Day 1

  

It's begun.  (technically, yesterday...).  We went through orientation, which was basically a 3 hours talk on alcohol.  Very dissapointing us "Americans" have to be lectured on this so much... They played us a video of a bunch of Chinese students on campus, asking them questions about American students.  They said we like to go out to bars, and are normally "strong-willed and spontaneous", which I took to mean "noisy and reckless".  Hmm.

I like the staff.  All very nice and professional, they speak Chinese to us (when appropriate... a lot of kids here don't speak much Mandarin).  After introductions and the alcohol talk, we were split up into groups of 7.  My group was me, Ken (Penn State), and 5 other girls.  They're all very nice, talkative (but not excessive), and we've all been bonding in our experiences here sofar.  Granted, I'm used to the Asian-ness of things, like traffic and food and whatnot, but it's still fun to see them wide-eyed about it all.

Our group went to a homestay to eat food, as did every group.  I was the only lucky one of the homestay students, cuz we ate at my homestay!  Joy.  My host mom was the only one there though, with her friend, but she's very nice and oh so excited to have us over.  I reckon she had a student last semester, whom they said 'spoke some chinese', but she said he didn't speak any... and she was so surprised I could speak, so she talked my ear off about the house and 'do you like your room?  is the bathroom big enough, cuz if not you just come and use the big one in our room..." etc... haha...  But yeah, I move in tonight or tomorrow... she says tonight, the program schedule says tomorrow.

My room, btw, is sweet.  At least as big as my hotel room here (2 person room).  Got a bed, lazy boy chair, big closet, a tv, speakers, a great view... I'll take some pics and you'll see better...

Speaking of which, here are some photos of our hotel room (I'm rooming with one other homestay, Matt from Lawrence, NY.)

Next we went to this huge 15 story mall, Zhongshan Park Mall.  Spent 2 hours buying phones....er, waiting for others to buy phones.  Finally, time to go home, I take Matt and this other IU girl to eat at a local small place, help them order chinese food, and it was delicious.

Not much more than that... one adventure to tell from yesterday, but I must be off.

下次再聊！