Banks.

Highlight of the day today was having to spend pretty much the whole day queuing inside two different banks  for almost 3 hours. What fun.

I collected my passport with my new visa in from the office at BNU at 10:30 then went straight to the bank. After having to wait for a good hour and a half, I was eventually told that I had to go to the bank I originally set my account up with in order to sort out the problems which the bank I was currently in couldn't solve.

Since class started at 13:00, I had no choice but to miss it - good thing it was just Listening class though because it's easy to catch up. Anyway, I had to sit around queuing yet again for another hour and a bit before I was finally called up to have my problem looked at. I handed my passport and bank card to the bank lady before then having to spend the next half an hour sitting at the desk watching as four bankers gathered around the desk opposite me looking at my passport, discussing some kind of problem with my passport and the details on the computer, laughing (a lot), and then being told that I could finally touch the money which was sent to my Chinese bank account almost two weeks ago.

By the time I managed to get to class, I had already missed an hour of the lesson and it was break time. As I entered the classroom, I tried to sneakily walk towards my seat, hoping the teacher wouldn't notice but she did. She asked me where I was to which I replied "银行问题!" (bank problem). Thankfully, she just accepted my reply and didn't ask for any more details. Instead, she said, with a smile on her face, that even though I missed the first half of the lesson, I still have to do the 听写 (dictation) that everyone else did at the beginning of the lesson and to not bother thinking that I could get away with it.

Mango Guy.

Nothing actually happened today. Had class, and that was about it. But in the evening, Tanya and I went to get our usual drinks and happened to stop by at one of the drink places which make the best smoothies - the place where I got an extra mango drink for free.

Whilst waiting for Tanya to get her drink, one of the guys who we had sort of made friends with, and also works at the place (the one who gave me the free drink) attempted to speak English to me. I had no idea what he was on about but his friend who could speak English translated for me and it turned out he was saying "I think you are really beautiful."

...Er..... :/

I just gave him a "o.O" look, Tanya got her drink, and then we walked away...

Trio of Weirdo's.

When getting my daily soybean milk drink today, there was the normal guy who was usually there, as well as two of his friends. Tanya and I were there for a long time yet again and a lot of crazy stuff happened. Ever since the drinks guy saw my picture of me doing the splits on the Great Wall and I told him that I used to do karate, now every time I visit the drinks place, his friend would point out some random person on the street and tell me to K.O them. How hilarious.

His other friend who was there was a bit of a freak. He tried to speak English with Tanya and I, then started karaoke singing this song called Fei De Geng Gao (which has been stuck in my head for ages ever since I heard it playing in the shop). I told the guy his singing was pretty good, because he actually does have a good voice, and then told him that it was Tanya's birthday, to which he started singing "Happy Birthday" to her in English. A while later, he then started singing Akon's "Right Now" - we're hoping he doesn't actually know the meaning behind the song though... :/

Keen For Life

Somehow, I spent another two hours talking with soybean milk guy. Not sure how I keep ending up spending so long at the drinks place whenever I buy a drink. Apart from trying to talk, and the odd silent awkward moments, we read some comic books and he gave me one as a present, and embarrassingly, he listened to all the music on my phone and when he came across the Jo Kwon Wonsungi song, the impression on his face was like "...what on earth is this... o.O". Haha!

Just A Mess.

The day was just like any other, get up, have lunch and then go to class. In the afternoon though, Yasmin and Ibby wanted to go out and have dinner in a restaurant since it was Yasmin's last night in China. Ibby had found some Middle Eastern Arabian Restaurant in the northwest of Beijing too which she was pretty keen on going to - I guess because she stressed to us that she doesn't like Chinese food.

