Moving In

Quite a lot has happened since I’ve updated my blog last week.

Most importantly, I’ve moved to the dormitory. It’s a single room in the international dormitory (which is unfair in and of itself – Chinese students aren’t even offered the option of living in a single room. As far as I’m aware, they can choose between a 6-bed or an 8-bed dorm.)

I’m not going to lie, the first few days have been quite difficult – the room was quite impersonal at first, it was hot, I didn’t know anyone here, there is no internet connection in my room and the internet everywhere else works unreliably at best, so at times I felt like I was cut off from the entire world. It was certainly a little bit of an emotional rollercoaster.

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But now to the positive side of things, because although there were moments where it didn’t feel like that at all, it was actually a really good week in hindsight.

Let’s start with the least interesting thing: I’ve finished (almost) all of my administrative duties. Like finally registering for my courses, getting my Chinese student ID, and getting my residence officially recognised.

More excitingly, I had some Austrian/Chinese company on Tuesday – Hong Ling, my former Chinese teacher was in Shanghai with her husband (Michael) and her daughter (Lilia), and I was generously invited to join them for cocktails in their hotel bar (in the Waldorf Astoria, of all places. It’s going to be a while until I even enter a hotel of that calibre again!) It was very fancy – and I was terribly under-dressed…

Lilia and me in the entrance hall

Another thing that’s really great is the campus. It’s so huge that basically the first thing I did was to buy a bicycle to get everywhere quickly (which, given my tendency to be late to everything, was definitely a good idea). I’ve had a look at it on Google Maps, and it’s around 560.000 m², which, to put it in “Graz” terms, is like a rectangle (one side is the distance between Griesplatz and the opera house; the other side is the distance from the opera to the Dom/Burg/theatre). Just to give all of you an idea of just how huge this area really is…

It’s also quite obvious that someone put a lot of effort into making it a really beautiful place.
There’s a lot of green (especially a lot of trees), and there’s a river that meanders through the entire campus, and it really looks lovely. The air quality is better than in most places in Shanghai, and from my (tiny) balcony, I can see the stars and moon at night.

The campus at night

Finally, and particularly delightfully, there was a student event for all the new German-speaking students on Friday, where I finally met some people, and since then, my social life here has improved a lot. Three days are not enough time to really befriend anyone, but there is a group of people that I’ve been talking to a lot throughout the weekend, and everything is suddenly looking up.

Next week will be an exciting one: My classes start tomorrow, and at the end of the week, I’ll be joining my friends Skye and Xinxin on a trip to Ji’nan, the capital of Shandong Province (山东省), where we will be attending Skye’s nephew’s wedding on Saturday. As I’ve mentioned in last week’s post already, I’m looking forward to it a lot.

To everyone who’s reading this: I hope you had a great week. Thanks for stopping by to read my rambling week review – I’ll try to be back next Sunday.