Right now I'm sitting in an internet bar located directly across from the gates to the college. I'm surrounded by men chain-smoking cigarettes and playing World of Warcraft, but it's actually pretty quiet - everyone's wearing headphones. Apparently there's also an internet room on campus, but this is cheaper by far - 2 yuan an hour (that's approx. 26 cents). I had my placement test this morning, and then we're doing a city tour of Harbin this afternoon. We've been told to dress warmly, but it's actually not too bad here - very comparable to a New England February morning. The dorm rooms are pretty warm, and even though I took a freezing cold shower yesterday because I forgot to turn the water heater on, I now know to make sure all the lights are red, and that problem shouldn't occur again in the future!
So, what do I think so far? All of the other students seem to be pretty nice - the only one potential issue is that there are 14 guys and only 5 girls, so the gender ratio is a little skewed. Will be good to have lots of bodyguards to protect against sketchy Russian men, though! I haven't met my new roommate yet - she should be arriving this afternoon. I also don't know exactly what classes I'm going to be taking yet - I'm going to be taking a modern literature class for sure, and then I'm going to try and get in the high-level "special" class. They're going to let me go to the first couple of classes and see what I think - I was fighting against being put in the newspaper class, because that's all that I've been doing for the past year is reading newspapers, and I HATE the People's Daily!
All in all though, things are going well. The dorm is not fancy, but has all the necessities, including hot water now that I've figured out how to work it. We even have cable television - was watching a children's cartoon this morning, then switched to a panel discussion about global networking. It will be great to see the random variety of programming broadcast on CCTV! I've heard that "24" is incredibly popular in China, and that's where everyone gets their understanding of the inner workings of the American government from. I think that's the next DVD I'm going to try and go find - I think the first season of that show I was in Germany, and never really caught up on it.
ok - off to grab lunch. more later!
