A Quick Update Pt. 2

So, where was I? Ah yes...van to Suzhou.

If you've never been to China, then I don't know that I can describe the craziness that is their traffic system. The horns are not used to get mad at people, there is no road rage...but it is literally every man for themselves. You hear honking, it is to tell you, "I'm-a coming, and you best get out of the way." I'm not talking just cars, either; mopeds, motorcycles, and bikes all have horns that are all used nearly every second of driving. Strange thing is, I haven't seen a single incident yet. A lot of close calls, to be sure, but that's where it stops every time. And nobody gets mad. This will take some getting used to.

Anywho, to continue with the story. We had to travel an additional two hours to Suzhou from Shanghai, so by the time we got to the university (I still call it Suzhou University because the characters are the same as the city, and Soochow just sounds so...wrong to me) it was nine o'clock in this time zone. The rest of the students and I had a fun time getting checked into our rooms...and if you can't tell the sarcasm through the internet, "fun" equals "oh noes, things don't work!" My roommate Tyler and I had some difficulty figuring out how the internet worked, mainly because we thought there was only one internet jack in the room, and as it turns out, that jack is the only bad jack. Other students' rooms have had problems with hot water, the TV, and the air conditioning. Overall, though, I've been really happy with the state of the room. They really give us a lot, even if some of it doesn't always work.

I finally fell asleep and put myself back on a good sleep schedule. I still woke up every so often thanks to the wonderful (again, sarcasm is intended, if you can't tell) effects of jet lag, but my "true" waking up time was around 8:30 AM. That'll serve me well with class times. For Thursday, our day consisted mainly of getting our picture taken for our university ID's, eating a HUGE lunch, taking our placement tests (which I did pretty well on, considering I hadn't studied much over the summer...thanks a lot, two jobs and a play... :P), and then going to the most jam-packed supermarket I have ever seen. Everything is so cheap over here, it's ridiculous. You can buy food over here for around 2 yuan. That's less than 10 cents American. Wowzers.

Friday (for those of you in the US, we're about 15 hours ahead of you, so although you might currently be reading this Friday night, I'm writing it Saturday morning. Just FYI) was our slightly tourist-y day. We went to a canal city call Luzhi, saw the sights, got extremely wet from a huge downpour of rain, proceeded to go to a silk factory, got our text books, and then went back to the dorm. All and all, a pretty full day, despite the rather rushed description thanks to just finding out we are supposed to be somewhere soon.

If anyone wants my Skype account number, feel free to send me a message and I'll give it to you over email so as not to reveal too much personal info on this blog. I can't promise that I'll be on it at the times that calling will be good, but I will try.

再见，
杜楷