Tsinghua Uni and the first few hours

The train from Tunxi to Beijing lasted 19 hours. The day went fast by talking to some Chinese police/army guys, of whom some knew kung fu and were actually ladies, very militant-spirited.. So, they did not talk any English, but I presented the admission notice to them to explain what I was doing in China and bribed them (as you would do for the street polices here in China) with few 50 eurocents, of which they tried to offer me 20 kuai, which I then rejected. I taught them to play Uno and they taught me this really cool Chinese card game. In addition, there was this student guy, who spoke a little more English, and we talked of various stuff also with him.

The night, on the other hand, was a nightmare. Some got even three seats for sleeping, but I got only one from the aisle-side, so as an owner of not-so-good back, I could not simply find any position to sleep. I fell asleep constantly but woke up instantly having entered the dreamland, as I would have fallen out of my seat. So maybe one or two hours of very shrapneled sleep. I ate during the trip maybe few fruits and some cookies and maybe 2 dl water. T'was odd.

It was dark when we arrived again to Beijing. We ate our breakfast in front of the train station (some sausage-on-a-stick and my train leftovers). I also brushed my teeth at the same location :). After this we left for the metro only to arrive to Wudaokou metro station, which was the nearest to our Tsinghua campus.

We got our apartments and had to pay over for the whole supposed stay instantly, plus a deposit and an extra fee for Sampo pankki. Nice. Our apartments are across each other in this building's corridor, so no need to walk long distances to talk about something.

My roommate comes from Tchetchenya (or however you write it) and is called Ruslan. He's also going to study Chinese, but in a different department. Ruslan seemed to be a very nice and polite person. We went instantly shopping to equip our residence with some common supplies such as toilet paper. We also got the laundry card, cafeteria card, a local SIM-card (whose price was determined by the actual phone number - superstitious stuff) and a bank account, to which I shall transfer some funds from Finland.

The campus is big area, but luckily there are primarily only bikes and silent scooters, so it is totally different from the midtown traffic of Beijing. Few malls can be found and lot of sport possibilities: tennis, basketball, football (soccer) and a sport hall, which I haven't yet checked out. It all seems very promising. Tomorrow I'll go and enroll myself to this China's second valued university.