Anyway, had a bit of a time trying to sort out this restaurant business because it was late notice and I was pretty tired cos I had just finished class. I got a text from Ibby at 17:20 class saying that they wanted to eat dinner at 18:00 - not possible because it would take that long for me to dump my books, walk to the train station, complete the train journey and then find them. Ibby was already in the area where the restaurant was as well, and Yasmin was on her way to meet Ibby. I phoned up Ibby saying I couldn't possibly make it to where they were in such a short time so she told me to get a bus down from the university rather than walk. I then spent about half an hour phoning back and forth between Yasmin and Ibby saying how I would take a while to get there, as well as pretty much being their messenger girl - don't see why they couldn't just talk to each other instead. In the end, I managed to cancel myself from having to go because I was just too tired to be bothered to go out and was going to have dinner with Tanya (but I didn't phrase it like that to them) so the other two just went by themselves.

Instead, Tanya and I ended up visiting the soybean milk guy and we somehow stayed there for an unexpectedly long time. :O He was asking us stuff about working in London and how London in general compares to Beijing. He also asked us some other questions but we had no idea what he was saying. How we were there for 2hours, I just don't know. o.O

Wan Li Chang Cheng

A 06:00 start to go to the Great Wall, Badaling Section (the most touristy section of them all). The reason I had to get up so early is because everyone says that the earlier you go to the wall, the better. Otherwise you'll just end up getting caught in the flood of tourists. The coach we got left at 08:00 and was a one and a half hour ride to the wall too.

Climbing to the actual start of the Great Wall was a bit of a challenge - the stairs up were really steep and deep, and there was a mini bear park which you had to go through first too. Actually, we cheated a bit by taking the sliding cars up, but still, even getting to there was pretty tough too.

So we walked along the wall for a good two hours before reaching the highest point of the Badaling section. On the way, there were loads of Chinese tourists asking to take pictures of us - well, mainly Beth, most likely because she's white and ginger (and I'm saying that in the least racist way possible).

After reaching the top, Beth and I carried on walking the rest of the wall but Yasmin for some reason turned back the way we came without us knowing - we thought she had gone ahead of us since we were taking so long at the top but obviously not. In the end, we ended up having to sit around waiting for her for an hour because she got lost.. :/

Whilst making our way round and down the wall, back to where started, the path got more and more difficult - there were loads of steps and slopes which were so steep, they were practically vertical. On the slopes going downwards too, I must've slipped at least 3 or 4 times, and almost fell into an old man who was trying to walk down the slope himself because not only was it steep, but the path was slippery and so there was hardly any friction between my shoes and the ground.

Yasmin.

Got up at 07:00 to find a number of texts on my phone from Yasmin (Mustanir's friend's sister) that she missed her train twice and would be arriving in Beijing South Station at 13:00 rather than her original time of 11:00.

After picking her up, the first place we visited was the famous Niu Jie Mosque, situated in the Muslim quarter of Beijing. Walking down the street, you could tell it was a Muslim street; everything is green with the typically Islamic patterns on all the buildings, and the street had the most Muslim's I had ever seen since being in Beijing. One thing I have to say though is that it's quite different from what I expected. I thought there would be a load of stalls in the street, almost like a market place, but it's a lot more modern than that. Apparently the street is actually famous because of the food and restaurants.

At the entrance of the mosque, we spotted a very Chinglish sign in the doorway.

The mosque area looked quite big on the map, but it's actually smaller than I thought it would be. There are quite a few areas though, including the prayer rooms (of course), an exhibition hall (but it was closed by the time we got there since it was after tourist hours), an Imam's grave area, courtyards and a teaching room.

After this, we walked for a good while - about 1 and a half hours - until we reached Tian Tan Gong Yuanr (Temple of Heaven). It was already 18:30 by this time so the temple was actually closed, but we still went in. It was a 8yuan entrance fee.

The temple area was actually lit up at night so even though we couldn't go inside it, we still managed to see some nice views of it's exterior. I'll be a coming back another time though during opening hours so I'm not too bothered about not seeing much this time round.

Whilst wandering around, since we were the only foreigners there, loads of people tried to sneakily take pictures of us which I found quite funny. I should've done the same back at them. Maybe next time. ;)

You Will Die!!!

