没有

没有. Meiyou. Don't have it. These are probably the two most infuriating syllables I know of the Chinese language. 

I had a bit of a rough day today. I did not sleep well, did not feel well, and to top it all off, it was raining, I ran out of deodorant, and our toilet broke. Lots of little things just piling up and it made me upset. And they're the type of little things that are easy to deal with in the US, but because of language barriers and the absence of a store like CVS, things are much more difficult in China.

I went to seven different on-campus stores in search of deodorant. I even looked up the word, wrote out the pinyin and characters, double checked it with my teacher, and asked the salespeople if they had it. Each store said 没有. Finally, after the field trip and after reporting the broken toilet, I walked down the street our dorm complex is off of because I saw a cosmetics store there when we were driving home. I showed them what I was looking for and they said 没有. I left to try to find another store, but on my way back I decided to look around there to see for myself. Plus, I needed a small body wash to get through the rest of the trip. Lo and behold, they had five varieties of men's and women's roll on and spray deodorant. So much for 没有. The on campus places definitely didn't have it, but it was so frustrating to find what I was looking for in a place where I was explicitly told they didn't have it.

Classes were fine today. We had an ordinary Chinese class and a lecture at the hospital on acupuncture and moxibustion for TCM. It was most of the same information as yesterday, but with a new person, so there were fresh nuggets of knowledge to be gained. Plus he did some cupping demonstrations and let a fellow student try applying the cup to another student, so that was pretty cool. On the way back from the hospital, Gu Laoshi distributed the lab coats we are to wear when we do our acupuncture lesson in the clinic. Tomorrow and Thursday we are split into two groups. One group goes to the acupuncture clinic, and the other group has a classroom activity. The syllabus says we watch a movie. I'm in the movie group for tomorrow and the acupuncture group for Thursday.

In my free time, I read from my coursepack, studied my vocab, handled e-mail, and then went to sleep early. I had a simple on-campus dinner with some friends, and I ate my chicken, vegetables, and rice with the spork I was given.

Today is awesome because all the issues were resolved by the end of the day and tomorrow will be better.