Running Errands

 So this past Friday a lot of stuff went down. Charlie my roommate from MSU came into town around 10:00am and it seems like we were going non-stop from then on. We had a number of things to do and it would have been impossible / a huge pain to do them if we didn’t have help from one of the Faculty here.

Once Charlie got settled in we headed over to the police station to register our residency on campus. Technically it should be done within the first twenty-four hours but they let it slide. However, everyone must register and it seemed a pretty complex process with the shuffling of passports and all. But now that I think about it it wasn’t really all that intimidating. But maybe that was because I’m the tall American or whatever.

**side note: while it may seem  that stereotypes hold true over here with the small Asian caricature and all, in reality I have seen quite a number of tall Chinese guys. Kudos to them.  

However, it turns out that I was much more intimidated by next errand. We had to get cell phones and it turned into quite a trip. I know that back in the states trying to get a phone plan and such is quite a hassle, but over here I think the whole event left my head spinning a little. The cell phone store was right on campus but afterwards even our Chinese faculty member told us that she was confused with all the phone options and plans. It didn’t help that the cellphone attendant was literally the fastest talker I have ever encountered. But hey it was kinda fun and I chuckled a little bit afterward. 

It turned out that I had to get a cell phone from another carrier or whatever so this was the fancy display shop with a ton of fancy Asian phones. Oh and this is the cool graduate student who took me there. He wants to go to Los Angeles to see the Lakers play. Just thought you should know.

Funny Anecdote of the Day: In all of the craziness of the cell phone purchasing I was kind of on edge wondering what else could go wrong. Well it turns out that later that night I had a strange message in Mandarin on my phone. I thought it was about my phone plan being invalid or something terrible like that. Well, after a solid 30 minutes of translating this text message it turns out that they were just trying to sell me ring tones…. haha.