Craziness in China; ups and downs

Ni hao,

Here is the first posting from China. Crazy China indeed. I arrived in Beijing 2 days ago subsequently took a night train to Harbin and arrived there yesterday.
Some words that summarise my stay in this country so far: crazy, confusing, annoying, ups and downs, crowded, chaos, loneliness and a bit of euphoria.
Must admit that this is probably the shortest time in which i have ever experienced so many sentiments. But thats part of the deal he.

The start: The flight and everything went very smoothly and i a good amount of sleep. So i arrived reasonably fit in Beijing. However, exiting the plane i hit a wall of 35degree air, which i had absolutely not expected.
Took a bus from the airport to downtown as i had to find a travel agency in beijing which had booked my train ticket to Harbin. With a little help of a cab i managed to find it quite easily. With the ticked in the pocket i dropped off my luggage at the train station and took a nice stroll through Beijing as my train was only leavin 5 hours later. When taking a rest at tianamen square some chinese students approached me to practise their english. As the forbidden city had already closed its gates they asked me to join them to a tea ceremony in a traditional tea house. I decided to join them and speak a bit english to them. Up to now everything went really well. The tea ceremony was quite extensive and we had 6 strange and apparently old and traditional tea's which tasted quite funny/good/strange/surprising. However, when we had to pay for these 45min. of fun i found out to my surprise that the bill was 50euros!!!!! per person. I dont know what kind of teahouse or what kind of tea we had been drinking but this was ridiculously expensive. I thought i had been tricked but the 3 other chinese students each payed 50euros (500RMB) quietly. Hmm, strange and expensive round of tea. I would say that is certainly not my cup of tea!! Felt quite bad about this as it could have spend on something much more to my liking.
After this 'scam' i took my 12h night train to Harbin. Quite comfortable i had my own bed in the so called 'hard sleeper' class. As opposed to the name, the beds are not hard. its just the chinese way of indicating a second class bed ticket. I again had a fair amount of sleep and some chats with some chinese people that spoke some english.

In Harbin i took a cab whith a driver not so easily to get rid off. When i paid him the normal fee of 10RMB (what the university had told me) he wanted more money and kept holding my bag. So I had to pull it out of his hands which resulted in the handle being broken. F%$#^ckin chinese people. Registration then resulted in the typical language obstructed bureacratic chaos. damn chinese!! Then i was directed to my room. To my surprise i did not have a single room. damn chinese organisation. The room was and is shitty, small and i have to share it with a 40ty year old schizofrene (i dont even know how to write this word) Australian who had been there for 2,5years already. Ok he's been really useful in helping me survive this first couple of days, but he is a bit of an awkward figure.

I really hated my first day here in Harbin. Today however i am feeling much better and i am confident to stay here for a while. It will be really good for my chinese most likely. However, the fun will be a bit less. Therefore, most likely i will not stay here more then one semester. After that i will try to switch to Beijing.

Harbin is really cheap. For example the internet costs about 15cents per hour. Fresh fruit is very cheap and meals in cheap restaurants cost between 50cents and a euro. Thats an advantage here. Will tell you about the bar and beer prices later when i have been there.
For my Antibes friends: I discovered already a chinese red wine for less then a euro; whoeaa.

I have a phone number here as well. It is:+86-13796636140.
Actually i have to say it is really cheap to call me on this number from Holland if you use the pre-dial of 'teledump'(see www.teledump.nl). If you use the acces number 0900-1717 you can call me for 5 cents a minute. Its no joke. Its true. Ask my parents :d You have to use a fixed line in Holland though. "dus kom op mensen en geef me maar eens een belletje :D"
Sending a message is of course always possible.

Have to admit this is the first reasonably long email i write to this website. It was about time he :D
Hope to hear from you all guys.
Zaijin,
Marc.