The next days

The lake in Nanjing

I guess you notice the differences to another country the most when you are new to it. So, I'm gonna try and write a little more regularly these first days.

The metro in Nanjing is pretty new and they seem to take a lot of care that it stays that way. There's a lot of security and you don't have the obligatory German-subway-pee-smell. They also have (judging by their uniforms) soldiers that take care you don't get to close to the rails. And when a train comes in, they actually salute to it which really looks kinda strange to me. On the other hand I remember that the soldiers at the passport control had a series of smiley-knobs in front of them with which you could rate their politeness. In German offices you sometimes would really need one of these. Another very often used picture of China is that everything is under construction. The funniest thing about it is that most of the scaffolding is made with bamboo, maybe I'll get to show you a picture of it some time later.

Living-room of the appartment

The strangest differences alltogether you would find in the toilet. For one in many public places you only find those toilets you can't sit on, only crouch. And the water pressure is so low, that in most places you have to throw the used toilet paper in a trah can next to the toilet and not into it.

We are different, too, and people recognise that. I didn't get too much attention yet, except of a few strangers greeting me and a little hidden staring. Christine, the girl in whose appartment I stay until I find my own place, with her very long black hair is quiet openly commented and stared at. 

View out of the window

Now would probably be the time to comment on my current living situation. I stay in an 3-room appartment which is quite close to the University. 

Not only Christine, but also a Chinese architect Xin and a Portuguese, in whose room I live since he went to south China  for a couple of days, are living there. Xin is exceptionally nice and has been extremely helpful in many cases. He helped us with the local food, to get cheap Chinese phone contracts and is now spending a great deal of time trying to find me an appartment.

I'm probably also gonna buy me a new phone fairly quickly since my old one hasn't been working properly for several months now. Tomorrow I hope to get my documents from the local health department.

Arrival

I thought it would be a good idea to create a blog, even if they are usually blocked in China. Hope I get to write in here frome time to time...

What Chinese food looks like ^^

Now the first days in China have passed and since I haven't been there before a lot of surprises have been awaiting me. Most of the things I've heard before (maybe thought they were exaggerations or superstitions) but to really understand them you probably have to have been here. The first thing that struck me was the weather, going outside every single time strucks me like entering a sauna, you can even taste the fog. (It's more fog than smog thats the problem) The traffic is actually quite funny. Most of the time you have to walk on the road because the sidewalks are blocked by all kinds of things (today there were many people lighting little campfires, but don't ask me why). A lot of cars, bikes and mopeds are driving around, honking, yelling and generally trying to make themselves recognised. But after all I feel like New York's traffic was louder and worse. Like usual it's the little things that make you fail. I literally spent half an hour to leave the appartement, turning three different locks. and by magic it some times opened and others not. (And as usual it's now very easy after somebody explained it to you). Without some help, its also still some kind of adventure to eat food, especially if theres no way to know what you are ordering. We were close to eating frog, but right now there was only a well tasting donkey and a so called century egg (tausendjähriges ei). Somehow nobody understands the drinks we are ordering so we stuck to the obligatory kekoukele (Coke). and in the usual Chinese manner you just order a lot of different food for the whole table and everybody takes food from everybody else. and afterwards everybodys is fighting over the bill.

What we were "forced" to drink

Chinese is still really hard, and we've already encountered the problem of people speaking in other dialects (or at least accents of this dialects) which just makes it even more complicated. Right now I'm staying in an appartment of one of the other exchange students. In a couple of days I'm probably going to have to rent in a hostel. Today we basically went to see the university and tried to get some of the paper work done. We went to the police station to get registered and to the health department to receive documents for our admission. Stupid as I am, i forgot to take a passport photograph (which you apparently need 8 of) and I had to find a place to do that within 20 minutes - in a strange city. And we rode the subway, which I guess isn't that interesting for you but after having to organise a rechargeable ticket in a mixture of chinese and english, you are starting to be oddly proud of the very little things.