The Search

Hi everyone,

So good news: I found a room! What began as an incredibly frustrating and discouraging process ended up in success. We came to Shanghai with the plan to stay in a hostel for 6 days and during this time to all find adequate housing...whether it would be all of us in the same apartment or a few of us in an apartment of of our own, or some of us spread out in different shared flats. Now some of you may be thinking that coming here without a place to live is kinda crazy, but that's just how it works here in Shanghai. Everything is done on such a short time frame. You can read advertisements for shared apartments and the move-in day is in three days. When you go to see an apartment, you basically have to say yes or no right away or it might be gone. That makes it really hard to do the whole "let me consider and weigh all my options before I come to the right decision". Germans like to do this a lot. But in Shanghai, you can by the seat of your pants. We had heard from friends we could get amazing penthouse-style apartments for cheap, especially designed for expats. Maybe this was true at one time, but it certainly wasn't our experience. To us, everything is way overpriced. It's an unpleasant feeling to negotiate money with the Chinese and know that they are ripping you off. They told us the apartments are more expensive for foreigners because we have different "style requests" than the Chinese. (un huh). Anyways, in the end we found something that ended up being the easiest, most convenient, and cheapest option. Us 5 girls are in the same building spread out between three different shared flats. It's the perfect option since it allows to have each other all in the same place yet give ourselves the chance to mingle and meet new people. I'm living on the 5th floor with Lara. Anne and Anna (now named Sophia for less confusion) live on the 8th and Jitka is braving it on her own on the 14th. My room has a balcony! We are right across from the Indoor Stadium which is a huge complex for sporting events, concerts, and other public events. It's a 5 minute walk to the underground and then we are only two stops away from the University. We are 4 stops away from the former French Concession and 6 stops away from People's square. So we are really happy to have a good location, all be together yet separate, and have have decent, clean rooms for a reasonable price. Our landlord lady, Mia, is also very cool. She's Chinese but speaks English well and worked with us on making short-term contracts. Today is orientation where we will register for classes. We have no idea what to expect. Will there be a lot of exchange students? Will we have to wait ages in line to register? What does the University look like? I'll post next on Uni life, but for now here's some pictures of the flat. Oh and I forget to mention. Lara and I have two roommates, a French guy and a girl from Mexico. The French guy has a baby kitten....no, he did not find him at the back of Chinese Restaurant (at least I think not) Her name is Merci and I'll be posting lots of pictures of her soon too.