Settlin in

(This is post-posted since I did not have internet yet.) Today and yesterday have been difficult. I got up and went and got some things for the room. Yesterday I arrived in Hangzhou, and was really pleased to see how beautiful it really is. After some bungling trying to find the correct building (no signs- at least none in English to indicate where to go for the international school), I got checked into my room. It is simple, but quite nice, with a big window facing the very popular Nanshan Lu (Road). Jump to today, I was told to go downstairs for a meal card and to register for the internet at 10am. The lady at the desk did not seem to be in the mood for sorting things out through hand gestures, so I had to get help from Moshall, who will be my Chinese teacher starting next week. The experience felt embarassing and awkward when you have to rely on other people for help doing simple things, I hope she did not have too much else to do. Anyway, I was told that I could wait in my room and the man would come by either today or Monday to help me connect to the internet! I was hoping it would just involve a password, but maybe he is going to indoctrinate my computer with some kind of restrictive software. I dont know yet, obviously, my computer is not connected yet. Anyway, I figured I would go to the canteen for brunch. Absolutely no English or Pinyin (phonetic Chinese) was available, so I did the whole point randomly to order thing. I still dont understand what happened down there- I do not think they deducted the money from the card, but I am not sure. And I was shocked to see the price- it looked like 95RMB (about $15)- I still think this could not be right (hopefully it was only 9.5). The main part was a deep fried dish, which I almost cracked my teeth on a few times when I hit the bones (why are there bones in a deep fried item?- is it to intentionally hide them?) Anyway, it was tasty enough, unlike the awful brown squares-on-a-stick thing I had yesterday (I presume some kind of bean curd?-see picture) I felt full, it was raining, and I was hoping the internet guy would show, so I decided to take a nap (I've been waking up at 4/5am). When I got up I went and got a coffee, only to be shocked again that it cost upwards of $6!!! I just dont know how, even in the fanciest places, how they can be charging this much for a bad Americano that takes 15-20 minutes to prepare. I resolved immediately to buy myself a kettle and do the coffee myself at home from now on! Honestly I am very worried about the cost of some things here. My budget will be coming from the Chinese government, and I believe it amounts to about 30RMB/day (5 dollars). Some things are very cheap, but lots of restaurants seem extortionately expensive. You can see from some of the pictures how fancy some places are- I don't know how long it has been like this here, but it seems that most Americans' conceptions of China are way off-base. On the other hand, you can still find things cheap if you are careful and dont mind some entering the scruffier joints. In Shanghai, I was eating delicious fried breads from the stand for just 1 or 2 RMB, and I think this is going to be the way to go. For dinner tonight I had a really nice noodle dish at one of the small unassuming places for only 9RMB ($1.50). They were friendlier there, and helped me to order, humoring my terrible, but as-a-necessity-rapidly-improving Chinese.