The week in review

This week has been both better and worse than I expected.  As far as studying goes, finding classes has been slightly frustrating – the second-year law classes I was going to were all really boring except for one, and it turned out to have too many prerequisites for me to hold my own in the class, even though it was really interesting.  Oh well – now I’m looking at first year law classes and some international relations and higher education research classes, so we’ll see how that goes.  Flagship classes have been good – a bit slow, but I think they will help me improve my Chinese.  The media class is especially interesting, because I’ve never really paid much attention to the structural foundation of Chinese media and its relation to society.

Apart from study, life is great!  I feel acclimated to Nanjing, and everything has gone pretty well.  I’m using my downstairs neighbors’ wireless Internet connection – they’re Nanjing Daxue students too, and they gave me their password when I first moved in.  Funny story: they changed the password over the weekend, but I didn’t want to set up my own connection, because I’m only going to be here for a few months and the cheap Internet service here doesn’t come to my building, so I decided to offer to pay part of their monthly fee to keep using theirs.  I went over a couple nights ago and hung out with them for half an hour, watching them play Starcraft and making small talk.  Finally, right as I left I brought up the Internet, and they agreed to let me use it and didn’t even let me pay them!  I felt very Chinese, not mentioning the real purpose of my visit until the very end and doing everything the guanxi way.  Basically, they circle around issues and don’t mention them directly unless absolutely necessary.  I need to invite them over or give them a gift or something, though, because I am definitely in their debt right now.

The roommate I found told me his family opposed him living with me, so I’m back at square one now, even though we were supposed to have found our roommates by today.  Oh well – I’ll call the other guys I met with again and work something out.  Once that’s settled, I’ll feel a lot better about everything.

I love the crowds of people!  I always felt like Provo was empty, but here there are people everywhere.  Joel and I went to Xuanwu Lake on Sunday and walked around it, and there were throngs of people everywhere we looked.  This good-looking girl was sitting on a bench and taking pictures of herself as we walked up to her, making flirty eyes at me in between shots.  We came up to her, and I asked if she wanted me to take a picture of her, which she did, but then she got what she really wanted, which was a picture of me and her together.  I fell right in her trap.  At least it was a fairly innocuous one!

We have district conference in Shanghai this weekend.  I’m really excited – I’ve flown through Shanghai, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually been.  More on that when I get back.