Week 1: Pandas and earthquakes

     I have now been in Chengdu for a little over a week.  It's been a lot of fun so far.  My classes are going pretty well.  Nothing too exciting but I definitely feel like my Chinese is improving already.  I've been able to speak briefly with a few people in Chinese when ordering food or buying things, which is exciting.  This past week there was an earthquake in China's Yunnan Province.  I think it was a 5.6 magnitude earthquake and something like 50 people died.  It's pretty far south of Chengdu but I woke up and felt my building swaying.  At first I thought it was the construction they are doing on the building but later I figured out it was an earthquake.  Most people didn't even feel it here though so it wasn't a big deal.
     On Saturday we had a field trip to go to the Panda Research Base and we got to see baby pandas!!  It was kind of amazing!  They were so small and adorable!  You could hold a panda and get a picture taken with it for $200 USD but I just couldn't bring myself to spend that much money just to hold a panda for 5 minutes.  We spent the morning with the pandas and then in the afternoon they took us on a bus tour of the city.  It was nice to see what all there is to do in Chengdu and we're definitely planning to go explore the city more.
   Yesterday my roomates and I decided to thoroughly clean our apartment since it looks like it's never been cleaned.  We probably started around 1pm and cleaned all day.  At about 6:45 I headed to my room to study and the power went out.  It was only our apartment that lost power though.  We called Wentao (the program director) and she called some people to try and fix it.  We had 3 different people come work on fixing it but nobody could.  At 9:30 I decided I needed to go study before it got any later since I had a quiz today.  I went over to someone else's apartment to study and spend the night because it was really dark in our apartment.  When I woke up this morning their power had gone out.  At least there was some light coming through the windows but the bathroom was really dark so I had a hard time getting ready.  I got back to my room today though and the power is back on!  So exciting!