05/17/2014
Yesterday was my first full day in Nanning. I had a leisure morning and then spent the afternoon looking for apartments. We looked at four different kinds. Non of them were entirely convincing. They were either too big or too small. It was hopeful though. I am convinced that I will be able to find something that will be very accommodating and at an affordable price. The price range seems to be between 216 and 286 US dollars per month.

Lily, my english speaking guide, and two of her friends took me around on their E-Bikes. It was quite the adventure! The roads are filled with a mass of hundreds of E-bikes that travel much like an ocean wave crashing against a rocky beach. They just find the open cracks between the traffic and flow through them. They mostly keep right off the main traffic until it comes time to cross the road to the other side. Then it is every man for himself, weaving between the traffic. It is the fine art of cutting people off with out getting killed. You can tell that they are all accustomed to this way of maneuvering and the on-comers calmly (mostly) adjust their speed and direction so as to not cause a collision.

The most amazing moment was when we crossed an intersection with about fifty other E-bikes and were met in the middle by about fifty other E-bikes. It was a lot like a scene from Braveheart, when the two armies would collide in the middle of the battle field, except there was no screaming and no blood shed. Just a hundred Chinese people driving carefully through a mass of chaos.

Another fun moment was when my driver made a u-turn in the middle of traffic when he realized that it was too sketchy to make it all the way across.

I filmed some of the drive and will do my best to post it up soon.
I was excited to find out that our two drivers were believers. One, the elder, at 35 years old and the other, a worker, early 30s. What a blessing to get to meet them right away. They seem very nice and will be great to work with. Between the two of them they speak about 10 english words. So it looks like I will be needing to learn Mandarin after all.

I was also able to do a short tour of the university I will be studying at. It is nice. It has a very impressive building at the entrance that you walk through (see picture). I am sure I didn’t see even half of the campus. The school has 26 thousand students, which is more than my entire county back at home!! The campus also has some nice green park area near the entrance.
I tried to find the library but was unsuccessful. I read online that the library has 1.24 million volumes in it. WOW!! 

I will write more about the university when I get the full tour.

Well, that pretty much sums up yesterday