Friday, August 30th, 2013.

I get up early and walk across Campus to the office so I can go use Internet. I get to talk with my parents finally! Season, one of our employers, helped get us Internet at our apartment. Even though its pretty spotty and kicks us off half the time. I have sometimes been able to access Facebook on my phone using my VPN, but that often does not work. The office internet is the most reliable, so I have a feeling like I will be using it most of the time for regular communication with people back home. Chinese Internet if a very funny thing. Later in the afternoon some of the current Co-op students took us out for lunch. They took us to a place near campus, and it sort of reminded me of Mongolian BBQ, except all of the meat and noodles you chose went in a soup instead of the BBQ. I had quail eggs in mine, they were interesting, but the veggies and noodles were really yummy. It took me a long time to eat it though since I was using Chop sticks to eat a soup hahaha. But it all worked out in the end.Season took all 5 of us new co-op students to get our Bank of China account so we can start getting paid. We spent over 2 hours there trying to get everything sorted out only to find that all of us were blacklisted by the Bank as money launders. We were all in so much shock by this it was hilarious. Even Season was in shock haha. So apparently we are going to go back on Monday and try again. Season is determined. Later in the evening,the group of us decided to go out on the town and explore downtown for the first time since arriving. We took a taxi into the center of downtown and walked around for a bit. There were so many bright lights everywhere and music playing. It was a very lively scene and so interesting to see the differences in culture. We ate at a fast food place and then walked around more. We were originally going to try and go to a dance club called Kiss, but it was closed because its summer holiday here right now and lots of people are out of town. So we ended up going to a sports bar where lots of expats hang out. That was interesting as well. But the highlight of the night was for sure seeing all of the brightly lit buildings all over. It reminded me of Las Vegas.