First Update from China

Hey Everyone

Sorry it took so long for me to update my blog but, I have been both very busy and have had little internet access. I will try and sum up the past week as best I can because so much has happened. Going forward, I will provide more details and post much more frequently.

I landed in Beijing around 2 pm last Saturday and the family I was staying with Mr. and Mrs. Pi were there to pick me up. They drove me to their home, which took an hour because of traffic and because they live on the other side of Beijing from where the airport is. That night we went out for dinner to with their daughter and a friend of hers. The food was excellent it the company was great! We had many beers!

My first full day in the city, included going to get my sim card for my phone and we also went to a map store to get me a map of the city. My cell phone bill will cost about 88 RMB or $11 a month. It includes 450 minutes and 150 MB of data. Text msgs are .3 RMB and each MB I go over my data plan is .24 RMB!!! Check the exchange rate to see how cheap that is!

On Monday, Mrs Pi took me to register for my school and to start looking for an apartment. The registration took about 2 hours and was typical China in that it took forever to complete when it should have been done in 15 minutes. Very frustrating.

Looking for an apartment was even worse. Mrs. Pi knew what I was looking for because her daughter translated eveything but she doesn't speak much english. So it is very hard to communicate with her. It wasn't until Tuesday that I thought of using google translator for everything. Anyway, the first day of apartment hunting was miserable and the places we looked at were awful. They were typical Chinese apartments.

The second day was much better and we found an amazing apartment! It is brand new, in a gated community of sorts. It is so new that many rooms are still be completed and the outside is still being finished. Many of the things in my apartment weren't installed yet.

On Wednesday, we went back to the apartment began to finalize payments and to oversee the installation of the air conditioner, TV and the cleaning ladies who came to clean the apartment so I could move in that night. After they had completed, Mrs. Pi took me to Wal-Mart to buy many apartment neccessites.

Yesterday, I had my physical for school. The paperwork for my physical I brought from the US wasn't sufficient because it was all photocopies!?!? So I had to get 5 tests done. Again Chinese inefficiences, caused a process that maybe would have taken in an American doctor's office an hour took close to four in the Chinese hospital! But it was great day because I met so many foreign students from all over the world. I met people from Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Iran, Pakistan, South Korea, Japan, UK, Belgium just to name a few. It appears that for students entering the university this year year there are only four Americans. I also got to meet up with two Chinese friends that I met at the Olympics and we went out for dinner, got milkshakes and they came over to my apartment.

My one friend Lang Cheng asked me to give him an English name. He was thinking about Nove, which I told him was kind of dumb because its not a real name. I came up with the name Miles because he reminds me of a hipster-like kid and thought he needed a cooler, less-common but still used named. He really liked it!

That is all for now I think, I have to go back to my apartment to meet Mrs Pi who is going to help me with some of the last formalities of my apartment. I will post pictures of my apartment next time I am at Starbucks, since I don't have internet at my apartment until Monday.