The first weekend in China

I spent my weekend being a hermit, mostly.
As I'm adjusting to living here, my apartment is my sanctuary. I really like the mod-feel and I like having the little tastes of home all around.
I know I'm being super closed-minded, but give me some time.
At home, my room is full of different pieces of different cultures I've accumulated from my personal travels and from international friends.
Here, the only international items I brought were my hippie pants from Paris. Other than that, my clothes, books, stationary, and yes, I brought my bandanas, are all American. I'm not talking about having the American flag everywhere, just the language of everything and the clothing quality (even though they were probably made in China, anyway), and there really isn't anything more country/hippie American than bandanas.
I really enjoy having a lot of time to myself to read and write and simply look out over the city.
Not to mention, the air in my apartment is clean and smog-free.
As it gets hotter into July and August, the smog will only get worse. I will probably leave even less then and I feel bad for admitting it. Just imagine breathing in bus fumes every few minutes and that is what it is like when I leave the apartment complex.
On a brighter note, I have learned that if I go to the store during the day, say before 3 pm, there are less people out to stare. And, generally speaking, it isn't considered rude to stare here, so they do it early and often without qualm. Usually a "knee how" (hello) distracts them from it long enough for me to pass by as they quickly jump out of their trance and into a reciprocating hello and smile.
On Saturday, the other intern and I went to explore Suzhou.
We started with Papa John's near the hotel as he was craving pizza and I could always go for a taste of home.

It was a sit down restaurant (yes, the same Papa John's we eat at home is a sit down restaurant here) and was really expensive by my new standards of living.

Generally, I don't spend more than 50 yuan for groceries for the week, that's not even $10 US. Our total ticket was 133 yuan, about $21, which included a stuffed crust pizza, and coke, and a snow kiss (basically a sprite float with strawberry ice cream).

Sure, it doesn't sound like much, but it is a lot for my new paycheck, which isn't even $500 US a month.
We roamed around the outdoor mall, checking out fake brands and those we recognized such as Crocs (yes, those ugly shoes), Dickies, Burger King, Starbucks, and Pizza Hut.
A new subway opened in the last month and we wanted to check it out. So we hopped on and went to the last stop and got off. As we climbed out of the ground, I quickly became even more thankful for my living quarters as shabby two-story apartment buildings crept out from behind store fronts and above the slums behind them. It was much more crowded than our side of Suzhou and much dirtier. Leftover construction mess from the subway's covered what should have been sidewalks, forcing people to utilize the scary-busy street.

We got more stares than usual.
So we walked to and fro until we reached the next stop and rode back to the hotel to walk the canal.

Suzhou is known for its canals. The historic ones are really the famous, and probably much nicer ones. The canal near the hotel feeds into the major Suzhou Industrial Park lake that the hotel sits on. It seems to go on forever and we walked a while until we came across some government buildings with a line of flag in front of it. Including the only two whose language I speak. Alex, the other intern, was a little upset that Venezuela was not present and even more so when France was - he doesn't really like the French, go figure.
The sun was beginning to set, so we headed back to catch the shuttle back home to rest (he still hadn't recovered from his flight just 2 days earlier and had also just moved apartments and needed to unpack). I spent the evening watching the city from my reading nook and clean air, slowly adjusting to calling this home.
Yesterday, I slept pretty late: 7 AM. It's a record that I couldn't beat again today. My room mate, Grace, was off so we decided to go to the store together. Alex came, too as he also needed a translator.
I'm really hoping the next food and beverage intern is at least half as nice as her and speaks as good of Chinese. Cross your fingers for me.
She stumbled through as she tried to remember the name of the place her mom had gone 2 months earlier when she arrived, "cher, char, car, car something."
Wait.
"Carrefour?!"
"Yeah, that sounds right." And then she produced a reusable tote from her room with the Carrefour logo on it.
Sigh of relief.
I was going to be able to eat here after all.
Carrefour is a super market I discovered in Paris when I wanted to eat more than just fruit. I nearly literally stumbled upon it when I got lost on one of my runs and a little girl came running out of the storefront. Children are generally extremely well-behaved in Paris so I was, for once, happy for such a rarity when I realized where she ran from.
Well-behaved children are not the case here. I had at least 3 children run smack into my front side, bounce off, and run along, without pause during this 30 minute venture inside the Carrefour.
I've never seen a store so crammed in my life. It's like black Friday, every damn day. I assure you I'm not exaggerating.
It was crazy.
I finally found rice (who knew I would have such a problem finding rice, here?) and then, more importantly, the foreign foods aisle. I nearly hugged the strawberry jam and wheat bread. And skippy! I even found Skippy peanut butter. And, my guilty pleasure, Nutella, but it was way too expensive for me to splurge on - 30 yuan for a little jar! That's not even $5 US, but nearly every food item I buy here is under 5 or 10 yuan - .80 and $1.60, respectively.
I also grabbed spaghetti noodles and meat sauce in a can (no tomato paste in sight, heck I couldn't even find tomatoes, so no homemade sauce for the next 6 months).
On the way out, I decided to treat myself to a minute maid grape juice. Be warned, grape juice is, well, pulpy, there. I had no idea and that first swig was quite the surprise.
Also, like in Europe, they charge per plastic bag, so go ahead and invest in totes. I almost wish they would charge for them in the states to make us a little more environmentally conscious.
The more I look around here, the more I fear that we are headed down the same track in the United States.
Yesterday I told Grace I probably couldn't stand to live here long-term. The people are nice and I love being in a new culture, but I simply cannot handle the pollution in the water and the air. I love being outside and that is one thing I have really come to appreciate about the states, going outside freely without fear of inhaling cancer and having the room to grow and go enjoy the national parks that they so seriously lack here.
That's the first thing on my list of things to do when I get home, breathe.
It sounds stupidly obvious, but I will breathe and appreciate the air like none of you probably ever have.
Much love.