Officially enrolled for the semester at Jiao Tong

Yesterday I enrolled at university. I thought it would take me half an hour to walk there so I left at 8am only to realise there is an entrance just down the road from me!

The campus is pretty old and run down and I thought I was going the wrong way but I saw a girl with a map so went to see if she would let me see. It turned out she was enrolling at the same building so we waited outside together. There were two other guys standing there we figured were also enrolling but we had 20 minutes to wait. As we waited and waited and a man with a briefcase turned up and unlocked the door, and the two guys followed so we went too.

Then they turned around, stared at us, and asked in Chinese where we were going. Luckily my new friend is quite good with Mandarin and responded and we were told we were at the wrong entrance. At this point we both breathed a sigh of relief to know we weren't studying at this paint peeling, wood rotting, cracked tiled building.

The other building entrance had a marquee set up and the whole registration process was like a conveyer belt. Let's see; first we had to hand in the letter of registration, pick up a bag with info pack (different colours for different language papers inside), pick up a t-shirt (really thought it was a uniform! pink for girls and blue for boys), and then handed a raffle ticket with a number and piled into a room.

At this point I thought we were going to watch a presentation video but found out we were in a waiting before the waiting room.....! The registration room there was a tv and the numbers of the raffle tickets were called up to a desk. So the paper we were handed from the front desk became the most important paper we needed for the whole day. We then had to hand this paper to the payment desk where they stupidly had two sides - one for payment by card and one for cash - but since most were paying cash and there was a girl in front holding up the entire process! So after that we were told to go to the 4th floor for tests.

First was a spoken pre-test test and questions were being asked and then she pointed to characters and I was asked to read. Then I had to do a computer test which took 40mins and was pretty hard and entirely written in Chinese. I'm not sure if its a good or bad score but I got 53.

Across the hall we had to do a speaking and listening test followed by some reading. In yet another room we were told which class level we were going to be in, to sign a paper to agree to it, and handed class schedules. Classes are either morning or afternoon, starting 8.30am - 11.50am for morning classes and 1.30pm - 4.30pm for afternoons.

We then had to do to the 2nd floor to get our books with many people complaining about the costs although for 8 books and 2 cds I paid about 230RMB. We had to get student cards made which I found really odd that the lady actually told us to smile for the photos. It makes me wonder why I was told to bring 8 passport photos with me when not one of these were used and cost me around £20 to get done in UK!

After me and my new Korean friend had finished we went to see where the library was on campus and then to register at the police station. After treking all that way she was told she was at the wrong station because she lives in another district, and I was told I needed some paper from my landlady. So we walked to the shopping district and stopped by Aijisan Ramen for some noodles. Tried to go to the toilets there and people don't seem to lock doors out here, and she screamed and slammed the door and it was very gross as she had thrown up in the sink! So got out of there and went to the mall.

Went for a walk around and stopped by Haagan Daz for some coffee and to check our schedules. I can take some elective courses and have been thinking of learning some Chinese painting or calligraphy, and maybe either wushu or taijiquan. I was looking it up on Youtube last night and quite like the look of taijiquan (shadow boxing). I'm a bit annoyed because I wanted to do the course on Chinese idioms but it says I have to be intermediate or advanced level and I'm at elementary level.

As for today, 3rd time lucky I managed to get my "alien" visa permit thing for residents which is one less thing to worry about.

Tomorrow I have to attend the university opening ceremony and officially start classes on Monday. If it is anything like the test I did, it is going to be intense.....