So in the last couple of days (yesterday and today), we've been dealing with a lot of little irritating issues with the apartment: the hot water doesn't work well, there's an unexplained hole in the living room wall, and we are really puzzled as to why they are having us live 20 minutes from a grocery store and 20 minutes from a subway stop. I was sort of hoping that we'd be more centrally located to things. This is a disappointment.
We also feel like sometimes my questions are not getting answered, or getting only partially answered. For example, I still have not been given directions on how to get to the campus where I'm supposed to teach, and class starts in five days. I realize that this may be part of Chinese culture, but this is extremely frustrating to me. As anyone who knows me will tell you, I like to plan out everything in advance.
On the plus side, our weiban, Carol, has been a wonderful guide and interpreter through China. She has guided us through the streets and through the subway, taken us to an Italian cafe for dinner (GREAT food--near the university), shown me the main campus of SISU (quite impressive), and even helped us with phone issues (twice: the first time to get SIM cards and also on a return trip today after we realized that our American phones won't work with Chinese SIM cards). She also took us to Hongkou Plaza twice, where we shopped at Carrefour, a Western grocery store that's bigger than a Wal-Mart but not as annoying.
Today I also spent some time planning out my first class: the Classic American Literature class for Honors students. It's difficult to pare things down: the class meets only 90 minutes a week on Monday afternoons. But it's been oddly enjoyable to work on class planning again.
Tomorrow I get my required physical exam. I do not expect that this will be a fun process. We'll see.
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