Hello, all! Today Kevin and I had such a great day. I finished work as always at noon and Kevin met me for lunch. I want to write more about the food here, but that is for another(/many more) post(s). The language barrier affects us most when it comes to ordering food. Going out with friends is a nice treat as not only can they show us new places, but they can help us order! Usually we get what we can point to, so there either has to be a pictures menu or someone else eating it, or else we have to play menu roulette, which has gotten us some less than appetizing menu options. We’re slowly getting better (when I first got here I stupidly couldn’t even use chopsticks, so at least at this point I can get most things into my mouth), but I can’t wait until we can understand our options a little better and can choose accordingly!

But I digress. Today we had a delicious lunch of beef and cilantro dumplings, twice cooked pork, and fried rice. Yumyumyum. As another side note, this meal got Kevin and I both completely stuffed with left overs and cost under $5. Can’t beat it. But anyway, feeling fat and happy, but a little post-grubbing sluggish, we decided to hop on the bus and head downtown for the afternoon in search of some coffee. Not always an easy thing to find, and usually kind of expensive. People in Chengdu are all about the tea.

Our search for a Starbucks led us to Tianfu Square, the central point of Chengdu, and from there we wandered to People’s Park. We finally got into a photo frenzy, so I’ll start with Tianfu Square and the city center and maybe save the park pictures for tomorrow.

Chengdu is pretty big and there’s still so much we have to explore. We haven’t even really gotten around to much of the typical touristy kind of stuff cause we’ve been so busy getting settled. I will say, though, getting around is so super easy, even with our minimal understanding (and zero reading ability) of Chinese. The (limited, but in the process of expanding) metro and the bus make it easy and CHEAP to get all over town. And there is cheap, delicious food to discover everywhere you go. So living here after our initial panic to get our apartment together has been really budget friendly. And tasty. Sorry, I’m really hungry. Some pictures and then it’s dinner time for us!

Ps- see that gray sky in the pictures? Notice how everything looks kind of washed out, and buildings in the distance are hard to see? That’s the lovely fog/smog that constantly covers Chengdu! Takes a bit of getting used to, but there are  redeeming factors, such as the trees all over the city.

Love to you all!!

Construction is absolutely everywhere in Chengdu.

These flowers were all in pots, not in the ground. Kind of funny, but very pretty!