I am alive! It feels like it has been months since I left the US but it really has only been few days. I have had so much packed in to this small amount of time that I don’t even know how to describe it. I don’t have a card reader for my camera yet so pictures will have to wait.
I am going to do a quick summary of what has happened since I left and at a later time I will go into more detail.
Wednesday
I left the Hartsfield-Jackson airport on Wednesday at 7:30 (EST). Had a good flight on Delta and landed in San Francisco at 9pm (PST 12EST). Waited in the airport until 1 to leave for Hong Kong.
Thursday/Friday
I flew on Singapore Airlines and it was fantastic. Slept around 8 hours during the 14 ½ flight to Hong Kong. Landed at 6:00am (Chinese Standard Time 6pm on Thursday EST) on Friday in Hong Kong. Left the airport to get to a ferry, got on the ferry and made the executive decision to never go economy on a Chinese ferry. Docked in Zhuhai, met my roommate, lost my checked bag, found my checked bag and got in a private taxi. Went to a supermarket called Carrefore and was stunned by the sheer amount of items stuffed into the 3 story section. Left the Supermarket to go to United International College and might have talked my roommates ear off the whole 1 ½ hour drive. Oops! Got to UIC, checked in, got my card and walked into my room to see a bed frame with no mattress. Turns out they don’t use mattresses here. Went to get food and to buy a cheap mattress pad that is still more like a mattress topper with a hard bottom and then tried my luck at sleeping.
Saturday
Found out that I cannot sleep past 6:30 am, might have teared up at the injustice of that. Went to the Chinese bank with roommate to get an account, waited 2 ½ hours for said account not understanding a word. We left bank to get more food and rest. After a nap my roommate and I went to get a Chinese phone. I am now the proud owner of an Oppo R8. This also took around 5 hours. Then we came home, tried my luck with the shower and succeeded.
Sunday
Woke up the next morning at 6:30 again and went to Orientation. Met all of the international exchange students (all 5 of them) and got a great tour of Zhuhai. I will definitely be talking more about this day later. Then we had a fancy dinner with the director of the International Development Office and staff. I got home and promptly fell asleep as soon as I hit my bed.
Monday
I woke up again at 6:30 on the dot and mulled around until 8:40 when orientation started. It was a long day because we had ten 30-minute sessions that are usually reserved for freshman. It was very boring to say the least. Then we toured the library, which is very nice, and then broke off to go for the rest of the afternoon. I was able to pay for my Internet and submit some prefilled forms for my foreign resident card. Later in the afternoon all of the international students, some of the Chinese volunteer students and some Western TAs decided to go out for dinner and it was delicious. We then followed up our fabulous dinner with some Chinese desert and it was quite good. Afterwards I went home and tried to figure out how to get the Internet to work, and promptly gave up to go to sleep.
As soon as I have more time I will expand more on each day and different activities that my group did but until then at least everyone knows I am actually alive and not in jail!
