"Young Joe"

Well guys, I've made it to Yangzhou. After a rather nice overnight train ride, we arrived at the final destination. As we drove across town to our apartments, I kept thinking, "This is home!" I am glad to settle into a place and become familiar with the area. Yangzhou is noticably smaller than Beijing, at about 5 million people. I like the feeling that the city will indeed end. There are many more bikes and mopeds and fewer cars. Traffic is lighter but more chaotic (is that possible?). I have been venturing out a little bit, usually with my other teammates, but mainly these first few days I have been focused on putting my apartment in order. My apartment. After sharing a room all my life and last year sharing a house with 10 girls, I now have an entire apartment all to myself. I'm a little excited. I'll put up some pictures and tell you more about it soon, but we don't yet have internet in the apartments, so I'm at an internet cafe.
You know, you should really be jealous of me. In the morning, I look out of my kitchen window down at the rows of bikes and across the canal to where women are washing their laundry and peddlers are biking along with their annoyingly loud bells and carts full of fruit or whatever else. I look out the front window and see freshmen moving in. Most of them are carrying a small suitcase or a few bags of clothes. They live in rooms about the size of our college dorm rooms, but as many as 6 people share the room. So not a lot of storage space. Students will often wear the same clothes for a number of days in a row (which will make it much easier to tell them apart!).
This morning I got to play my "stupid foreigner" card quite early on when I locked myself out of my apartment. I knew this would happen at some point so I had an extra key made for Matt and Corrine. Unfortunately, the key was still in my apartment... Oh well, many more stupid things to come. Classes start either on Monday (non-freshmen) or a week from Monday (freshmen), but I'm not yet sure what I'll be teaching. Not business students, but probably freshmen. One thing you definately learn in China is flexibility. As our professor said, "Learn to tolorate ambiguity." Oh yes, life is fun.