The amount of homework we've got given to do over the weekend is ridiculous!!! We have to learn roughly 160 new words, all the words in the textbook we don't understand in the text, do the first lesson in the workbooks (each about five pages long), as well as find a newspaper article, write a summary for it, write our opinion on it, and then come up with questions about the article. And the worst thing is, I don't have the time for all of this what with Mustanir's friend's sister coming tomorrow. Plus the teacher said in class "If you don't hand in the homework, you will die!!!". Great.. :/

On the other hand, Tanya and I made more dinner! This time, a noodle's version of yesterday's food. :9

First Proper Home Made Dinner.

Apart from class, which finished at 12:00, we spent the rest of the afternoon studying. Why? Because the teacher thought it was a good idea to give us homework for the following day.. :/

We had to be able to understand the whole of the first lesson's text, as well as the grammar structures we had learnt, and be able to make our own sentences to show we understand them. The translation section took practically 3hours to do because we hadn't learnt half the characters at SOAS, plus the grammar is really confusing to translate! Managed to do it in the end though.

In between studying, Tanya and I made a sweet potato and carrot curry cooked in gochujang (Korean hot pepper paste), which was actually pretty darn good. :9

9 Days.

So... poor...

So I went to the bank and what did they say? The money has arrived!! BUT I can't touch it until I show them my passport... :| I gave my passport in to the visa office yesterday and they have hold of it until the 21st so I guess I'll have to be a tramp for a bit longer. It's not like the bank is gonna do anything to my passport, just gonna check the details and that's it. And a photocopy wasn't good enough; what is the point of me carrying a photocopy on me if it's of no use...

So embarrassing at the bank too. I went there by myself at 10:30 and I explained to the people at the desk that they phoned me up. It took them a while to remember who I was before then making me stand around for 15minutes whilst they do whatever. All the seats in the waiting area had been taken up so I had no where to go but to an empty space in the corner of the room. Since I was the only foreigner there too, and stuck out so badly, everyone in the waiting area was just sitting there staring at me for the most of the time I was there. D: Eurgh.

On the upside (I guess), Charlotte and I signed up to the BNU Taekwondo club like I said I would, and found out that Ibby used to do Taekwondo too when she was young so I've decided that she's now coming with me too.

Also class was pretty fun today. I made some friends! Yay. A Korean guy and an American girl, but she's only here for the first term. I wrote out my English name in Hangul so he could pronounce it. The teacher for our listening class started explaining the meanings to everyone's name, and when she got to mine, the Korean guy tried to say my English name out loud, but kinda failed cos his accent got in the way. So embarrassing!!

Societies and Bankers.

Second day of classes. Today wasn't too bad actually. Despite having an 08:00 start, reading class was alright. I understood quite a bit of the lesson apart from the odd few words here and there but I guess as long as I learn whatever's in the book, then it'll be fine. Tutorial was next and I'm pretty happy about this class because it's practically a doss. The teacher said that unless we have any problems, just treat it as if we didn't have a lesson.

BNU was also holding a society fair today, and I made my first proper Chinese friend who can speak English pretty well!! We've even got so friendly as to now be meeting up to have lunch together next weekend. :O I also joined the English Club (lame but I guess it's a good way to make friends? since there are gonna be people who want to learn English), some Student's Association of International Network, and I'm also planning on joining the Mountain Climbing, Road Trip, and possibly the Taekwondo society.

Bank of China phoned me up and were saying something, but I'm not quite sure what. From what I managed to make out, it's something to do with the money transfer but I heard them say something like wanting me to change my name on my account? I'm not sure. A lady phoned and tried to explain in Chinese but because I didn't get a few words she was saying, she called over a guy to explain it instead. I think this was pretty pointless because he basically repeated pretty much the same things she was saying but in different words, and still used Chinese... :/ In the end I just asked them to tell me the address of the bank and I'll come over to sort it out so I now have to make a trip to the bank tomorrow. Good thing I don't have classes until the afternoon!

