Busses galore

So over the summer I ran into Sarah Clark, a girl I went to HS with, on a boat back from Chebeague. To make a long story short, we did the obligatory 'so what are you doing' conversation you have with everyone you see from high school you're not close friends with, and it turned out she had a friend who was also moving to Harbin, China to teach english. We found each other's email through facebook, and said we'd meet up once we got here. So last night I called Charlie and this morning I headed downtown again to meet up with him for lunch.

First of all, the busses here are so cheap. It costs me less than fifty cents go get all the way downtown, about a 20 minute ride. Inside the city, or if I stay in this district, its only 1 yuan, like 14 cents. So I am determined to use the busses and not cabs whenever I can (cabs have a starting fare of a little over a dollar US... sounds like not much but when you're here that's a lot). I got a map of the city at a bookstore last week, but it has a street map on one side and a bus map on the other. The street map doesn't show the busses, and the bus map doesn't reall show the streets. I was supposed to meet Charlie at HaGongDa, the Harbin Institute of Technology. He did a summer program there last year and kinda knows the area.

Before i left the hotel I figured out which bus should get me there, and it only required one transfer, wight when I got into the city. Problem was, I watched that bus drive past me twice, without stopping where i was standing beneath its number. The third time it went by I decided this was going to take a while, and I caved and grabbed a cab to meet Charlie before the sun went down.

We went to a place I had read about online as being a hangout for westerners, a place that had actual sandwiches. This is a big deal. Chinese people don't eat sandwiches. Harbin is one of the few places you can really find good bread, and thst's only cause of Russia. I had a BLT, and it was grrreat. Even after a week, I was really craving a sammich. And I had an iced lemonade, also dericious. These are the things that now make me wicked excited. Bread and lemonade. Oh dear.

After we ate and discussed how many 'Oh my god,I'm in China' moments we have every day, we walked around the hagongda campus, which is really pretty with willow trees lining the streets and such. Now I know where there is a big grocery store (something like a French Walmart Charlie said, I can't remember the name though), and I've been told there is in fact peanut butter in the city. Also exciting.

I was dead set on finding the bus back to where I came from. I had my map, and Charlie wandered a bit with me while we tried to fnid number 84. There were about 6 other numbers going by in different directions, but we couldn't find it. Once we realized we had the wrong street, I finally found it sort of on a strip of sidewalk in the middle of the road... I obviously should've checked the middle of the road first. I got on the bus (right direction!) and eventually made it back to my hotel. Good job me.

Also, the season of Lost I bought the other day didn't work on my laptop (a small risk you run but it cost me a dollar so no big deal), so Charlie took me back to the DVD place I went the other day. However, he took me past where I had been buying the DVDs and into a room covered wall to wall in DVD heaven. I found lost on a better quality disc, slightly more expensive but worth it. Then on the way out I had a little deja vu, and on the way down a hallway to the cash register I realized, this was the awesome DVD store we had been to two years ago! So for Kim and anyone else who was on that trip, I did in fact find it again :)

Tomorrow I have to go for my health exam so I can get my residence permit so I don't get kicked out of China and into Mongolia or whatnot. I had a health exam in the states but apparently that wasn't good enough for the communists. Ah well. Silly China.

Ta ta!