Work

Work is going really well. The last week has been rather slow, but on the bright side, I haven’t been overworked! My co-workers are great – friendly, cheerful, and understanding. Interesting points about the office atmosphere:

                -Speech level. Shouting is completely acceptable. No need to get up and go over to someone else’s desk if you can just shout from where you are. While most of the time the overall noise level is moderate, occasionally there are large bouts of coinciding elevated speech levels leading to what sounds like a small riot.

                -Efficiency. It seems to me that this is not particularly important. I could be wrong on this, but it’s my general impression. Work technically starts at 9am, but employees can often be seen wandering in or relaxing/chatting until 9:30 or later. After lunch is the same story.

                -Attire. Dress here is very casual, and I’m not complaining. Jeans and a sweater – completely acceptable. Additionally, it is very common for Chinese people to wear the same outfits for multiple days in a row. Let’s be honest…despite our opposing cultural programming, much of the clothing we wear doesn't need to be washed after one use. Why should it matter if those clothes are worn the next day? That being said, I'm not sure how comfortable I would be with wearing the same shirt and slacks for 4+ days.

                -Food. I’ve been here almost three weeks, and I’m still trying new foods almost daily for lunch. Most of them are vegetables that don’t exist back home. No point in looking up the English, either, since “asparagus lettuce” means nothing to me. We all eat together at the office cafeteria – it’s a great time to chat/work on my Mandarin. Did I mention that we get an hour and a half for lunch? This actually means an hour for badminton and half an hour for lunch. Here's what a typical meal looks like.

Bottom row: dumplings (with pork and cabbage), Xiangsu duck and baiyejie (it's made out of beans, that's all I know), tofu with peas, tomato and egg.

Top row: soup with white carrot, vinegar (for the dumplings), cabbage, beef and potatoes in some sort of curry.

7 second version: Enjoying work, making friends, and still eating weird new foods.