May 28th and 29th in words

Not much to write about yet it feels like we’ve done a lot.

We took it easy on the 28^th, check out wasn’t until noon so we took full advantage of it and then hung out in the hotel lobby for another couple of hours before finally deciding that it was time to head to the airport.

The students were asked to wear their red Wisconsin t-shirts and we had no trouble spotting them. All but 3 or 4 had arrived. Only one person’s luggage didn’t make it but it was coming in on the same flight as the last group of students. We finally had everyone gathered and ready to go around 5. It was a 3 hour bus ride to Hangzhou during which I slept for most of it so sorry, not many photos. (Not that I have figured out how to upload photos yet – still working on that).

For the first night we all were housed in the international building and they had supper waiting for us. It was great to see the students eager to try the food and enjoy it for the most part. Then it was off to bed.

On the 29^th everyone met in the lobby, we applied for access to the wireless network on campus and meal cards, SIM cards, phones for those who wanted phones... just imagine a group of 30 students at every stop and you get a feel for the chaos. Heidi and I checked out of our room in the international building and moved across the road to the apt. It’s through the same gate as last time but this time we are in the first building. It looks like it is setup for 3 students with two students sharing 1 room. The first thing we did was go buy some cleaning supplies and scrubbed everything down. We managed to order the equivalent of a culligan jug of water, got our wifi passwords, bought some minimum supplies for the apt and bought bikes. We were feeling pretty proud of ourselves. Although today we heard that students managed to get a great deal on new bikes and we had to go back to the store where Heidi bought her SIM card because it wasn’t working and the grad student had to call China Mobile to sort my card out. But now that is sorted it just means we feel like we accomplished something today as well!      

I still haven’t sorted out VPN so can’t access blogger directly and I get an error message when I try to send more than one photo using the email route but I’ll keep trying. We’re not out of options yet. So far it’s been mostly running around so not really any good photos to post yet anyway.