Day 8: Second Day of Classes

My second day of work started a bit different than the first.
I got up around 7, had breakfast and took my time waking up, and then I got to bike over with Jessica, Will and Nick to statics class around 8:10.

I'm still disoriented by the fact that when locking your bikes, you don't have to chain them to a tree or pole, but just put the lock in the wheel so no one rides it away. In the US, someone would pick it up and walk off with it if you did that.

Going into class, we introduced ourselves again, and the students helped us with the attendance rosters. My friend Apollo was in the class (and I talked to him about the phone and wifi situation). There were also more interesting names in the class, including Hardman and Black.

I talked to Celia about the phone thing, since she came in for the next class. She said that she'd check with Jessica if the unlock code worked (since she FINALLY got an email back from Consumer Cellular), and if it didn't, she'd order the phone online and I could pay her back.

I decided to go relax and take care of some business before getting lunch. When I finally got into the food court, I wasn't actually sure how to get something. Most booths had no pictures, and those that did were a bit precariously high, and far enough away from the counter, where something could get easily confused. I eventually decided to go with a place that had a lot of different options sitting out, and I just pointed to one that looked like tofu. It turned out to be a great choice, because she kept putting more and more stuff on my plate until it looked like the picture below. (And the somewhat spicy chicken....or I think it was chicken, anyway..... was great as well!). The soup was a bit too sweet for my taste, but it was still good.

After lunch, I went to get a couple notebooks from the on campus convenience store, but they were closed. The ATM was also broken, and I needed money for the shuttle to Campus A for the next heat transfer class. So I biked back to my apartment, and stuck around for a bit.

I then got on the 1:00 shuttle, and fell asleep pretty quickly, despite my best efforts to read my book about fuzzy logic. I made my way to the class slowly, grabbing a can of coffee to get me through the class. Talking to Prof Mora again was pretty exciting, as we share a lot of common interests. He was also an international student himself, as he is from Ecuador, so he was excited that was one of my passions. He had also taught at CQU last semester as well, so after class, he showed me the copy center and a place to get milk and yogurt (since dairy products are in short supply in China). Waiting at the bus stop to go back, I was once again wondering what type of tropical trees were in the middle of the turn around.

On the bus, I transferred lots of photos to my computer, and got some fuzzy logic reading done. (If you don't know what fuzzy logic is, please look it up, it's a fantastic mix of science and technology that I will be doing research with with UAVs starting in the summer.)

Once I got off, I started walking home. I noticed the little outside snack shop, which was a novel idea. That would be a great idea in the US as well, but it wouldn't do well in the winter.

I decided to go to the bookstore on my way home, and got some notebooks, double chocolate Pocky (which I've never had before) and some yarn to fix my bike basket which is coming off at the moment.

My spoils

By the time I got back, Jessica was slightly freaked out, thinking I had gotten lost, while Dom had realized that I was just exploring. They all went for dinner at a chicken sandwich place, while I stayed in and had my leftovers from lunch. I also found out the code did not work in the phone, so I asked Celia to  I vegged out in front of the computer for several hours, finally catching up on blog stuff, uploading some pictures, trying to watch some videos (but the wifi is verrrryyyy slow here, so it didn't work too well) and chatting with people online.

I finally headed to sleep once I was done, ready to start all over again tomorrow.
-Zoe