My Mianyang Host Family

I've spent the last two days with the family of the school's director. And let me tell you, it was pretty nice. Bed with a mattress. Hot shower. Good food.

But, most of all, some really great people. My host mom is amazing - she's so laid back and always so happy! She paints a lot and let me flip through her sketchbook, which had a bunch of sketches from Lijiang (yay!!! lol, I also spent my morning texting directions to Mama Naxi's to Ellie; I hope she finds it, it's an an amazing place but really hard to find!). She does a lot of travel and also had sketches from Xinjiang, Ya'an, and Hainan (an island in the South that I realllyyy want to go to).

Her daughter, who's English name is Coco, is fifteen years old and reminds me a lot of Julia. Of course, she has no siblings, but she has two older girl cousins. They treat each other like sisters (like most kids here treat their cousins, seeing as they have no brothers or sisters) and remind me a lot of my own sisters. All three speak English very well. Actually, the oldest is a grad student in Michigan (she's on break right now) and basically speaks like an American. I was so excited in talking to her that I unfortunately started speaking too quickly for the others to understand. I've gotten very used to talking very slowly here.

So, I spent Sunday night there and on Monday we left Mianyang for a lake called Xianhai. We biked through the hills there, which were really beautiful. Then we got lunch out there - I was a little hesitant at first, because it was fish (from the lake) but it was really good. It was very spicy and so delicious! There was also eggplant, which always makes me happy. The restaurant we ate at was really cool too - it was made up of separate little roof-covered but open air areas connected by little paths in a big garden.

Afterwards, we played Mahjong. They were very surprised that I already knew how to play but, of course, I don't know the Sichuan version (I think my version is Guangdong...but I'm not sure - mostly it's my wierd, dunno-what-I-was-really-doing-Xian-version based off of the maybe-Guangdong-version). Anyways, my host mom helped me out a bit and I even won a few rounds.

Anyways, we just hung out at one of the girl's apartments for a bit, watched some of Slumdog Millionaire and then went to Pizza Hut. Only my second time there in about a year. Anyways, it was pretty good. I had some of the leftover pizza for breakfast this morning. They invited me to stay another night, so I didn't get back to school until about an hour ago. I had a great time there - I'm looking forward to spending more time with them!