First off, in response to uncle mike, front desk was interesting to learn about but I was pretty familiar with all of those concepts since I worked front desk at VCA (the most amazing hotel ever...) ha! But now I am in my department, food and beverage. I have tried the local beer! And it is pretty good but I am actually partial to the Japanese beer asahi. It is better in my opinion and cheaper! And yes we have started Chinese classes! We had our second one yesterday. And let me tell you.. It makes me appreciate Spanish soooo much more! This is a very difficult language to learn but hopefully we will be able to make some kind of conversation in Chinese after these classes.
So, my first rotation is in Shang Palace, the traditional Chinese restaurant. We all go through rotations in all food and beverage outlets and then the boys go through different areas of front office. I found out once getting here that we all wanted to do front office but my roommate and I were chosen to do food and beverage since we couldn't all do front office. As my parents already know, my topic was changed half way through the time we had to write our outline for the project and I was not a happy camper... But now I am very happy that my topic has changed because it is probably the largest problem within the hotel at this time so I can really impress them! Haha at least I hope so.. Working in Shang Palace though has been quite an adjustment. Since it is a traditional Chinese restaurant you can imagine the customers are mostly Chinese and you know what that means... No speaky English!! Which in turn means that the employees don't need to speak very good English because not many of their customers are or they come with Chinese speakers so they don't have to worry about English. Which of course means the employees cannot communicate with me very well! This is the biggest problem I have had. If I don't know what you are saying, and you don't know what I am saying, how are we supposed to work together? They cant even tell me what to do or how to do it because I don't know what they are saying. I am hoping this will get better because as of now I am not being very helpful and I'm not learning very much. I have also found that these servers don't have that large of a problem conversing with the guests because they are speaking their native language. So this restaurant doesn't need too much of my help.
In terms of extracurricular activities jason and I found a gym! We are both very excited because even though there is a fitness center on the premise we are not allowed to use it.. The gym that we found is very nice too which I was pleasently surprised about! We heard from the other interns in Qingdao that the gym they are going to does not have air conditioning! That would be brutal.. But ours does! We also found a restaurant and bar here called Brooklyn and we love it! They only serve American food :) haha which we need every so often bc I miss it! The owner is Chinese but he was raised in the states so he speaks perfect English and he is a really nice guy, it's like we have a piece of home here with us! We went to the beach the other weekend but the one we went to was all rocks... So we didn't get lucky there but we have heard of some others that are sandy and hopefully we will scope those out tomorrow!
In case you were wondering, here are some things you cannot find in china to wrap up this blog :)
1: cheese... Which is very depressing, and if you can find it it is very expensive
2: milk, and the milk you do find is not refrigerated. It is that pasteurized..
3: lettuce!! Which does not make me happy at all I have been craving a salad since we got here!
4: ice cream, it is in very short supply and really odd flavors
5: corn on the cob! We see it sold on the streets everywhere but it's not in the stores!
6: Mac and cheese!! Which was expected haha
Ok that's all for now! Love and miss you all!
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