Well I’ve been here for 5 days now, spent two of them in bed hungover (old habits die hard) and have still managed to accomplish a couple of things in the meantime.
I’ve bought a cell phone for 500RMB ($71) with a sim card. It is cheap and crappy looking and I’m sure I could have bargained them a bi tlower but I had an employee of the hostel helping me and I felt stupid bargaining through a translator.
I haven’t been out doing the tourist thing much but I have figured out the subway system after taking a trip out to Wudaokou, the university area. I had originally planned to live out there so wanted to scope it out a bit and see what connections into the city were like. The subway is pretty good but seems to be packed at all times and I’m starting to realise why foreigners tend to cab it everywhere.
As for the apartment hunt, this sounds dodgy, but I met some American dude in a bar the other night and got chatting to him. He needed a roomie sharpish, I needed a place to stay, we chatted some more, I went to look at it and now I’m sitting in the lounge room typing away. My room is huge, the apartment is massive, it’s nice, pretty central in the Guomao area and at 2,300RMB ($330) a month it’s a lot cheaper than what I was expecting to have to pay for my own place. Plus I can stay for six months, he’s ok with me having people stay for the Olympics, he’s been here a while and has lots of connections, speaks a bit of Chinese and is a generally laid back kind of guy. Should be good.
Today’s goal was to suss out the language school scene. There’s a place up the road from me that has a class starting next Monday for $530 for four weeks. I am pretty keen to get started somewhere but this place is four hours per day starting at an agonising 8:30am five days a week. Gadzooks. I’m not sure I want to put myself through that but it’s near to my house, the price seems ok, and if I don’t have a reason to get up in the mornings I can see myself wasting all my time here. Still thinking about it…
I’m also on the hunt for a gym to join and apperently there are quite a few in this area. It’s funny wandering around here because I have no decent maps, can’t read the street names even if there were any, and I don’t even know what to tell a taxi driver if I were to get lost and need to take a cab home. It’s pretty exciting but daunting at the same time.
I’m up for a challenge though so we’ll see how it goes!
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