The next day I was exhausted when I woke up I was more exhausted than when I fell asleep, but I was still excited because I was going to get a chance to get my hair done. This meant two things: (1) I didn’t have to walk around with my hair jacked up and (2) I would get to learn more about Zimbabwe and its culture. My favorite part about traveling has always been meeting new people and seeing how everyone is basically the same even though we live in completely different places. That’s definitely a plus whenever I go to different places even within the US because there is such a difference between people who, say, live in the north vs. the south or the east versus the west. Anyway, back to the topic… As I was getting my hair done, Marvon and Tandi and I talked about the cultural and other differences between Zimbabwe and China, America and China, and Zimbabwe and America. We all agreed that the sales people at the Pearl Market on Silk Street were very pushy—they would grab you (especially if you were a foreigner) to make you buy stuff from them—but how they had no malicious intent. One thing that’s a little different at the Pearl Market (usually referred to as the Silk Market) in China than in America is that there’s a different type of competition here. Salespeople in America would never get away with pulling people around to get them to buy stuff and neither would sales people in regular stores in China. But, at the Silk Market, it’s rather common because the shops are so close together that they feel like they have to “grab” your attention before the next person’s shop does. We also talked about the government in Zimbabwe and the fact that’s it’s winter over there right now. Also, contrary to popular belief that ALL countries in Africa are very hot, they told me that Zimbabwe rarely gets over 29 degrees Celsius (about 80 degrees F) in any season. After talking for two hours, which is how long it took her to twist my hair, I was hungry, so I went to my room and my roommate and I went to Subway. Oh yeah, I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but American fast food in China is not the best way to go. My sweet onion, chicken teriyaki sub tasted pretty good though. We made the 15 minute walk back to my hotel-like dorm at Renmin (never get tired of that), and proceeded to eat my sub while watching some lude American movie that I would only watch in a foreign country. I went to camp from 7pm to 9pm and had a great time because I got to coach the big kids by myself for the first time, and it was a lot of fun because they already knew the basics that I was still attempting to teach the older ones. It was great! (for a summer thing because I wouldn’t necessarily do that for a living). I got back home around 9:30pm and went to the night street “market” that’s set up in front of the American fast food restaurants every night for two reasons: (1) because foreigners like to buy cheap stuff no matter the quality and (2) because it’s too hot in the day time to do it. Anyway, after a very long day took my McDonald’s food home, ate, showered, and crashed for the night. Tomorrow I’ll do it again…