Arriving in Harbin, or Ha1-er3-bin1, yesterday morning was like stepping into a new world. From the train windows we watched the large, green fields pass by with the occasional factory or highway dotting the landscape. Other parts of China, around Beijing and Xi\'an tend to be much drier and less fertile and I was expecting this part of the northeast to be even drier but instead there is rain! Although it had just rained when the train arrived the sky was already half blue and the air was so fresh. I don\'t want to speak too soon but I think the air pollution and heat aren\'t going to be as bad as Beijing.

Breakfast was yet another surprise. We stopped at a little cafe which could have been in San Francisco. It was yellow stucco, there were nice tables outside on the patio and a trendy looking sign that read \'Hamamas Kofi Haus\'. The food was European, with coffee, bread, cheese, jelly and fruit. I commented to the shifu (proprieter) that I liked it and she told me it was a Papua New Guinean establishment. I smiled and nodded, confused as all hell as to how it was connected to Papua New Guinea, but figured that was her problem.

The day consisted of orientation, a campus tour, the entrance exam, arranged dinner, shopping for toiletries, etc. In the fangbian shitang (convenient cafeteria) I ate what must have been the cheapest lunch ever, 8 jiao (10 jiao to 1 yuan, which is 12 cents) for a plate of dumplings. Apparently in the inconvenient but main and better tasting shitang the food is cheaper.

Then a couple of us went out to a little bar to watch Argentina beat the crap out of Serbia and Montenegro. The bar was a foreigner\'s hang out, but had a healthy group of Chinese students that we talked to. One guy, we didn\'t get his name, had long-ish hair, wore a Nirvana T-shirt, and asked me immediately if I was Christian. I said sorry, no, and we proceeded to talk about American music, futbol and the city of Harbin, switching back and forth between Chinese and English. He was duly impressed that Wang Li Hong (a famous pop singer in Taiwain) had graduated from my school and that he and I had the same Chinese teacher. Then I had a bit of a conversation, this time all in Chinese, with a girl from Germany, going to school in Vienna, but doing a year of study abroad in Harbin. Being fairly jet-lagged still, I didn\'t stay to talk to the handful of Australians, the Bulgarian, a couple brits, a few Russians and the other Chinese who all happily were squeezed in, two to a chair, into this little bar.