Moving to Minhang

Weather: 10C with fog and rain the next few days
Local Time: 235pm Monday 1st March

Hello all! It has been a long time coming, but finally I am getting to writing another post. There have been a few things that have been going on lately.

Courses at Xuijiahui
Last week was our last week of courses at the downtown, Xuijiahui region, campus. There were only some classes on top of that so it was a pretty good week. We finish courses on Thursday with a load of homework assigned over the weekend. We had Friday off to do whatever we wanted. Many of us chose to go out on Thursday night, I went out for a bit -- but I did not want to waste Friday in bed, so I came back a bit earlier than everyone else. A lot of people focused on buying things that we did not think we would have access to at the new campus. Some people bought food, toys, and clothing or shoes. I went for some suits. :D

Suits
A few guys all went suit shopping.  I was going with the intention of getting two suits, because the track record for the shop that we were going to was excellent among the group.  I wanted to keep my intentions / negotiation tactics widely open and attempt to get a lower price using a strategy of buying multiple suits.  Unfortunately, my hand was shown by one of the other men I went to the shop with while he was attempting to get a lower price.  Either way, I tried to get some damage control done, but it boiled down to me eventually showing my hand of buying two suits.  We were able to secure suits for just about 100usd and tailored button up shirts for 13.50usd.  I do not feel ripped off.  Each suit is a nice three piece suit, with two buttons.  One suit is black with fine pin-stripes and one slit in the back, the other is grey with textured pin-stripes with two slits on the back of the coat.  I hope they are great. I think I am suppose to pick them up this weekend.

Move to Minhang
On Saturday morning we were scheduled to be leaving the faculty club at 9am.  Our group size is 31 students.  When the bus arrived it was a 35 passenger bus.  This bus did not have the capacity to hold 5 months worth of american's luggage.  We actually had this very same problem the day we arrive at the airport.  It was a surprise that this mistake could happen twice.  We went though a few different packing methods before the graduate student from SJTU called in a small box truck.  It took a but longer than we were hoping and while I think we had a working idea.. fill the bus with students and pack the isle with baggage, we did not do that for whatever reason.  The small truck came and we filled the mini-uhaul type truck.  It would have been great if it did not reek of fish, but I guess that is what you get when you live in China.

Facilities at Minhang
Minhang is a fairly large campus.  I am told there are over 20,000 students on this campus and the thing to remember is primarily an engineering campus.  I think it is roughly the size of Purdue's footprint, including all the housing that Purdue has.  It is located in the city/area/town of Minhang.  This seems to be a smaller city and near the campus at least is "China" nice.  There was a birthday on Saturday night for someone turning 21, and we went out to find a bar.  The first one we went to did their full selection of beer, had no rum, and had no brandy.  The next bar we went too also was low on their beer supplies.
We are located in the international dorm.  The majority of our group is located on the fifth floor and there are a few men who are from other countries, Sweden I know is one of those other countries.  The  room over looks a soccer field and running track facing north.  The room has two desks, two large closest, two book shelves, two beds (end to end), and two night stands.  There is a mini fridge, a heater, and a television.  The bathroom has a western style toilet, and a small box for showering.  There is a wall hung water heater that provides the hot water for the shower only.  The sink is cold.  It would appear the Chinese are not aware of booster pumps and therefore the water pressure is awful.  As one of my fellow students describes it, "It is worse than getting pissed on."  I did not ask the obvious follow up of his comparison to see how is experience level would know this.  The other large difference is the piping systems are not built for toilet paper, which means you throw it away in the trash can instead of in the toilet.  It is not the American way, but it is how many people do it, I guess.

Internet
I am happy to report the internet situation is much better.  I figure we were sharing one or two connections at our last home.  Here in the dorm each computer has its own ip address and network connection.  It has really improved speeds and ability to load some pages that are not blocked.  We now can reliable check our Purdue webmail, something that took 20+ minutes before.  There are now reliable methods for getting around the firewall which is why for the first time I am posting from the actual blog website.  It is an improvement.

Afghanistan
I wanted to make a special note here on the blog visited by many of my friends and family that a good friend of my is fighting for his country in Afghanistan.  Ryan Dienhart is a long time friend of mine and many of my closest friends as well.  He is currently part of the large offensive that is underway in that combat area.  I just want people to know he is over there and he is always in my thoughts.  Please remember that our country is at war right now and it is not being covered by the news.  Please keep all the members of the military in your thoughts.  Living in China can reinforce why America is so damn great, we have our military and government to thank for that.

No country is perfect.  No government is always right.  No military must lose lives.

These are my thoughts,
Biber