Also, just to add on, as I was walking down the hutong near the apartment where I get my daily drink of milk tea, Beth and I stopped by a bread shop run by Muslims. The people serving asked if I was a Muslim, and then asked if I was Malaysian. Since I've been here, I've also been mistaken for being Indonesian, Pakistani, and asked which of the Chinese ethnic minorities I belong to... :|

Get Me A Rope.

... Not really sure how to describe how the first day of classes were. I had a two hour speaking class, and a two hour reading class.

Speaking class started at 13:00 so I decided to go to the Muslim canteen with Ibby and Charlotte at 12:10 (when Ibby finished her classes). As soon as we got inside the canteen though, there were way more students than expected and the whole place was pretty packed. We weren't too sure exactly what we were doing and dawdled for a bit before joining one of the many long queues up to the counter. Since we couldn't read the menu, I chose to have lamb noodles. It wasn't until 12:40 that I got my food though, and the other two didn't get theirs until 12:50. So we literally had 10minutes to stuff our faces and attempt to get to class on time.

Lamb noodles with onions and tomatoes.

Rushing wasn't really possible though because as you can see, the noodles are pretty big and the sauce was really runny, so I ended up with loads of splashed oil all over my scarf.. :/

We had to leave Ibby to finish eating on her own and Charlotte and I rushed to class. Well, we tried to but Charlotte managed to get a stitch on the way. By the time we'd finally made it to the building (it was a ten minute brisk walk since the campus is huge) we almost ended up going into the wrong class. We noticed Tanya wasn't in there though and found out our class was in the room next door.

We entered the class the teacher asked if we what country we were from and then sat us down. At certain angles, she looks like Amma. Is that because all Chinese people look the same? Haha.

The lesson was just standing up in front of class in pairs having a conversation to introduce ourselves. Since Charlotte and I were late, we ended up being partners. We had to ask each other where we came from, our ages, what we study at university, and our hobbies. As we're classmates from SOAS, the whole conversation was pretty much me asking Charlotte the questions, and then repeating what she said for my answer when she asked me the exact same thing. We then had a bit of a silence since we didn't really know what to ask each other next so Charlotte asked how big my family was. My reply was "I have 5 older brothers, 1 younger brother, 2 older sisters, and 3 younger sisters." Everyone found this pretty shocking and amazing, and the teacher got them to count up how many people are in our family altogether. She then asked "So how many mother's do you have?" to which I replied "Only 1." That properly shocked everyone.

Had a 10minute break and then had our next class. Newspaper reading. Eurgh. This lesson was just ridiculous. For almost two hours straight, I had pretty much no idea what was going on or what was being said. I understood a few sentences but for the most of it, nothing made sense.

Looking at my class, I think it's kinda unbalanced. I'm the youngest in the class and the oldest is 26. Apart from Charlotte, Tanya and I, everyone else had been studying Chinese for at least 3years or more. There was even one guy who had been studying it for 8years!! How are they the same level Chinese as us!?

We figured that it was because to pass second year, you have to pass newspaper reading, and this is only available from level 102 and higher. The lowest level is 100, and highest is 104, before you move up into the next set.

I have no idea how we're meant to manage newspaper reading, or even the year. Looking over the lesson, we're expected to learn about 40 new words each time, but also have all our other classes on top of that with an similar amount of new vocabulary. D:

To get bring our spirits back up, we went to the drinks place in the hutong near the apartment. I actually ended up getting two drinks there as I came back later on since Charlotte wanted to see who the guy in charge of the place was (since he's Ibby's Chinese penpal and she couldn't come the first time round as she had other stuff to do). Just as I was about to get my drink, the guy told his friend who made it not to put the lid on, then started saying how I want to take a picture first, then he started to imitate taking a photo of the drink. So I took one, but he creeped up behind me to watch me take it. How embarrassing.

Vanilla milk tea.

The guy then let me take a picture of him, to which he started posing for..

He also asked my name so I told him my Chinese one (Li Fei Xue 李霏雪) and he said in English "Your name is very beautiful." He also carried on attempting to speak English and said "My Chinese GOOD!! *double thumbs up*" We had kinda figured he had good Chinese though.. didn't really need to tell us that in English. He seemed really happy about being able to speak English though so we just laughed along with him.

