„Oh China“!! My first week in a different world...

Monday morning we arrived at the international office of our University to get trough the whole registration process so that we could apply for a multiple entry visa as a second step. The plan was pretty easy : Finish everything within a day or two and then apply for the visa and start to search for an apartment. Well, I obviously forgot in what hell of city or country I am in...I forgot that this is China… yeah China (INFO : China can be compared to africa when it comes to puntuallity and bureaucracy. The only difference is that in africa you can solve a lot of problems with money).. So the process was tiring, annoying, frustrating….. But i knew what i was going for when I applied to that Chinese University and begged them to accept me ;)

So to make it short: If you want to to finish registration and get the multiple entry visa you just need to collect a lot, and I mean a lot, red stamps! Chinese loooooove red stamps! How to do that? First you will go place A and then to place B. When you arrive at place B they will tell you that you first have to go to place D for the sooo called special stamp! After D you go back to place B… There they’ll tell you it’s lunch time (well I should have known that….). So that means you have to come back again.. And the game goes on like that! Ohhhh and I forgot to mention that every place uses those tiny little papers with a number on it, so that you know how long you have to wait until it’s your turn (not a good idea… I actually could have killed someone when I once got a number like 457 and the next number called was only 187….grrrrrr*%ç4”*°§)

Anyway I don’t want to bore you with that kind of stories because there is more to tell ;)