I left for China on November 4th and arrived at my final destination,nanchang , on the 4th November,2004 around 11 pm in the night. My flight schedule went as so: delhi-shanghai-nanchang.My only real layover was in shanghai, and it was short, in fact, it was from 12 pm in the afternoon until 8pm in the following evening.
After I retrieved my luggage in shanghai and walked out the double doors into this new corner of the world, several things caught my attention instantly:
Community is huge in this country, which explains a lot about the things that I just talked about. If someone is sick, than apparently everyone else has the understanding that they may just share that experience with the person. From this pair of eyes, it looks like people don’t have a whole lot that they hold back. That’s cool with me, I’m a pretty open person myself.

I am currently living in an apartment in JIANGXI CHINESE MEDICAL UNIVERSITY,NANCHANG,with my room-mate Mr. Manish and other friends .all of them come from India.

The apartment, my room, and the university themselves are great. The place is a lot bigger than I would have ever expected, with big windows and a nice floor with tiles. The view from my room of the mountains is beautiful, and isn;t a shabby sight to wake up to in the morning by any means.
The bathroom is interesting. There is nothing to separate the toilet, from the shower, from the sink, or from anything else in the room for that matter. The piping system is completely out of wack, with the pipes all going straight down, rather than curving. This means that everyone in the building is sharing the same line. If you haven’t figured it out, that spells some serious smelliness at times. On top of it, the water needs a little encouragement to make “the big plunge,” (down the drain that is), so when you have finished your shower you take a broom and do a little sweeping action to help the process a long.
Just like there are slippers that you wear when you walk in the door and around the apartment, there are slippers that you wear in the shower as well.
Taking a shower is not a daily occurrence here. Apparently to go several weeks without doing so, is not a rare occurrence. To tell you the truth, that’s not going to be a problem for me. I don’t get too stirred about things of that nature... ask anyone who knows me. :)
At meals, it is rare to have a drink. Even water, which is always served warm or hot. Meals are the same way, always hot, never cold. This is seen as being good for ones health.
From the outside it appears as if Chinese people have horrible table manners. But for the people here, it is not seen as rude in the slightest to slurp, burp, spill, or even spit on the table if need be.
So far I have enjoyed most of the food that I have tried. Although, the typical rice soup that is served in the morning. That just isn’t happening for me. It really doesn’t have much taste, but how I imagine it, is like a big bowl of runny snot. That’s really foul of me to say, but in all seriousness that is what it seems like.
Steamed bread and peanuts are typical to have with most meals. You should see me try to pick up peanuts with chopsticks. Straight up entertainment. I’m hoping to be a master with the little doo-hoppers before I come home. It would be pretty sad if I wasn’t, since they are used at every meal.

Speaking of money, the current exchange rate is somewhere around 7 Kuai/RMB/Yuan (depending on who you are talking to) to 1 U.S dollar. Meaning most things are pretty dirt cheap for us. Unless, you are a little stink like me and decide to hit up the local McDonald’s of coffee, also known as SPR Coffee, for a yummy late (the truth is, I am going to try my hardest to make that a once a week ordeal, but I would be seriously impressed if I were to pull that off).

As most people probably know, tea is definitely the drink of choice over coffee and other beverages in China. The deciding factor on what type of tea you drink depends on the time of day and year it is. It would be great, especially for my health, if I could cross over from being a coffee fanatic to a tea one.

As far as study is concerned, its been almost near about 4 years in university here. On my first day, we all met in one of the class rooms and introduced ourselves to one another and to the teacher. Most Chinese people have an English name that they go by. I would like to think that I could memorize all of their given names, but I am going to start off by learning their English ones in order to speed up the process. Besides, I think it is fair to say that they enjoy being called by their second name.

Everyone that works here is very sweet. You can tell that they are genuinely excited to have you around and are eager to learn more about your country and its culture. That is a two way street though, I am just as pumped to learn the same thing: more about who they are, where they come from, the food they eat, the things they do for fun, the language they speak, the holidays they celebrate, traditional customs, and the like .

Patience, is one of many things that I would like to work on while I am here, so I figure that this period of waiting for work through relationship building, will be a great place for me to start.

Well, I suppose this is enough for one sitting. I am looking forward to sharing my different Chinese experiences and adventures with you!! Please feel free to ask me any questions that you may have as well. Have a great day as well.