Textbook Day.

Got the textbooks for first term today. All these for just 190yuan (about £20). If it was England, it'd probably be £20 a book instead!! Flicking through them, they actually aren't as bad as I thought they'd be but maybe once lessons start, I might change my mind?

In the afternoon I wandered the hutong near the apartment with Beth and stopped off at a different drinks place which also sold milk tea/ bubble tea type drinks. The guy who was in charge of the stall mentioned Ibby (using her Chinese name) and we mentioned that we were her classmates. After a while, we realized that this guy had been texting Ibby, and was her "Chinese penpal." When I tried to take a picure of my drink, he started to pose and smile in the background. I didn't actually know he was doing this until I saw him in my screen looking straight at the camera and smiling. I got a bit embarrassed and tried to wait until he wasn't looking to take a picture but he still just carried on smiling and looking. Oh well.

I visited Ibby and told her about what had happened, who then mentioned Beth and I to him over a text. He then texted back inviting her to a drink and Ibby invited me along. So tomorrow afternoon, we'll be getting free drinks. I guess this is pretty lucky since I have literally no money for the time being. :D

Timetables.

Nothing much happened today. I got my timetable and that's about it.

So basically the morning half starts at 08:00 and ends at 12:00, and the afternoon half starts at 13:00 and ends at 17:00. Well I think. I don't actually know but I do know that each lesson is 50minutes long. And I'm kinda happy that I have more afternoon days than morning days since knowing me, I simply won't be able to get up in time for them. Although if I have dragon teachers, maybe I'll be too scared to oversleep in the morning and start getting up in time due to fear?

I also found out that my class has 19people in, and only 3 SOASians; Tanya, Charlotte and I - coincidence or what? The rest of the people in my class are Korean, Japanese and Italian. Compared to other classes, I know that one of them has 8 SOASians so I'm glad I'm not in that class. Means I have more of a chance of getting to know new people maybe?

As Poor As A Tramp.

Had to get up extra early since today was the opening ceremony for international students at BNU. To be honest, I think it was pretty pointless and a waste of 2 hours.. :/ All that happened was a few important people were introduced, they gave speeches about how amazing BNU is, some representatives talked about why they go to BNU, and then some Italian psychologist had a 40 minute speech about how to fight depression. So boring!! Quite a few people fell asleep, me included. After that, a policemen gave a small talk about Chinese road laws and regulations. But he didn't really give much advice. He just said stuff like "Don't drink and drive," "Don't drive when sleeping," "Foreigners are banned from riding motorcycles" - and an image of a foreigner covered in blood and head come off after getting into an accident was shown.. o.O

After the pointless ceremony had finished, we had to immediately rush to Haidian Clinic to retrieve our physical examination results since Beth's visa was soon to expire so she needed the results to hand in to the uni and prevent herself from being an illegal citizen. Looking at the results, it seems like my blood type is B+. I always thought I was an O this whole time but I guess not.

When we got back to BNU, I decided that I might as well pay my rent since I wasn't really gonna be doing anything for the rest of the day, plus I'd have to pay it sooner or later anyway since it had to be paid by Sunday. I had to sit in Bank of China for a good 2hours before I got my money and it was there that I discovered that I now have to live in conditions like never before. :O My rent was 7800yuan which covers until January 10th but I didn't have enough money in my bank and had to borrow 500yuan off Tanya. Since it also takes 7days for money to be transferred, I'm gonna have to somehow manage living off practically nothing for a week..

After handing in my rent to the desk people at Lan Hui, I got a call from the bank. They told me that they had done something wrong when I withdrew my money and so needed to come back so I told them that I'd immediately come back as soon as I could. It's a lucky thing that my dormitory is just a 5minute walk from the bank.

