My first week in Harbin.

Hey everybody! So I have finished my first week of classes and I have officially been in China for a little more than a week. So far it has been difficult to adjust to living in a new country and speaking a foreign language 24/7. They told us it would be hard though, and it should get better in another week or so. The city of Harbin is fairly large and has some cool underground shopping areas. There are also lots of people and a fair amount of Russians. Walking outside reminds me of being in New York. The pedestrians don't have the right of way, but you can also cross where ever you want. In some of the cross walks it's pretty much a battle between person and car for who gets the right of way. If there are enough people to stop the car, the people win. If it's only a few people, you pretty much dodge cars to get across the street. The city buildings and such are necessarily appealing to the eye, but the inside of many buildings are pretty nice. I have a video up on facebook that shows what driving is like.

I have a total of four classes, and all but my one on two class are two hours long. So every week I have 21 hours of class. My earliest class starts at 8 and my latest class ends at 5. My teachers are difficult to understand because they speak quickly and use a lot of words and structures that I haven't learned yet. I've already had to learn several new words to express things I already knew how to express. For example, we all learned homework as "gongke" but here they say "zuoye." I'm taking a Newspaper class, a Conversation class, a one on two drill, and a one on one tutorial. The one-on-one tutorial will be the hardest because the words I have to know are far beyond the "hi, my name is..." words, but so far I have been successfully learning about economics in the class.

The food here is pretty good. I've only eaten a few things so far that I don't like. The only difficulty is it's hard to tell exactly what I'm eating. I'm sure though that sometimes it's better not to know. The cafeterias are nice and to pay for your food each counter that has food has a machine that is like the pay pass machines. So, you tell them what you want, they type it in the machine, and then you touch your card to the machine and you've paid for your food. The lunch rush is huge so you have to be kinda quick and decide what you want or it will all be gone. You can also buy some food and everything else you might need at the grocery type store on campus.

The campus is pretty big and it took me a while to notice how many buildings there are and how tall and close together they are. It is definitely a far cry from the WSU campus but it will end up being home for a while for me. The campus is gated, but I've never seen the gates closed. The dorm is the international dorm and has several floors. I'm on the fourth floor. Today I successfully did my first load of laundry in a foreign country. :)

So I think this is all for now. I hope I have answered everybody's initial questions. I miss and love you all!

Nicole