Settling down in Nanjing

Hey everyone. I'm settling down here in Nanjing (our home city for this semester) and getting used to the campus and surrounding area. I created a livejournal account which I might use in addition to this site. The reason behind that is livejournal allows me to upload pictures with captions as well, which might be nice so you all know what you're looking at. The website is www.livejournal.com/users/brettinchina
Definitely keep both kicking around, and I'll pick one or the other sometime soon.

Anyways, a bit more of an update. We picked out Chinese roomies today in the most awkward manner possible. They sat the Chinese kids on one side of a room, sat us Batesies on the other, stepped out of the middle and said "make friends." We got about five minutes of visiting time, which was only enough to talk to one person, who became our roommate. That was a little aggrivating, but I'm sure it will work out.
We started Chinese classes on monday, and we'll begin the classes from our Bates professors tomorrow (wednesday). Our Chinese classes are taught by 23-24 year old grad students from Nanjing, which is really nice. They're techinically our professors, but they're encouraged by the university to be our friends as well so we have a great classroom environment to work in.
The campus itself is very beautiful and full of motion. It is home to about 20,000 students, both graduate and undergraduate, so it is a bit of a change from Bates. It is very intimidating at times but its nice.
At any rate, things are going really well. I'll write back next time with some indepth journal entries from Shanghai, and of my first few days in Nanjing if I can catch up on writing by then. Talk to you soon!

Love from China
-Brett