Welcome to America... in China

Heading to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu

Today I had two new awesome and amazing experiences. The first was going to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu, and the other was eating hot pot, which is a regional specialty in the Sichuan province. After morning Chinese classes, we all hopped on the bus and headed over to the U.S. Consulate. We were all wearing our "beautiful" new school uniform shirts, being oversized, hot, and quite unattractive polo type shirts. Upon arriving at the U.S. Consulate, we were greeted by two stern-looking Chinese military personal. The security was pretty intense. The two men checked our passports, then another man behind a shaded window checked our passports and wrote something down, and then another man opened the door, let us in, and took our bags. Once we made it through, we were guided to a small room that was plainly decorated and reminded me of America. There was a large American flag in one corner, furniture made of high-quality wood in another, and there was even a large map of all the esteemed universities in America on the wall. A lady who worked for the U.S. State Department talked to us about working for the government and about the State Department and international relations. Another lady talked to us about safety as U.S. citizens travelling in a foreign country. It was all very interesting. A large number of NSLI-Y scholars are interested in international relations and/or working for the State Department. When I applied for this scholarship, working for the State Department never really crossed my mind. Two of the main reasons I applied is because one of my life-long goals is to be fluent in Mandarin Chinese, and the other is that NSLI-Y provided me the opportunity to go to China (mostly) for free. After a long bus ride back to school and a long car ride back home, my host family and I walked to a restaurant not far from their home to eat hot pot. Hot pot is like Chinese fondu and is famously prepared in the Sichuan province with exceptional spiciness. Hot pot consists of a large pot of broth with salt, spicy peppers, and other additions. The pot is put onto a burner in the middle of the table and is heated to a boil. There are different variations, such as a pot that is half spicy and half not or a pot with a small not-spicy broth in the center and spicy broth surrounding it. Our hot pot was like the latter. My family ordered many different foods to cook in the pot, including kelp, seaweed, cabbage, mushrooms, fish, beef, pig stomach, and duck blood. I was going to try the numbingly spicy broth, but I shied away when they started to put duck's blood and pig stomach in the broth. Despite the... interesting animal products, I really enjoyed hot pot. I consumed two different kinds of fish and over ten different types of vegetables. My host mom helped me get food out of the pot because I struggled a bit. After we were thoroughly full, we headed to a fruit store and purchased grapes and bananas for breakfast in the morning. It was an overall very satisfying day.