Free Time

This is a backpost now, and it was somewhat unfinished, but I'll post it anyway:

Today has been my first day with some actual downtime. My apartment is finally arranged the way I want it, and I just have a few odds and ends to put away and decorate. But I'm taking this chunk of time to relax, soak my feet, and watch an episode of Avatar instead.

We still don't have internet, but even when we do, I'll still need to get a proxy so I can access blogspot and facebook to keep in touch. The five of us waiguoren went to an internet cafe yesterday, and I mainly used it to check up on io9 and webcomics; nothing really serious.

The five of us includes: Josh, Marlie, John-Michael, Ben, and I. JM and Ben are from Akron in Ohio, and the rest of us are from Beloit. Although Josh, Ben, and I are the only ones with any Chinese experience, the other two have quickly picked up laowai and wu ge waiguoren. [Honored outsiders, and 5 foreigners, respectively.]

I haven't gotten sick yet, and I'm hoping I won't. The food has been good, and extremely cheap. I've been reviewing my 7s in the multiplication tables as that's approximately the exchange rate. (More like 6.56 something, but 7 is easier.) Everything has been cheap. The bus costs one yuan, or kuai. So only about 18 cents or so. Or two baozi dumplings for one kuai. To refill my water costs 5. I've only bought essential things, like toothpaste (that I accidentally bought green tea flavored. I didn't pay attention to the cha character.) and water and cleaning supplies.

Right now I'm listening to the sounds of outside chanting. The sophomores are undergoing their two week military training that's compulsory for all freshmen. They would have done it last year, but because of the bird flu, it wasn't possible (we learned this from one of the foreign directors today; we thought they were all freshmen).

One hilarious thing that we've started between the five of us, courtesy of Josh, are calling all Chinese children “grinnies”, and all dogs and puppies “wuppers” or “wuppets”. Most of the dogs we've seen are of a fluffy white variety, so it seems appropriate.

Just like Japan, I'm feeling the lack of sweet foods here, and so now that I've discovered they sell skittles I've been buying them every other day so I can feed my sugar craving.

Classes will start on September 6th with my TA Jenny at the Nursing school, and September 16th with my other TA Puppy (that I mentioned before) at the new campus. I have a different class situation than everyone else here, so we'll see how that goes...