungry that I just wanted to get out of there and I said “no.” Well just my luck when I got home my flash drive did not work. Hopefully it is something that I am doing wrong or can fix because if not I am going to be out of luck. They told us to always ask for a fa piao (receipt). Word of advice: don’t go shopping on an empty stomach. We went to the supermarket to get some water and bread and then we went to KFC. I came home to get ready to go to New Oriental and I ate my KFC. In Wuhan there are two types of busses, some are 1.80 Yuan (about 0.30 cents) and others are 1.20 Yuan (about 0.13 cents). When I would get the 1.20 Yuan bus I would be excited because it was cheaper. But, I did not realize why there was a price difference until today. Today was very hot and the 1.20 Yuan bus does not have air conditioning. By the time I arrived at work I was soaked with sweat. That’s the last time I try to save 0.17 cents. At New Oriental, we had what’s called cultural salon. Where students can come and learn about English speaking cultures. This cultural salon was run by the interns and two of the Chinese teachers. They set up American games for the students, like beer pong (minus the beer), charades and Jeopardy. The students had a lot of fun and we did also. After class we attempted to go to dinner, but things closes pretty early in Wuhan so when we got the restaurant that we wanted to go to it was closed. We went home and got ready for the club. We went to the club that I don’t like but, there was nothing else to do so I went along. I met two medical students there one was from Bahrain and the other was from Somalia. I talked to them outside the club for a long time about their experiences in Wuhan and their life experiences. I asked the student from Bahrain if he saw Michael Jackson when he was living in Bahrain and he told me that he got a glimpse of him getting into a limo, I thought that was pretty cool.