Guten Morgen

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It’s 7 in the morning right now. I’ve been up for the past hour reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac, trying hard not to disturb my new room mate. But I can’t help it anymore.

We arrived in Shanghai yesterday afternoon. The flight was only two hours from Beijing. Now we’re on campus and I’m about to start my first day of school, though I’m not really sure what that will entail. I guess we have been severely pampered in our extremely cheap 4 star hotel this past week. I suppose it was really cheap because it was intended for two people but there were three of us sleeping there but don’t tell Howard Johnson that. Anyways, I’m pretty sure he had his revenge because on our last night water started leaking down from the light fixture in our bathroom so we were forced to switch. Wait a minute, leaking is too generous of a term to use there. It was more like pouring for a few minutes actually. It only furthers my hypothesis that Beijing is a pretty city if you only look skin deep. It’s so superficial. Shanghai on the other hand is perfect.

The city reminds me of Boston. It’s dirty and smelly like Boston. I suppose I haven’t been to many cities within the US so I lack the ability to find the most accurate comparison, but I think Boston will suffice. The only problem is that I’m pretty sure it is about 20 times larger than Boston and is apparently the largest city in China according to our guide who is actually the grad student I will be working with at the university.

Oh and something else. I have a room mate, which we were not expecting. From what my traveling companions and I were told, there was going to be a double and then a single and the three of us agreed to rotate so that one person wouldn’t be alone the whole trip. But as it turns out that single is a double shared with a German student studying engineering economics. We pulled names out of a hat to determine who would live with her first and of course mine was drawn. I’m already having trouble bonding with my two traveling companions who were already best friends and to top it off now I’m living with a complete stranger, exiled even further from my companions. But I guess it’s not too bad. She seems friendly and it will give me an opportunity to practice my German, which I haven’t studied in four year.

Other then that I guess I’m back to living in a dorm. I miss my apartment, but it’s not like this place is much different from the dorms at WPI except for that the internet is slower so now I can’t spend my afternoons on the facebook.

I guess that’s it for now. Tschüss!

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