I hate it when I'm right

It turns out April was unbelievably stressful. I learned many things. One of the things being that in classes with no structure and no designated book, I don't study well. There were a couple fun parts of April though. I got to go back to the Yuyuan Gardens and I actually was able to go inside the gardens this time. They are very beautiful. And somehow I got invited to the 2013 Shanghai Automobile show which was also pretty excellent. There was an unbelievable amount of people there though. Now that all of the exams are over my last class has started up. It is Applied Mechanics and it is supposedly going to teach me all the basics of engines. So far this class is really exciting and I think the remainder of my time here is going to be quite enjoyable.

So many things to do.

Wow, this past week has almost felt like 2 weeks and 1 day.... Anyways last week I finally got all of my visa information figured out. It turns that if you get the F visa (single entry) you don't have to do any registration with the police or any other nonsense with paper work. However, that information came with a cost. That cost was three days out of my school week because I had to make a trip to the city to deal with everything. The week before that was pretty uneventful, just meeting more people and doing school work. The weather is finally starting to warm up. More people are interested n my juggling than there used to be. I hope I can keep all of my effort up to get through these classes. The semester is cut into two. You have classes several times a week all the way until April 12th, and then a different set of classes starts. I have three classes in this first part of the semester and only have 1 class in the second part of the semester. It is going to take a lot of discipline to keep on top of class work though because in every class there is just one test at the end. It is going to be pretty stressful in April.

Almost in School

Well the past week has been kind of difficult. At the beginning of the week I was transferred to my room where I will be staying. It is basically a hotel room that is a 25 minute walk from campus with walls that are unbelievably thin. Thankfully I have only heard music and conversation. Getting my room took quite some time to get in because no one knew where I was going to be living and your name has to be on "the list" to get in. That was half of Monday. The other half of Monday was spent trying to figure out what classes to choose because most of the classes on the list were different than what I petitioned for. Before I could get any information on class descriptions the office closed so I had to wait until Tuesday to start figuring out. Tuesday came around and I get class descriptions and times and I was ready to go. I went down to the Registration office and it turns out I have no student number yet. Awesome. I finally got my student number on Thursday but when I went down to the Registration office I was not in their system. So as of right now I am not registered for any classes yet. Luckily on Tuesday I got class times so I was able to show up to some classes. It turns out that I got bad information and missed every class on Thursday because I had wrong times. I am still trying to get a laundry card so I can do my laundry.
Now for the fun things. I have been juggling everyday on campus working on my four ball and five ball juggling. I got a couple people interested in what I was doing and I even started teaching two people but they had class so they only learned for about five minutes. It really seems that no one knows how to juggle or how to use any flow props. But it has only been one week and it is kind of cold outside. Maybe they are hiding from the cold. On Wednesday I got to go on an adventure down to the mall and I got to watch The Hobbit (again) with Chinese subtitles this time. I actually learned a little Chinese from that. The school has a pretty interesting campus. I walked for maybe two hours following the river around campus. There is a little part of the river blocked off where they keep a bunch of ducks, geese, and a couple of peacocks. The Chinese beer I have tried so far is Tsingtao (#1 Beer in China!) which is a Lager and I also got to try Suntory which is a Japanese lager and much sweeter than Tsingtao. Still haven't found anything dark. I miss Guinness Draught.

Well it is the weekend again. I landed two hours and twenty minutes before my luggage did so that was pretty terrible. They didnt confiscated any of my juggling things although they did take the letter I left in the bag explaining what all of the questionable things were. Many thanks to Thom for pointing me in the right direction on how to travel with props. I ended up getting to my hotel at 2am. Over the past week I have been able to visit Yuyuan Garden, Qibao, Sheshan Mountain, and the Shanghai Financial Building. I have registered at the school but no one knows where I will be living yet... The course list that I got from them today is different than the one I got last semester so it will be interesting to see how I deal with all of this. Now all I need is a place to wash my clothes.... It has been an overall decent week and my Chinese is starting to get a little better.

Pre-Departure freaking out

First off I want to thank Yikun for all of the help he has been giving me. Now I have checked my documents at least seven different times. I am just now about to wash all of my clothes and start packing up. This will be my last day in Orlando. I am almost done getting everything else besides the clothes prepared. Hopefully all of my juggling props are clean enough to fly without being confiscated. I have set up a VPN so that I can use the internet freely. For future reference there are some free options to navigate the Great Fire Wall of China. One free program you can download is Ultrasurf and a website you can go to is "vtunnel.com". However, I do not trust those two things with passwords. You never know. Tomorrow I will print out my flight confirmation and hopefully relax until it is time to leave. I am very excited to be spending six months in Shanghai, but I am definitely going to miss almost everything here.

Well my passport and visa came back in today. My plane ticket is booked for February 17th. This post is basically just making sure I understand how to use this website. I will be trying my best to update this on the weekends.