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!!