this is why i will miss being a student

I woke up at noon today. It is 6 pm now and I'm still in bed. It is just the begining of my four day weekend. There is a cleaning lady mopping up the nuclear mess left over from our housewarming last night. Said cleaning lady charges 10 yuan an hour (approx 1.5$). I have eaten nothing but pop and candy all day. And I don't feel at all ashamed of the waste of space that I am!

Here's something I wrote last week when we didn't have internet yet, so here you go a blast from the past

Moving to a new city, even if merely for 5 months, is hard work. And now that most of it is done, I finally stop to breathe. I look around me, sniff my glorious new mood candle from Ikea, and look out at the city that is still alive and beating.
It is 1:30am on Thursday and I should be sleeping. I also don't know when this post will go up as internet is still a distant dream for our new apartment.
The last few days have been consumed with househunting, moving, contract signing, household shopping, cleaning, school, permits and student visas. We got this beautiful place on the top floor of a building that looks out onto Tsinghua. It is big and expensive to Chinese standards, but barely half of what I paid for living in Canada, and definitely a better deal than the double dormitory rooms I was sharing last week.

Today was the first day of class for me. I have four classes, bringing me to a grand total of two and a half days in school a week. Bummer, I wish I was on campus more often. I'll have to make do within my alternate habitat, the library. Mmmm learning, gimme gimme.
Things I miss: being able to use the washroom when I need to. Things I learn to deal with: the PA playing classical music to signify breaks, during which every girl with a bladder mauls eachother for the washroom.
So far the organization level of Tsinghua's international exchange admin has been questionable. They left us to our own devices during course selection, which was online and in CHINESE, providing a handful of english taught couses that all seem to coincide with eachother, and not bothering to resolve conflicts although our graduation hinges upon the completion of these courses. But hey, no biggie to them. Then in a few of the classes, the professor doesn't even speak English and the exchange students are forced to learn the language or bust. Since we were getting no love from the admin, we decided to take matters in our own hands and offer to write the professor an english case in exchange for not coming to class. He loved the idea. Success!

Otherwise life has been life, and I'm still searching for that aha moment here.

So last night was our housewarming party. It was an epic success, everyone loved our apartment and had mindexploding fun. We had probably 100 people, half of whom we had never met, in our apartment. There were Germans, Chinese, Frenchmen, Swedes, Colombians, Spaniards, Aussies, you name it we had em. Makes for the most eclectic and dynamic predrink EVER. This morning when we woke up there were 12309234987 empty beer bottles and the remnants of awesome memories all around.

Words are cheap, so I present you with some eye candy.

My new bedroom