The travel itself went smoothly, I sat next to a friendly Chinese man on the plane and that way I revived my oral Chinese just in time before arriving in China. In the airport a lady asked me if I needed a taxi, and I said yes. She said that it would take about 50 minutes to Fudan University, where I now study, which seemed reasonable. 300 kuai, she said. I just laughed and replied in Chinese "Are you kidding me?" and walked away. I'm not an easily fooled foreigner anymore!!
5 minutes later I wished I had taken the 300 kuai-cab. The legit taxi only cost me 180 yuan, but only a couple of minutes in to the ride the taxi driver told me how beautiful I was and how he wanted us to "hang out" sometime. When I said that probably wasn't a good idea, he tried to convince me that it was by telling me he had studied massage therapy. For 50 minutes I nicely tried to decline his proposals. But I got to the university. Sucess!
The registration was to take place at the Guanghua Towers, which are hard to miss. It's the massive main building of the university with two towers (photo will be uploaded shortly). The only problem was that I was carrying a 20 kg suitcase with me and to reach the entrance there were about 10 steps. Oh, and there were also about 10 different entrances to the building. On my third try I found the right one. At that point I had pulled my suitcase up and down 50 steps. In 33°C.
When I finally found the registration place it all proceeded very smoothly. After registration a shuttle bus took me to the dorm where I'm staying. I had reserved a single room with private bathroom. Private bathroom apparently means that we're only 3 girls sharing. But that's fine, compared to what I was used to in Beijing. When I arrived all sweaty I decided to take a shower. Then I found out the shared private bathroom didn't have a lock. Oh China.
This is what my room looks like:
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