你好！

Hello from around the world! It took make failed attempts to find a website that would get me past the block on this website, one of my wonderful friends in Shanghai was able to help!

After a wonderfully 3 hour delayed flight i made it! Lucky for me i met some girls from my program and was able to sit next to them on the flight so the grueling 16 hours didn't seem as bad. Since our flight arrived late we missed out on a welcome dinner that Alliance had planned for us so instead i was able to unpack and meet my other international roommate who is a doll. She's from University of Illinois. We will get to meet our Chinese roommate on Saturday.
Last night was quite the experience not only dealing with jet lag but also trying not to turn into ice while sleeping! I think the heaters in the apartments are just for show because they are less than warm! The apartment is a wonderful and fully furnished. I'm in the process of making my room more my own (aka piles of clothes in a very organized mess!) Hopefully once my camera starts cooperating ill be able to put up some pictures of my accommodations. Ok so enough of to boring stuff that probably only my parents enjoying, now to Shanghai. Fudan University is about a 20 minute cab ride (only 50 yuan which would be less than $10) from the heart of Shanghai. The street to the university is lined with cheap food joints, perfect for the starving college student, i have yet to try them out but i did talk to some girls who got waffles filled with chocolate and marshmallows (don't worry Molly OD, i try and bring one back for you!). One of the great parts about the Alliance program is their effort to make us use out Chinese by rooming us with chinese roommates. Some of the roommates had already moved in and helped to herd us from place to place today. I really enjoy being surrounded by the language and also be able to speak my very broken Chinese to someone who speaks English as well and Chinese.
After the beginning of our orientation today, a group of us decided to tackle Wal-Mart. Now in OXford Wal-Mart is our go- to, one stop shop, which is similar to China, minus that fact that it's slightly harder to navigate. We did make our way around the store though, whether you can all it successful or not is debatable. Most of my interaction with the Wal-Mart employees in the United States have only been at the check out but here they were all so helpful. Even though we were both struggling to understand each other they were going out of their way to help us. One sweet lady even went out to get us a cart as our baskets got too full. To try and find hair dryers we tried every work from hair (头发）and hand motions to electricity (电）and somehow found our way! The challenge came when trying to get a taxi (出租汽车) and fitting all of our purchases in the trunk, there was lots of honking and what i can only assume chinese curse words being thrown around.

And this all only Day 1! Can't wait to share more with you all.

xoxo,
Aryn