24 Hours Later – All the Difference in the World

This post was started at around 2300 March 2nd, first full day on campus. A lot has happened, so this is going to be quite long.

So it’s been about 24 hours since I’ve been on campus. I never thought that a day would so completely change your perspective. But I digress, it might be better if I start from the beginning.

It should be noted that I went through security at least three times during this plane trip. Apparently American Airlines can’t print my Korean Air tickets, and on top of that the Korean Air that is run by Koreans and the Korean Air that is run by Chinese are considered different entities. This means that they too couldn’t print off multiple air tickets. Where are those elusive tickets that need printing? Why on the other side of security of course.

“Silly Kevin why didn’t you print your tickets online like I did (which made me feel super trendy)?”

International flight = NO PRINTING FOR YOU

Note to Booz: Do print off and keep your itinerary, they like to ask you for it at various times to insure you actually plan on getting the hell out of the country at some point.

After about 20 hours of travel I arrived tired, smelly, and excited. Well that’s super until after a pass through customs (which wasn’t too bad because it was so late, took in total around 40min), you come to find out that you’re contact isn’t at the terminal waiting for you. Nah it’s still good, probably just got stuck in traffic, another 10min tops and I’ll be on my way to bed.

2 hours later, 20RMB so you can use the internet to find a phone number, and several failed calls later I found out that he had gone to the wrong terminal. Wasn’t really his fault though, come to find out our plane switched gates and their flight information screens didn’t show the change. Anyways we hoped on a bus and were quickly on our way.

After an uneventful bus ride we got in a cab and made our final leg of the trip to ECUST. Luckily my Hendrix contact here, Shane, speaks fluent Chinese which smoothed over a lot of potential problems. After a quick cold walk through campus we came upon this old looking building that looked like a sad rendition of my dream dorm. O well, it wasn’t much but it was home.

Bags dropped off, Shane and I decided to brave the cold once more for some food and supplies. We also stopped by an internet café in order to send e-mails out to my family saying that “yadda yadda I’m here.” Needless to say it was a slacker’s paradise. For about 3RMB (50cents ish) an hour you can play video games and watch porn all you want with relatively no one judging you. Believe it or not (and most of you won’t), I wasn’t really a fan. It was kind of like a dirtier, sketchier version of the Fragshack (for those of you that remember that place). But cheap internet is cheap internet and I’ll make sure I keep it in mind.

Next stop, Chinese Muslim Noodle House (not actual name), which was damn near the best noodles I’ve ever had, and at the lovely price of about 12RMB ($2) I could easily have seen myself rolling down the hill towards obesity. After goodness was consumed (praise Allah), we popped into a small store and bought a phone card, a 2 liter of Coke, and some toilet paper. O that reminds me, Shane at this point has paid for everything but the dinner (I nabbed that) which was pretty generous on his part, he also gave me a used phone and some goodies, doubly generous.

After that I went back to the dorm where I finally passed out around 1am… and no sooner was awake by 6am, super. But I didn’t have anywhere to be until around 9am so I unpacked all of myself and noted with interest that a large group of various and seemingly unconnected students were out on the jogging track just having at it. Now I don’t know about you but unless you have a super early class you don’t really see students out till around 0900 or 1000, and here were like 150 students or so out at 6am, in the cold, running. I was tired just watching them (or from 5 hours of sleep in 48 hours, but whatever).

Anyways fast forwarding a bit I’m at orientation and I find out that every single one of the other exchange students are French with one student from Brussels’ French area. Great… Not a single person I could relate to our have a conversation with. At this point I was resigned to having to tackle Shanghai by myself and just make the best of it. FML

Needless to say I was stunned by the rest of the day. Not only were the Frenchies (I now say this with utter love) super nice, but three of the girls asked me to come with the group to lunch. So all of these kids, a majority of which went to the same college, who had been here for longer than me and obviously already somewhat knew each other, had a common language, and had no need to add another tap to the wine barrel, immediately invited and accepted me into their group. *mind blown*

At this point I feel it’s important to admit my own short comings in order to accurately my growth as a person. I freely admit to have lightly bought into the idea that most French people were a bit snotty and arrogant as hell, who held people trying to speak anything but fluent French in contempt. Now obviously I knew that this was just a generalization and it didn’t help that my only real contact with someone from France left a holy, bile like taste in my mouth.

Well as ambassadors of their country they blew up and shamed that notion down the drain. I have never met a better group of students, ever. O ya and though they all speak French, and use that in most conversations, their English is pretty damn good and they often make a decent effort into keeping me in their conversations. In short I may still be a bit of an outsider due to the cultural and language barrier, but I have just found a group of people to hang out, party, and in general experience all China has to offer.

Switching gears for a sec, we got back from lunch to fill out all of our paper work and my concerns with class schedule, and getting internet in my dorm were assuaged. They perfectly understood that I had an internship and said I could just come to the Mandarin classes when I could. Also they’re putting 2M internet into my room (I assume that means 2 Mbits/sec) without making me pay for it, it should be installed in about a week (sucks but could be worse). O I also switched out of my drag of a dorm, into a smaller but much more awesome dorm in their new international student dormitory. The bathroom leads much to be desired but now I’m like on the 14th floor with my friends, with a balcony, and I’m chillin like a villain.

Putting this blogehicle (it’s a word, try looking it up, it’s right between to Awesome and Porchse) back into 4th, our group headed out into the Shanghai night to look for food. After some intense walking and a few hops along the subway we came to People’s Square where we found some scrumptious BBQ. Antonie, Ping Pong (her chosen Chinese name, I whole heartedly approved), and I made plans to go out tomorrow to get some shopping down, get a transport card (used for the subway, bus, taxis), and get some photos taken for some paper work that the school wants.

I really like these -> () just in case you couldn’t tell.

“But that’s not grammatically correct!”

Sadly at this point it started raining but I decided to still go with four other students to find a drink and a good time. Both were found but due to the rain not in the quantities we desired. It was probably for the best cause at this point it’s around 1am and I’m fading fast…