kunming log

Arrived in Kunming

We arrived last night in Kunming and met our minders at the airport. Silly me, my minder is a man! I have no idea why I thought he was a girl. Either way, nice guy.

Here is Chong Hui (first one to the left).

We had a very nice welcome dinner. It was family-style with tons of food. God, I hate wasting food.

Our hotel room is modest, but good. I call my bed a funeral pyre because it feels like I am sleeping on a table top. They say its good for your back.

We had our big meeting today to introduce us to the program. So far so good.

Bought a pre-paid card for my cell phone. Wanted to buy a new cell phone, but the prices are about 3-4X what you can get the same "cool" phone for in the US. I guess the two most interesting things I learned today were that 1) people pick out cell phone numbers based on how lucky they are, paying a steep premium for 'lucky' numbers, and 2) labor is so bloody cheap that there are ten shop clerks for every customer. I will write more on that later.

Still haven't figured out a topic for thesis, but labor/wages is still looking interest.

Oh, so far it seems as if our minders education is extremely narrow. No surprise there, but need to learn more about them and figure it out.

posted by Aki @ 3:30 AM