Day 9: Third Day of Classes

For the third day, I didn't have any mandatory classes to go to, but I could go sit in on another class to make some extra money.... so I decided to go to the class.

It was Prob and Stats on Campus A, so I would get paid for the time riding the bus too, which was a double plus. Getting up early, I finished off the buns that I had gotten a while ago, and tried the milk that I had gotten the day before. To my surprise, it wasn't sweet at all, unlike most of the drinks here, and it reminded me of milk at home.

Starting my day off right, we all got on the bus. Waiting for Will almost made us late, but he showed up at the last second. I talked for a bit, and then relaxed. All of a sudden in the middle of the ride, the bus driver honked his horn, which was the most shrill thing you can imagine. Now, in America, honking a horn is a sign of anger at the drivers around you, but in China, the ubiquitous horn honking has led me and the other TAs to believe that's it's simply a signal of

We went in the room, and the remaining students finished their introductions that weren't finished from Tuesday's class. There was another couple odd and/or humorous names, from Lightning to Fiona to Bob. During the break, I went to go fill up my water bottle in the aptly named Tea Room. Since the water in China isn't clean, they had water that was 100 degrees Celsius (if you don't know.... that's boiling temperature of water). I needed water, so I decided to go ahead and try it. What's the worst that can happen, right?

It was a disaster.... I started to put the water into the bottle, and the bottle shrunk before my eyes. Not entirely, thank goodness, but enough where it was making a mess. To make things worse, I couldn't touch it for a minute, because it was just that hot. I was just glad no one came in and saw that. Walking back, holding it by the lid, I told Nick and Jessica what had happened, and they were astonished. I couldn't even drink it for a while, either because of the temperature.

Sizes of the bottle before and after the incident....

After the class, I ran across the street to try to grab some cash from the Bank of China atm, since the one on Campus D was broken. I wasn't able to do so, though, because the only open ATM was for deposits only, and I didn't want to miss the shuttle bus. The shuttle almost left me.

Unfortunately, Will didn't get on the same shuttle back, so we had to wait to get our SIM cards until later. On the way back, I read my fuzzy logic book.

At the bus stop, we met up with Apollo and Dom to go take care of wifi. It turns out that you have to pay a certain amount of money per month for three different plans of data. I eventually decided on 6 gigs for 25 a month for the first month, and then I would see if that was enough for the other months. We didn't have much money on our card, so we had to reload it, but the place was closed, so we decided to come back another day. We headed to the dining hall, and I caught up with Apollo about our respective lives.

Gorgeous trees about to blossom

 At the dining hall, Dom pointed to a random thing, and got it. I got the same thing, and Apollo informed us it was Kung Pao chicken. I also got a Pepsi that was spelled Pspsi for some reason....
Apollo told me it probably wasn't safe to drink the water in the melted bottle, with all the chemicals in it, so I got a new bottle from the convenience store in the cafeteria.

Kung Pao chicken

 We headed over to the bank afterwards. The atm was still broken, but Apollo informed us that there were more ATMs inside. After getting some money, we headed home, saying goodbye to Apollo for now, thanking him for all his help. Dom decided to go to the gym down the street and get a membership, but the rest of us headed to the apartment.

The dual trash and recycling cans (which they should have in America too)

 On the way back, Nick stopped by the convenience store to get some snacks, where we saw some strange items for sale...

Mini fruit cups with two pieces of fruit in them

hopefully this is to cook with.....

We headed back home to wait until Celia was free and gave me my phone that she had sent to her apartment. I worked on my Linked In account, sent some emails, worked on some scholarship stuff for next year's living expenses, applied for funding for my research in the summer, watched a couple videos, etc. I finished off my sesame sticks from home, which are my favorite snack, ate some of the mint thins (which are the same as at home), and contemplated eating some of the orange mango oreos (which are surprisingly good).

Then Celia messaged me, and I got Will and the gang of TAs together to head over to the TA office, where she was waiting, and then the phone store. I had to use some of the yarn that I got yesterday to tie the bike basket that was falling off.

Making our way there, we went over a lot of speed bumps (like normal), and the yarn broke.... I engineered better (a reference to UC's engineering slogan) and used the bike lock to put it back together for a bit. We then split up, with everyone but me and Dom

Then we found Celia, and she gave me the phone. We all walked over to the phone store, and FINALLY got the SIM cards working in the phones, but we found out that calls and texts do cost a bit of money, although the data is still an amazing 500 Mb a day. Our service would start the next afternoon. I paid Celia back for the phone, since it was indeed working, and we headed over to the dining hall after looking in the store next door for zip ties for my bike basket (unsuccessfully)

We were up to our usual shenanigans, messing around with each other with puns and the like, and Celia accidentally ordered Jessica a huge bowl of noodles, that was bigger than her head. And then, going back, she had to pay for a to go bowl. I tried a bun with dried meat floss on top (not sure what type) and some bread that tasted like tomatoes and herbs, as well as mint coffee.

Going home, we almost stopped by a hardware store to get zip ties, but Jessica realized she had cable. Getting home, we finished the roster for statics, and Jessica and I had the longest, most satisfying roommate talk, and we found a lot of common ground.

After chatting with some people online (which is always hard with the wifi disconnecting constantly), I headed to sleep.

-Zoe