I wrote this a few days ago and I am just posting it now

I am happy to report that internet has come to my house.

After 36 hours of grueling, no-internet time, the internet company has come to my new apartment and set it up, once again welcoming us to civilization. It feels nice. Crazy to think how dependent we have become on our computers for everything we do in our daily lives and even crazier to think that once upon a time, there was no internet.

So now that we are here, my roommates and I are busy planning our housewarming party, which is tomorrow night. (It is so weird having other roommates outside 223!!!! I miss you ladies!). We have invited our token local, Ted, who shows us around and introduces us to his friends, as well as 30ish exchange students. I'd say by now we are half undergrad and half MBA, removing us from being the babies amongst our friends. I am interested to see how it turns out. Most people have been here a week or so and don't have many friends so they are eager to meet people so hopefully everyone opens up, feels comfortable and has a good time. I have been searching for cups fit for flip cup just in case conversation is lacking and we need to get people into the mood. I've failed so far so that's not great. We got finger foods and beer for literally no money. A huge bottle of beer (each is probably 3 or 4 cans of beer) is 2.5 kuai- which is about 50 cents. JGao and I are happy because Jacks Monday's got nothing on us!

Other than that, life has been revolving around classes since we just started. Let's see, my first class was a first year accounting course which I left 20 minutes into because I knew Ivey would not approve of it...my second course was intermediate macro, which was actually great because the prof is awesome. My third class was one of the most interesting experiences I have had here. We come in for Global Business Analyst Team Project and there's about 7 of us exchange students and then locals. The class starts. Mandarin. The powerpoint starts. Mandarin. Someone mentions the class is supposed to be an English class. WHAT? The prof was SO confused. He told us he is not a good teacher in English because he has to think about the words and not the concepts and so at first break (classes are 3 hours with 5 minute break each hour) the exchange students got together and decided to ask him if we could do a project instead of the class for him (ie. write a case) and he agreed! It was fantastic. He doesn't want to teach in English at all so this works for everyone.

Today I had Developmental Economics and so far, I am very much looking forward to this course. ND, I thought of you the entire way through and how much you would enjoy sitting there with me. The course talks about economics in different types of countries as well as all of the aspects that affect the development of a nation- from health care, to education, to traditions. Already today the course was interesting. There's a lot of exchange students from all over the world and there's lots of locals so it makes for an interesting conversation about cultures and it is eye-opening to see how different cultures perceive the world and themselves. We spend a good chunk of the class looking at The World Factbook statistics and talking about why some countries may be where they are in certain stats. It reminded me of my Politics of Latin America course at UWO two years ago in that you talk about really interesting things but having this class with people from all over the world takes it to a whole new level.

I must be off to get my cell phone set up (finally!!!) and get a DVD player for our pad but hopefully it is easier to communicate now that I have internet at home and classes are rolling.

Much love.