Chinese life, I'm coming!

Mochou Lake

There's been a lot happening over the last couple of days. I found my own apartment -which I will say more about later- got most of the paper work done we have to do and already spent a couple of days at the university with classes. I got placed in an intermediate level which I guess suits me very well, classes aren't as great as they were in Trier, but they seem to be alright. In the hostel where I stayed I got to meet many foreigners, which doesn't help my Chinese, but I do enjoy the international atmosphere. I got to practice my Polish and even a little bit French throughout the past days (and obviously English as well). I got to see the Museum of the Nanjing Massacre where about 300000 got slaughtered by the invading Japanese troops in World War II, went to Xinjiekou, which is the biggest shopping district of Nanjing, and got a glimpse of the Mochou Lake in the city which looked really great.

Huge food market we
found by accident

Foodwise I spent the first 5 days eating only Chinese food. Afterwards my stomach decided it wanted something else so I switched to Mcdonalds, a German bakery and a Turkish restaurant. Now I'm switching back and forth between Chinese and Western food. Most of the Chinese stuff is just really weird and usually the smell doesn't make me get hungrier either, but that might still come, I'm just not used to it yet. And like most Weterners would make the mistake to offer dairy products and sweets to chinese people without considering that there's a big chance they won't like it, many people here seem to keep forgetting that only a few of us would consider chicken legs and claws a small snack like chips.

Other things for example I'm basically already used to, like babies not wearing pampers but just having a big slit in their pants and peeing in the middle of a crossing in front of a big bank. (Alex in Shanghai put up a nice picture of that:http://howtodowtle.tumblr.com/ ); women using umbrellas to not get tanned, people putting a stamp on your receipt after shopping (which I still don't really see the sense in), and little kids shouting „Mama, mama, a foreigner“.

Bamboo is even used
on really big buildings