Week One: Over

It's been a whole week already. Wow. I didn't really realize untill I typed that that it's actually been a whole week. It doesn't feel like it. Three or four days, maybe, but not a week.

My roommate arrived from England last night. Her name is Saffron and, while we haven't had much chance to talk, she seems pretty cool. I can't tell yet how well we'll get along, but I doubt there will be any butting heads. She's a vegetarian, but considering how hard/costly it is to find meat-less food here, we'll see how long that lasts.

Update on my phone friend. I mentioned that I went to the doctor for my medical examination and (s)he suddenly became terrified that I was grievously injured. I consider text based instant messaging shoddy communication at best. But when you mix in different languages, it probably won't end well. It took about four more messages on my end to convince him that I was bleeding on the side of the road or something.

My View on Things Now:

• I'm living in one of the better parts of the city, so while foreigners are uncommon, I haven't been stared at as much as I expected. There are a couple palces that someone would have to be on fire before people looked at him instead of me. I've found that it's easier to ignore (pretend they're not) the staring if I listen to music while I walk around. If they can see that I have my headphones on, salespeople, people handing out fliers, and assorted curious people are also less likely to approach me. Once I start learning a bit of Mandarin, I'll do this less often, but for now it's like my little safety bubble.
• I still don't understand the corn thing. I don't think I ever will. he other day I saw corn mixed into a fruit salad. I don't know who created such an unholy abomination, but I can only wish them bad luck.
• I'm going to have to experiment on my own with a lot of things. This means walking around on my own and hoping I don't get lost. This also means that when I get cold enough to try and turn the heating on, that I'll need to make sure I don't blow anything up.
• My internet isn't as slow as I expected. Now that I've got the land line working it's going about twice as fast, or twice as not so slow, as it was when I was leaching off some guys unprotected wifi. This means that I can still spend some of my free time on 4chan and other websites that provide absolutely no benefit to society or my social life.
• I really want to start learning Mandarin. I really wish I hadn't forgotten that copy of Rosetta Stone that I downloaded. Maybe I can get my mom to mail it to me once I figure out my address.
• China is just a weird place compared to my old home. It can't fully be explained in words why it's different, but it is. It's going to take a bit of getting used too, but I'm lovign every minute of it.