I found a better place for the ripped off DVD’s. I got blackhawk down for 10 quai. And yes, that’s about $1.25, and apparently, I’m getting ripped off unless I get them for 6.
I’m convinced that I’m the only latin american in this city. And for a city of 7 million, that’s sort of impressive.
I’m going apartment shopping later this afternoon, which is kinda crazy unto itself, but it will be nice to have some space of my own. From what I understand, they charge more the foreigners, but it still seems like a steal compared to DC prices. A two bedroom apt for about $200-250 a month. Not bad, right?
Unfortunately, right now I don’t have internet access in my room, but hopefully once I get into the apartment, I’ll get that taken care of and will be able to send out emails more often and I’ll be able to upload the pictures as well.
So as I mentioned, this city is cold. I wear a coat to the bank, to class and everywhere in general. Mao famously said that the cities to the south don’t need heating, so the central gov’t didn’t install any. So all the foreigners curse his name regularly.
Yesterday’s big adventure was searching for Western Food (OJ, french bread, cheese) and I got some terrible OJ stuff that tastes more like minute maid or something along those lines. Can’t find any cheese nor can I find anything other than sandwich bread..which tastes kidna funny. From what I hear, the chinese cheese isn’t very good, but there is a western style store in the center of the city that has some in stock. Tomorrow, NuNu, Marc and myself are making a run for it. I also got some Chinese Oreos that taste…bad. Really really bad. What a let down!
I got a Chinese name! Li A Bei. I’m still learning how to draw up the characters, though. The ‘A’ is pronounced like the A in my name and the Bei sounds like the ‘i’ kinda cuts off at the end. I wanted to get a cooler name though. Something like ‘He who is absolutely incredible in every way possible’, but the registration person didn’t let me do it. It was also like 54 characters long, so it wasn’t the most practical of names.