So, today was a good day.  Not that the rest have been particularly bad, but today's was particularly good.  It's not that I did anything spectacular, but I think I finally have my routine down.

Joined a gym a yesterday that's extremely nice.  It's funny because the showers at the gym are better than the showers at the dorm.  The showers here are insid the bathroom, but not separate from the toilet, sink, etc.  So when you take a shower, all the water just kind of runs everywhere.  There are two drains that the water supposedly runs into, but there was also a mop provided in every bathroom, which says to me "Sorry our drains are terrible, but here's a mop to help out juuuust a little."  Regardless, showers here are sketchy to say the least.  I wear shoes.

Anyway, back to the gym.  It's extremely nice, so I've gone there the past two nights.  After the gym tonight, a couple of us went to KFC which was my first time to eat American food here in China.  It was nice, but not exactly the same as at home (not that I eat at KFC that often in America).  For one, there weren't any biscuits or mashed potatoes.  I was livid, which is funny because I don't know that many exclamations in Chinese, so I just kept saying the same thing over and over.  Also, they don't sell chicken strips.  LAME.  So I got a chicken sandwhich (which turned out to be dark meat, but thankfully without bones) which was pretty good and also some french fries. Yum.

Classes have started and are going fairly well.  I only have 1 class tomorrow and then I'm through for the week, so I'm excited about that as well as the lack of homework tonight.  So far, I'm enjoying my classes even if it is difficult to undersand the teachers sometimes.  I'm taking 4 classes here: A One on One Topics-Based Course (my topic is Religion in Modern China), a Two on One speaking and pronounciation course (which turned out to just be a One on One course because of an odd number of students), Business Chinese, and Modern Chinese Literature.  All the courses are taught exclusively in Chinese, which has proven to be difficult.  Even when the teachers define new words and phrases, they use Chinese to describe them, though I suppose this is good because of how much it will increase my listening comprehension.

Tomorrow night, a bunch of us are going out to this huge club, G+, to hear this famous DJ.  I mean, I've never heard of him, but he's billed as famous (which I guess means I'm buying into the marketing scheme.  Oh well, I'm in China and won't get to do this kind of thing again for awhile).  So anyway, we're all going to do that tomorrow night, and then for the weekend, most of us are going to stay in Hangzhou to explore the city and maybe head to a few of the smaller tea villages in the nearby hills/mountains.

My roommate and I seem to be getting along quite well.  I came home tonight to find a pear sitting on my desk that he bought for me.  He's really thoughtful, and the fruit was tasty.  He probably got it from Hou men(literaly "back door or gate", which is this amazing little neighborhood at the back gate of our campus.  There are restaurants galor and also tons of street vendors selling all different kinds of food.  I've tried some strange grilled meat (they said it was pork.  For my sake, let's hope so), a fried banana with ketchup, baozi, jiaozi, tons of fruit (they have GREAT pineapple and oranges here), and various other noodle and rice dishes.

Well, I'm about to head out.  I just bought some American tv shows in iTunes and some friends and I are going to watch them.  Nothing says comfort like Rock of Love: Tour Bus and The Real World. Yesssss.  

P.S. Here's some pictures I've accumulated.

This is a baozi.  It's basically a small dumpling with any number of fillings inside.  You can get vegetable inside along with different meats, but this one is my favorite.  It has red beans inside of it.  Red beans are this tasty creation that I hardly ever see outside of China.  They look like kidney beans, but they have this intensely sweet taste to them, so this is sort of like dessert.

This is some tuna sushi that a man on the side of the road made for me.  Overall, it wasn't that great, but it was totally worth the 60 cents I paid for it, haha.