LanZhou rhymes with J.Lo and that's why I love it!

Leaving on a Thursday evening and arriving, in a foreign country halfway around the world, on the following Saturday morning was only the start to my adventure. As soon as we got off the plane I realized the only other girl who wasn’t Chinese on the flight from BeiJing to LanZhou was also part of the delegation. Her name is Augustina and she is from Uruguay. We spoke some Spanish and got to know each other a little. (sidenote: Apparently when you introduce yourself in a foreign country you must also include where you are from. I introduce my self as Carlos Bejarano from the USA. Yes, I have to say USA because if I say US they are confused!)

After a hour drive from the airport to LanZhou University we were rushed to lunch and immediately introduced to twelve other delegates. TRAFFIC, holy Chinese frijoles, TRAFFIC is nuts here, NUTS! Just image that you are in a high speed police chase, surrounded by bicycles and pedestrians, bumper to bumper, accelerating every two seconds, then stopping, the accelerating, then almost running over a person, then hitting a bike, then HONKING! HONKING IS THE FAVORITE PAST TIME OF CHINESE DRIVERS! BEEP BEEP… I am sure that if I grew up in China my first words would have been “Beep Beep.” All in all, Augustina and I couldn’t stop commenting of the craziness of it all and how back in Uruguay or American ALL of the drivers, pedestrians, motorcyclist, and occasional baby-in-strollers would have tens of thousands of traffic violations. Well, after being in a ‘short’ traffic jam, as our greeting party described it, we made it to the lunch.

So far everything has been great. I am enjoying meeting the entire delegations of foreign people. There are people from Romania, Hungary, Kenya, Madagascar, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Uruguay, Cuban, Italy, France, Tanzania, Ukraine, Zimbabwe, Japan, and USA. Guess how many of us speak Chinese? THREE – which means that I get to serve as translator! I can translate from Spanish to English, English to Chinese, Chinese to Spanish, and all the combinations you can think of with the three languages I speak! I have been getting some headaches… to say the least. But everything is great!