Hooray for a proxy

Okay, this will have to be quick as I don't know how long I have before this proxy kicks me off or my internet disappears. I am in the hotel on the Beijing Language and Culture University and the internet is not very reliable.

Beijing has been a blast the past few days, I've really enjoyed myself. I wrote up a couple of journal entries which I will be sure to post up on here at some point. Look for them later.

Yesterday was a bit of a nightmare. Nathan and I arrived at BLCU to meet Ella who is the Wentao of Real World Chinese. Only... she wasn't there to meet us. And she doesn't speak English at all. Uhhhh....
Anyways, after a few minutes (half hour) of trying to find her to meet up, an American student also on the program took the phone, figured out where we were, and brought Ella to meet us. This was all fine and well until she gave us a list of things we had to do that day; find the dorms, register with the police, register with the school, etc. Errr. Then she told us she wouldn't be coming with us. What?
She took us to the housing office and got me registered there, then gave me a map and sent us packing. Victor Zhang, the program coordinator (located in Canada) had told me I was going to live in building number 6. So Nathan and I trooped over there (poor Nathan had my very heavy suitcase the entire time) only to find out that I was not in building 6 after all, but in building 4 where we had just been. So we went to building 4 and this is where the real drama began.

We found the front desk and I attempted to check in. Only, I have a resident visa seeing as I live here and all, which the program knew ahead of time however didn't inform the dormitories. The dorms are for students only and apparently to live there you have to have a student visa. Which I dont'. After much back and forth between Nathan and the front desk staff, Ella was called in. She, of course, wasn't informed of my visa situation.
Hohum.
The only solution was for me to move into the hotel. They wanted another $800. Wtf, no. I told them that either they paid for the hotel since it was their mistake or I would like a complete and total refund of all the program fees. They paid the hotel fees and here I am.
In retrospect it doesn't look like we went through much, but trust me, it was an incredibly tense and stressful situation. Thank God Nathan was there or I would have been utterly screwed since Ella does not speak English whatsoever. Thank you, Nathan!

This morning I took my placement exam and was put in the class I wanted. The tester was a bit scary, a man who just yelled (only in China they just call it talking). I held my own reasonably well, but he told me I needed to study chapters 1-10 of a book he didn't give me tonight. Haha. I guess we'll see how that goes. Classes begin tomorrow and I am quite thankful that we'll only have one day before the weekend. I think it's going to be exhausting.

Right, that's all for now. Nathan is meeting me for lunch. Sorry if this one is a bit sporatic and poorly written, that's how it goes when you're a 'busy' student.