Week One in Nanjing

Hello all! I've decided to continue this blog to keep everyone updated to my adventures (and misadventures) over here in China. I will be doing a one year program at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center taking classes in Chinese history, economics, etc. I arrived in Nanjing on Saturday night after a very long and arduous trip that included three different plane flights (Boston to New York, New York to Beijing and finally Beijing to Nanjing). The second, from JFK to Beijing, was on a plane with two levels- first class and business class on the top level and everyone else on the bottom level. And although my ticket led me to believe that the flight from JFK to Nanjing was direct, it was, in fact, not. Upon arriving in Beijing three of us on the flight were continuing on to Nanjing and a woman was waiting to bring us to that flight. It turns out that the flight into Beijing arrived late, so we had to rush through the airport, which was almost completely empty at this late hour, to make it to the flight to Nanjing, which was already boarded an waiting for the three of us. Anyway, it was a long journey that finally ended at about midnight China time.
The Center (as it is called) is located in downtown Nanjing at the corner of two major roads and prominently labeled. It's on the campus of Nanjing University, which I'm told is one of the best universities in China and enrolls around 50,000 students. Right now, it seems like a dauntingly large campus, but it's very pretty and I will post pictures once I have them. The Center has a few buildings of its own- a dormitory building and a very large building of classrooms, offices and faculty apartments. The larger building is newly built and mostly glass on the outside. There is a nice courtyard between the two buildings with a lily pond and koi fish. There are also assorted rooftop terraces throughout the buildings.
Overall, my first impressions of Nanjing are that it is a more manageable size at 3 million people than Beijing at 12 million people. There is also lots of vegetation, which appreciate, and blue-ish skies with real clouds. Nanjing is known as one of the four furnaces of China because of its hot, humid weather during the summer. Indeed, we were told that this summer has been one of the most humid on recent memory, and let me tell you it is very, very humid. Our dorm rooms are air conditioned, but that only seems to make it cold and damp and not remove any of the humidity. The pages of my books have all warped and our bathroom floor seems to be in a constant state of slippery wetness. I'm unclear whether this will change in the near future.
My room is fairly small, with a bed, a desk and shelf complex, a wardrobe like thing built into the wall, and a bathroom. It does have two very large windows that have a nice view onto the road below. My roommate is Chinese and funnily enough went to the Capital University of Economics and Business, where my abroad program was located last year. It seems that there are a fair amount of students who went there on this program.
The first week of our time here is orientation to the Center and classes and Nanjing in general. Yesterday we spent almost the whole day listening to talks about the Center and the computer network and other aspects of life here. About half was in English and half in Chinese. My Chinese abilities are certainly not what they were when I left China last time and I think the first few weeks of classes will be very difficult...we'll see.
Well, it seems to be breakfast time, so I'll sign off now. The cafeteria in the Center serves all three meals a day, but at very restricted times (11:20-12:15 for lunch), so one must be proactive in getting there on time. But, the upside is it that it is extremely cheap. My breakfast yesterday, which was a cup of soy milk, a steamed bun and a bowl of rice porridge was 1.6 RMB or about 25 cents. Lunch was 3 RMB. yum yum.

One of the city gates in Xuanwu Lake park