Exactly a week ago today, I arrived bright and early at Hong Kong International airport. The flight here had two parts, a section from Georgia to San Francisco and a section from San Francisco to Hong Kong. All together it took me 26 hours to get to China.

I lost an entire day of my life flying and I don’t regret it. It hasn’t been as hard as I expected adjusting to this new environment, but I think my ease comes from the outpouring support I have received from the students and staff here at my exchange school.

I admit that my situation is very different from others because the school I am studying at is an English language school (the first of its kind in mainland China) but I cannot say enough about how wonderful this country has been to me so far.

My roommate came to school a week early to pick me up from the ferry and to help me settle in. All of my classmates are eager to help me do well in my classes and the staff wants me to be comfortable.

The area isn’t exactly as I pictured it, as we are not near the city center, but more located in the mountains. I am okay with that as Statesboro is about an hour away from Savannah so it is similar.

However the public transportation here is AWESOME. Super cheap and quite clean. The routes are somewhat easy to understand and there is always a bus within 5 minutes of waiting. In addition to that, the campus I live on is right in the epicenter of a group of universities so everything I could need is within walking distance.

Though the walking distances is quite a bit more than I am used to in Georgia. We are talking around 18,000-22,000 steps a day according to my Jawbone.

I think that the fact that this grouping of college is more like an independent city is really beneficial because I don’t have to stray far to get what I need so I save time and often money. Also it feels really safe on campus so having everything here means I don’t have to take a chance of being pickpocketed in the city.

My favorite thing about this whole trip so far though is the food. I think that I am going to start doing a weekly post about the food I have been eating because it is so good and very different from what we eat in America, especially different from Georgia. I have yet to find a type of food I don’t like. The price does help too, as most of my meals have been less than five dollars.

That brings up another point; I love how far the dollar goes here. The current exchange rate is around 1 CNY (or RMB) to 6.35 USD. That means that I get six times the purchasing power in a place where the cost of living is already low. For example I bought a cell phone here in China from a Chinese brand called Oppo and it was 2000 CNY. The SIM card for said phone is bought separately, but the monthly payment is 35 CNY with a 55 CNY opening cost. So all together to by a new cellphone and get a months worth of 2.5g data and 200 minutes of calling ability it cost me 327 USD. I will only pay 5.49 USD a month for the data and minutes. My phone bill in Georgia cost 40+ USD with Verizon and the phone itself is normally around 600 USD. Every time I encounter things like this, where my money is worth so much, it blows my mind. I think that it just adds to the draw of China.

Overall I have enjoyed my first week here in China and I am glad that I decided to spend a year here because I don’t think I could truly enjoy it fully in just 4 months. Next week look for my post on Chinese classes. Until next time!