Apologies, but this update is delayed due to my lack of access to practically everything being blocked. This post will mainly just be about NYU Shanghai, aka our living situation, campus, and orientation.
So I guess I'll start with our living situation:
I live in the off-campus apartments near Zhongshan Park with two other people, Chloe and Marissa. Our apartment is very spacious. Sadly, I will probably never have an apartment as big as this one in NYC. Our room consists of three singles, a balcony, a kitchen, a living room, and a washer and dryer in the kitchen. Main problem with our apartment so far, how cold it is...same goes for our water...but other than that, we live in what is considered a comparatively higher-end apartment.
The area that our apartments are located is very convenient. It is a fairly Westernized part of town, with Starbucks, Costa Coffee, McDonald's, and etc. I'm fairly surprised at the amount of outside influence in that area. There are numerous Taiwanese eateries located here, including 85°C and a Taiwanese breakfast place, as well as Cantonese style restaurants and Korean BBQ places. It is located about 10 mins away from a large American-style mall, Cloud 9, which houses a Carrefour, (similar to our Targets, Walmarts, and K-marts, where we buy all our apartment necessities).
Orientation
Orientation started this past Tuesday. So far, we have had a few welcome presentations, academic info sessions, and breakout sessions dealing with shopping, scams, resources available to us, and etc. As for food, NYU goes all out...I mean we're spoiled here (but then again...our tuition kind of pays for it) The first day of orientation, we were treated to hot pot at Hai Di Lao Hot Pot, which is considered an upscale restaurant. Service was excellent (not just by Chinese standards, but by everyone's standards) Someone said that it was rated with best service in the world. Coming from a hospitality student, this is what made their service special: as our group walked in, we were greeted and led upstairs. As we sat down, each guest had their jacket covered to avoid the smell of the hot pot getting onto the jacket, guests with glasses were offered glasses cloths, and girls were offered hair ties to keep hair out of their food. A special treat of a noodle performance was definitely an added bonus to keep the overal experience memorable.
Other than that, our other meal we have had so far through NYU was our Peking duck dinner, which was probably our largest meal thus far. Orientation festivities for tonight (1/17) even included an acrobatics show titled "ERA-Intersection of Time" located at Shanghai Circus World.
As orientation continues, we will have a cultural fair, dim sum at Royal Garden Restaurant in People's Park, and a scavenger hunt to look forward to tomorrow!
Campus
NYU currently uses East China Normal University's campus as their own. All classes and events are held on one of the floors of a building. Everything else, is ECNU's and not really used by students of NYU.
Considering I go to NYU, this will be the first time I will be on a real campus for school. After just a few days of being on a "real" campus, I'm beyond thankful that I chose to go to NYU. As nice as the scenery inside the school is, the overall feeling of being confined to one location is not exactly up my alley, neither is the amount of excess walking involved in getting from one side of campus to another. Side note, since China uses squatting toilets as well, and most foreigners don't know how to use it, aka NYU students; therefore, NYU put a sign up on the door of the toilet stall that contains the normal toilet seat, just for it's students.
This post was a little long, so I will give my first impressions on my overall experience thus far in another post. Since it's midnight here in Shanghai, 晚安 （Good Night）!
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