Arrived and settled

I arrived in Shanghai yesterday at 7:15 and quickly caught a taxi and came to the Tonghe International Student Village where I will be living for nine weeks.  The taxi ride itself was pretty frightening.  Cars will driving on the shoulder like it was a line and people turned at intersections whenever they wanted to, resulting in a chaotic mess of cars facing in all directions.  Crossing streets is also very harrowing.  I was one of the first people to arrive, so I spent most of the day in the apartment unpacking, reading, and napping.  In our apartment we have three bedrooms and 2 bathrooms.  I have two roommates.  My Chinese roommate's English name is Elaine and she is about to graduate from Fudan.  My other roommate is Stephanie and she is from Hong Kong but attends Brandeis.  The apartments are large and pretty nice. We have a small kitchen, a sun room for drying laundry (no dryers), and a living room with a tv.  The bedrooms also have full size beds and are pretty spacious.  Last night we first met as a group for dinner.  We went to a local restaurant and sat at large tables and ate family style from a variety of dishes on a lazy susan.  I enjoyed the food much more than I thought I would, although eating with chopsticks was difficult.  There were many meat based dishes and also some vegetable and fish dishes.  I was really surprised that there was a potato dish that was quite good.  To drink, there was a liter of sprite and of artificial tasting orange juice.  All plates and cups for the meal come in individually packaged plastic wrap, which was very interesting.  Today we have the first full day of orientation.  We are meeting to have breakfast as a group and then going on a city bus tour of Shanghai.  After lunch, we are going to the university to meet our language instructors and then there is a placement test for those who have taken Chinese.  I am actually the only person in the program who has never taken Chinese, so I might be in a class by myself.  Thanks for reading such a long post.  I can't wait to start exploring the city and learning more about the culture, food, and language.
-Kate