Since it was after closing hours at the bank, the guards had to specially open up the doors for Tanya and I to go through. The bank people then tried to explain the problem but I had no idea what they were saying. I knew they wanted to do something with my card but I didn't know what so I just gave it to them and let them do their thing. We actually had a bit of a laugh with the bank people since communication wasn't too good. In the end though it seemed that the guy who did my transaction had accidentally inputted that I had withdrew 600yuan rather than 6000yuan.

Did pretty much nothing until dinner time where we walked down one of the nearby hutongs and found a small place to have dinner for just 50p. The portion is actually bigger than it looks so well worth the money!!

We then wandered the rest of the hutong for a while and stopped off at a drinks place. I bought a mango ice smoothie drink, and the guy who made my drink also gave me another one for free and said that it was a bit more milkier so I might like it better.

I did finish them both but man, it sure was cold. I had the brainfreeze feeling in my throat, and the cold night air didn't really help. But the man was right, the milkier drink was not only milkier, but had more of a mango taste too.

Everything Is In HD!!!

Picked up my new glasses today. I must say, they're probably my favourite frame out of all the glasses I've had. I chose these particular frames because when I was in Leicester, I tried on Hafizah's glasses and discovered that I don't look too bad in thick frames. Her glasses suit me well. Haha.

For lunch we had the noodles alternative to Subway. Basically, you choose the vegetables or whatever that you want to eat, choose some noodles, and then hand it all to the lady and she boils it all up in some special sauce, suitable for vegetarians. Each food you add it 1yuan (10p). My lunch came to 11yuan. So cheap!! I'll definitely be a coming back here regularly.

Glasses and Placement Exam.

I finally met my room mate today. Actually, I had caught a glimpse of her on Monday morning when she briefly came into the room in the morning to drop some stuff off, but I was still in bed. And then Tuesday night, because I had come home from the Korean restaurant so late, she was already sleeping in bed. But today, we finally talked and introduced ourselves. Her name is Morimo Haruka, 21 years old, with an older sister who is 23. She's studying a 4year degree in education at BNU, and has just entered her 3rd year.

Since we had nothing much planned for the day, we decided today was a good day to find somewhere to get some glasses. As we wandered through BNU, it seemed like there was some kind of student fair thing going on. There were lots of stalls and students behind them handing out bags and stuff. Charlotte and I walked up to one advertising Ice Tea because we really wanted a drink of Ice Tea. We weren't really quite sure what you had to do though, whether it was something you signed up for or whether you just got a free bag, so we just stood in front of the stall. The students asked us something but we had no idea what they were saying, and then they started saying in Chinese that we were English and couldn't understand them. We all had a bit of an awkward moment, laughed, then walked away in embarrassment... :/

At the glasses place, the lady there knew that our Chinese wasn't that good but she was patient with us and we managed to get the message across that I needed glasses and that Tanya needed wanted lenses to put inside a glasses frame she had bought with her. I chose the frames of the glasses I wanted, and then the lady took us to have our eyes checked, where we had to wear some funny looking glasses for 20minutes after she had worked out the lenses we needed.

The variety of glasses frames to choose from.

After this, we went to have lunch at one of the on campus restaurants. The restaurant is actually really nice and clean, and the wall decorations are pretty darn good too.

My lunch was Bibimbap with squid. So good!! The bibimbap sauce could've been hotter but it was still pretty good. Probably the best Chinese Bibimbap I've had since here in China so far.

At 15:00 we had to make our way to have our placement exam. The paper was split up into listening, reading, grammar, and writing sections. It was actually a lot harder than the stuff we had been studying at SOAS. Half the characters on the paper, I didn't even know. But I guess it would be like that since there are people of so many different levels taking the same examination paper.

After 1 and a half hours, we had to make our way upstairs to have a short speaking exam. Students were in the speaking room for various amounts of time, and I soon discovered why when it was my turn.

When I got called in, there were two teachers who asked questions to see how our spontaneous speaking was, and then we had to do some reading. The sentence I got given was about 50 characters long. I read about 20 odd characters before one of the teachers suddenly said "Finished". I hadn't even got to the end of the sentence and yet the exam was over. Not sure whether that was good or bad.. :/

Since the placement exam was just ridiculous, we decided to buy some comfort food. Cake!!

