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.