Orientation

So quite a lot has happened in the last week. Monday morning I embarked on my journey to Hangzhou on a flight from Des Moines with stops in Dallas, San Francisco, and Hong Kong. The whole thing took from 8:00 am Monday to 12:30 am Wednesday (central time), and seriously screwed up my circadian rhythms. When I arrived at the airport in Hangzhou I exchanged my cash and grabbed a taxi. I was pretty sure I was home free at that point, but unfortunately I had a rookie driver or something because he jumped out of the cab like five times to ask other cab drivers for directions to Zhejiang University of Technology (zhejiang gongye daxue). I'm pretty sure I still paid for all the wrong turns he took, and he didn't even drop me off at the right gate, but whatever. I found my way to the international student dorm and more or less collapsed in my room.

After catching my breath I little I went down to the office to meet the resident director, Amy Saurer (Su Aimei), who is super nice and helped me order a big jug of water for my room. (I am in love with that water. Not only does it mean I don't have to buy water bottles all the time like the last time I was in China, but the whole 19 liters is only 8.5 kuai=$1.24 Way cheap.) So anyway I went back to my room and turned on the hot water heater so I could take a shower (I was GROSS) and had every intention of unpacking I was before my roommate got there, but I laid down on my bed for just a minute because it felt sooooo good after 4 plane rides, and wouldn't ya know I fell asleep. So I was completely conked out when my roommate arrived, and I think my first impression was a lot sweatier disoriented than I had planned. No worries though, Xiao xiao and I are getting along really well. :) She's incredibly patient with my very limited Chinese. And she keeps a stash of awesome snacks.

We had orientation Thursday through today, and on the whole the support from the staff here has been really encouraging and informative. We had several meetings in English to go over ground rules before signing the language pledge yesterday, and in between we've been eating tons of delicious food. I've eaten so much this week it's ridiculous, and without serious repercussions... yet

I'm so excited about all the classes and activities offered and getting to know Hangzhou, but I'm afraid it'd take me all night to describe them, and it'll be more interesting to read reports when I actually do them anyway. This week I start classes, and given all the warnings from professors about how heavy our workload is, I think I'll be plenty busy. So think of me when I'm wandering around looking for my classes tomorrow morning (or tonight, for those of you on the other side of the globe and all that) and straining to keep up with my teachers and classmates. I guess summer vacation's over - well, the vacation part anyway, it's so hot over here!! According to Su Aimei Hangzhou had the highest average temperature of any city in China last year. Good news for October, miserable right now. Good thing my room has air conditioning.

Disclaimer: In light of my Chinese language pledge, my blog entries will probably have minimal editing. If you notice a flowers for algernon effect, you can rejoice because it means the zhongwen is taking over my brain.

On the other hand I plan to take tons of pictures and post all the good ones, so yeah, worth a thousand words, etc etc.