I was quite looking forward to eating this but ended in disappointment. Overall, it just wasn't sweet enough. The sponge at the bottom was kinda plain, and the main beige coloured bit was a weird texture. It seemed like it was meant to be cheesecake but it wasn't. I don't know what it was meant to be but it was okay, just not up to expectations..

To The Clinic.

Being foreigners, we have to take a compulsory physical health examination. The clinic which we had to go to is open from 08:30-11:00 so we had to get up extra early today to make sure we got there in time. The journey took about an hour and after arriving, we found that the whole place was packed full of foreign students, some from BNU, some from other universities. So we had to queue for a good hour or so before finally being able to get on with the examinations.

The first examination was a blood test. This was actually my first time I've had a blood test and surprisingly, it wasn't too bad. I couldn't actually feel the needle even go in which was pretty good. As I was getting my blood taken, next to me was Beth who was sat there screaming her head off because she doesn't like needles. It was hilarious to me, probably not so much to her.

Next up was a X-ray exam. This was pretty quick. We went in the room, stood up against a machine for 10 seconds and then we could leave.

The next room was a bit... different. I wasn't quite sure what to expect but what happened was when I went in the room, there was one lady who asked me to lie down, she then pulled my top up and put some wet suckers on me; one on my ankle, on my wrist, three across my chest and two on my stomach. Eurgh, not the nicest of feelings.

Blood pressure was then taken in the next room, followed by an eye test, a check to see if we had tonsils, and a check to see if we had ears in the following room.

In the final room upstairs, we were checked to see if we had a throat and jaw, and our weight and heights were measured.

To finish everything off, we had to go back down, hand in all the forms and then were asked to come back again on Friday.

We had to make our way back to BNU after the clinic as we had to pick up our BNU ID cards which is proof that we are BNU students. Here, the people at the desk also gave me my student campus card as I had lost it yesterday in all the confusion during registration as I simply had too much to carry in my hands and only just noticed I had dropped it after I had got back to my room.

For dinner, we went to a Korean restaurant hidden down an alleyway. The portion was too huge, and I had to drink almost 2litres of drink to help me wash the food down and finish my bowl. The rice was just too dry and grainy.. :|

Just some nice graffiti in the alleyway.

Official BNU Student.

Finally, the day to register and be recognised as an official student of BNU had come. Had been waiting for this day for ages since all the other days since we've been here have been pretty boring. We arrived at Jing Shi Hotel (an on-campus hotel where registration was held) at around 10:30 but when we got to the room for registration, we were told that they were closed  for the morning and wouldn't open up again until 13:00. So had to linger until we could come back again.

Jing Shi Hotel

 Beth and I went for a little wander and came across a small shop just 5minutes south of campus which sold a variety of bubble teas made on the spot. The lady there was really nice and so we decided that we might just try and become 'regular' customers since it's so close to BNU.

After a bit of time wasting, we went back to Jing Shi to register. The process was ridiculously long and required a lot of patience and queuing. Basically, we queued around the whole perimeter of the room, stopping off at desks on our way round. The first stop was to hand in a photo of ourselves so we could collect our campus card, then we got given a bag of introductory BNU stuff, then moved on to buy medical insurance, then had to go to another desk get a sheet about the health examination all students have to undergo, and then there was a desk where we collected a free Chinese SIM card (but only if we wanted it). After all of that, we had to make our way up to the 9th floor where we then queued up even more (about 30minutes) to hand in our form of temporary residence, proof of medical insurance, proof that we had been admitted to study at BNU, and two passport photos.

To celebrate the long process, Tanya, Charlotte, Beth and I went to a nearby Sichuan restaurant to have lunch.

Fish

Tofu and Vegetables

Some oily, crispy things with chilli and peppercorns.

On the way to the restaurant, we walked past the front of BNU where you could see the main building and noticed something. There were suddenly a whole load of flowers which had appeared and neatly placed on the ground. We had walked past there yesterday and they weren't there!!