First Week in Chengdu

Things have been very busy. Between Chicago on June 29th and when I
moved to my host family's house, I've been dragging all my luggage
everywhere around hotels and airports. When we got to Chengdu there
were training events every day and we started language training. We'd
have to get up at 7 and finish everything by 4pm. I caught a pretty
bad cold on the second day I was at the hotel after getting several
vaccination shots, so I wasn't as alert and focused as I wanted to be.
And I didn't get to go out and explore Chengdu much. I'm just about
over my cold now, but I got another round of vaccinations yesterday,
so i'm afraid I might get sick again.

The whole group split up in to 4 groups and went to 4 different
universities in the area for training. I'm now at Sichuan Normal
University East, which is a bit further away from the center of
Chengdu where the hotel was. Moved in with my host family on Tuesday.
They're a nice young couple with a very nice apartment. I have air
conditioning in my room and wifi. The school is about a 15 minute
walk. I have to get there early to do language training and TEFL
English teacher training. I'm there from 8:00 to 6:00 and I've been
falling asleep around 10 because of the jet lag and just sheer
exhaustion. When I get back to my host family's apartment, they are
constantly talking to me. The woman speaks a little english but her
husband doesn't speak any. He has a very heavy Sichuan accent when he
speaks Mandarin, so I can't really understand him even when he's using
words I understand. We have been relying on Google Translate, which is
remarkably accurate. The woman speaks much clearer Mandarin, but
usually they just speak in the Sichuanese dialect, which I can't
understand at all.

Today is the first day off I've gotten from training. I think I'm
going somewhere later with my hosts. Not sure where.

The climate here is extremely humid. It's usually around 80 degrees,
but the humidity is almost unbearable when you're wearing dress
clothes. It feels about as bad as Bangkok, if not worse. The skies are
constantly cloudy from pollution, but we saw the sun yesterday for the
first time.

So far the language training has been easy. I haven't learned anything
new yet, but the training focuses on actively using the language
rather than studying it. And being forced to speaking Chinese at home,
wherever I go, and learning with the group has helped a lot.

I have a very good group. They are very interesting people. Most of
them are around my age. Many have the same ambitions as me and I feel like we can work together to prepare ourselves for what we're doing after Peace Corps.
Some are having more difficulty than others. Two people have already
decided to go home. Now there are 81 of us.