Grow Blog

This first week has been eventful, exciting even. But exhausting at the same time. It seems we are starting everything from scratch: outfitting the apartment, learning to navigate, assessing the level of my students.

To start with we have been buying lots of basics for the apartment: plates, bowls, chopsticks. But I hear from my other Fulbrighters that they are working on the same tasks. Even the students on campus are doing much the same thing! The night before classes started the local super-duper-market was filled with young people buying essentially the same things as us:

From Wuhan Arrival

Toilet paper, instant noodles, Pringles. That first night we were still lacking a refrigerator, so were still in snack mode. I think we quickly got tired of restaurants, because frozen potstickers were on the menu before the end of the week. This is doubly strange since factory-made ones from the store cost exactly what hand-made fresh ones do on the street. But there’s something about eating at home that appealed to us (something other than instant noodles, yoghurt chilled on the balcony, and Pringles that is).

By Wednesday I was ready to just take a day off from the logistics of teaching and settling, so we set off across the river to Hankou—the central business district of the city, and home to its art museum. We had hoped for Belgian brew-pub food, but the Lonely Planet recommended restaurant had moved 10 months earlier, and there was no evidence that it had ever been at its advertised location anyway. It took an embarrassing number of minutes of walking up and down the street before thinking to call their phone number. Interestingly, the same friend who called in the middle of our wandering (which reminded me that I had a phone) called last night asking me about the exact same restaurant. In an even more amazing piece of serendipity, we were having yet another navigation problem at the exact same time! The campus bus, which I thought we had mastered, went backwards on its route!

Today (Saturday afternoon) brought another navigation error: this time by myself on the bus. I missed my stop by a long shot. Things started looking edge-city-ish, so I abandoned the bus and ducked into a coffeeshop and had the waitress point to where we were on the map. Sure enough: I was a good 3 miles past my intended destination. A quick cab ride brought me back to my intended destination: an intersection that includes multiple department stores and the one place that I know will sell me actual coffee rather than instant. So here I sit at Startbucks with a ½ kilo of medium-ground beans in my backpack. They share the space with ham, cheese, bread, pasta, and tomato sauce.

Please don’t think we’re soft. Sure, we had KFC last night. But I had the crabs!

From Wuhan Arrival

L picked the location, I suppose thinking it would be familiar and easy to negotiate (we’re never quite sure what we’re going to get in a Chinese restaurant). I didn’t have the heart to warn her ahead of time that negotiating Chinese fast food is often more difficult than throwing yourself on the mercy of the 服务员 at a restaurant. （Think about it: ‘you want fries with that?’ ‘you know, if you get a combo meal, it’s cheaper.’ ‘The crabs take a few minutes’）I was also heartless enough to send her downstairs to get the food herself. It took her about 20 minutes.

All this said, there are many familiar things and we have plenty of friends to help us. The first week of class here is much like the first week of class anywhere else: right down to the first lab assignment:

From Wuhan Arrival

OK, it’s time for me to go buy a pot to boil our spaghetti in. And figure out exactly what sort of vessel I am going to make my coffee with.
(Click on any of the photos to see the whole album, or follow this here link.)