Freshmen Move in Day

Today was that annual right of fall that sees teenagers wandering the campuses with maps and confused looks on their faces, yes friends, today is freshmen move in day. And much like in any place America it was quite a show. There were cars everywhere as parents dropped off their children's stuff and tents set up to welcome in the new class. Tomorrow Bryan, one of the people from CIEE is going to give one of the welcome speeches to the new class, it should be interesting. It's just another one of those things that looks exactly like it does in America with maybe one or two exceptions. First, the reasons that even though the freshmen are here I don't see them for another two weeks is that they have some sort of military training to complete. I saw a number walking around today holding fatigues that it looks like was just issued to them along with their bed sheets. I'm told that soon we'll see them marching around the campus, which will certainly be interesting. I asked one of the Mandarin teachers during the CIEE orientation if China had compulsorily service and he said that they sort of do. He said that they have at least some training they have to go through but a lot of it is deferred for college students.

After walking around with the freshmen for a while I headed out into Changzhou. The cheese you see cost about $7 the DVD's cost about $12 for 8. Now the DVD's are absolutely not what one would call authentic, but I still object to paying about 6 times a much for cheese as for a DVD, or at least I object to paying that much for cheddar cheese. Around town I walked thorough a canal which is done up and supposed to have sort of a touristy feel, which is at least partially ruined by that deep brown shade of the water. I have yet to see a river or canal here which looks at all clean. Just walking around I definitly get stared at sometimes by people of all ages, but the most fun ones are the kids. Three times today I was walking around when I hear some one call out "Hello" in English. Once I looked up to see a little girl and her father on an upper level of a mall looking down and waving at me. I called "Hello" back and then "Ni Hao" and waved. I walked for like another block then turned around and they were both still watching me, smiling. Some times it feels really weird to be watched all the time, but that was a lot of fun.

I took a taxi back from town, due to just missing the bus and noticing that since it's a weekend there even more crowded then usual. The taxi driver was particularly insane and I really thought at one point we were going to get into a head on collision. Here are some highlights of the crazy moves he made: To get around traffic that was going to slow for him he would drive across the double yellow lines to pass them on the left. Now he didn't just dart out across the lines and back either he would linger there for a good few hundred yards some times. The crazyist move though was when he, more the once mind you, would go out to the left, across the yellow lines of a car turning left when he two was turning left. The result were these wide left turns and him gunning it to get back over after we were out of the intersection. The most terrifying moment came when he crossed over the yellow lines while cresting a small hill, so that I'm pretty sure he couldn't tell if there were cars coming right at us just over the hill. Suffice it to say that I no longer fear death because I've ridden in a Changzhou Taxi.