We have been warned, time and time again, about drinking the tap water in China. So, it is little wonder that, when I woke up bright and early at 6:00 this morning, I was extremely trepidatious about showering. I was worried to death about keeping my mouth shut the whole time. Having chatted with a few other first-time-in-China students over lunch, I think we are all paranoid.
I ordered my first lunch in China today, in Chinese, in the Chinese restaurant in Cafeteria no. 2 (everything in China is (building type) no.(#)). I had niu2rou4mian4 (beef noodles), since I could actually read those characters and was quite sure what I was ordering. I was expecting something mediocre, but it was actually pretty delicious. I had a bottle of xue3bi4 (Sprite) with the meal. It was 14 kuai, or about 2 dollars.
Then it was off to the internet store... long wait, and expensive in Chinese terms (250 yuan--nearly 50 dollars
--for ethernet cable, one-time fee, and fee for this month). The internet is very slow here, but since we have the Yale VPN and therefore Yale bandwidth, it's just like being at home for us Yalies (Harvard has a VPN, too, of course). I can Google and Facebook without fear.
