In Continent Brendan: An Oaklander In Nanjing

Greetings everyone. It has been a while since I have had time to write anything, but after getting settled in Nanjing this past week I have found some time to go to a coffee shop and use the internet.

Since August 13th after I moved out of my Taipei apartment I have not had a steady place to lay my head down. since then I have slept;

-in a bus terminal, on a bus

-Friend Soso's floor in Kending

-hotels for a few days while on cycling tour

-friend Morice's house in Yilan

-my friend John's concrete floor for two days

-my friends Brendan's couch for 5 days,

-my friend Dennis's spare room for 5 days

FINALLY I have my very own place that I will be living in till the end of January 2012. I have already slept there two nights, and I am slowly getting it filled with the little things a new apartment needs, as well as clearing out all the old crap that was left behind. It is very curious the amount of things you can leave behind when you move out, and no one seems to mind. So I have closets full of old bedding and cloths and shelves of random knick-knacks. BUT I have also found a type-writer, and old Pentax camera and a unopened French-press Coffee set. so it's not all garbage I suppose, and also I guess I dont have to worry about making sure the apartment is spic n span when I move out.

My first week in Nanjing has been busy, lots of running around with real-estate agents looking at apartments. It was the fourth day when I found one, not a lot of land lords are willing to rent an apartment out for just 5 months without raising the rent through the roof. I have already spend two full days on campus going to orientation meetings and taking placement tests. So far I have made plenty of other foreign student friends, as well as a few locals. I am not lucky enough for there to be a Bike Polo team in Nanjing as well, because that was truely a great way to make 15 local friends really quickly. So next week when school really starts to get going I'll be going to Student Center on campus to try to join some student organizations to meet some new folks. ALSO this week I will get to meet some potential roommates to live with me. Our roommates will also be our tutors. The school matches up each student with a few candidates based on their major (they said it was very difficult to find me some Geography student candidates, but they found two for me) And so this week I will meet with them and see how we get on together and I'll choose one who I feel will be a good roommate....

For those who don't remember, this is all apart of a program called The Language Flagship, a program that aims to get more American's out into the world speakings languages other than English to help strengthen America's role in the International Community. I will be taking Chinese language classes as well as Geography classes that will transfer over to my B.A. at San Francisco State University. Chinese classes start tomorrow, but starting next week I will be "sitting in" listening to the GEOG classes and seeing which ones I like, and I have till the end of September to actually register for classes.

Ok that's all for now. Get back to y'all as soon as some more interesting things happen.