policia?

last night i apparently got bitten by a vicious mosquito or spider or something like that becasue i have a HUGE bite on the back of my knee.

in other news, today we went to the police station to register our temporary residence. we took taxis which are really cheap compared to the US. we did that from 9-11. i went to my desk for an hour before lunch and finished finding the articles i'm supposed to be reading. then i ate lunch with britni and jasmine in the merry christmas restaurant again. i order ceasar salad that came with no salad dressing. but it was good to have some vegetables nonetheless. after lunch a few of us had a meeting with our academic advisor david mao. he talked to us about not procrastinating, working as a team, etc. it was good to hear as i start this thing off so we are all on the same page. then we had another 30 minutes to work so i printed off the articles i'm supposed to read. my group decided to read(skim) all of the articles by tomorrow so that we can get started on our work statement that is due at the end of the week. a work statement is a document that describes the problem the researchers are trying to solve and it is like a contract between the researchers and the sponsor. it is kinda a big deal. at 2 we had a meeting with everyone that included some more introduction stuff and also a message from legal about what we can/can't do. they are really passionate and protective about intellectual property here.

we had our first chinese lesson from 4-6. AHH this is so hard. but i'll get it. the teacher was really nice and there are people not in my program also taking the class. a guy from new jersey, a guy from australia, a guy from singapore... russia... japan... germany... you get the picture. 6pm is the end of the official workday so i came back to the apartment that was 87 degrees. uhh not ok. i took my laptop to the wireless cafe down the street and uploaded some pictures to picasa because facebook is being strange and the internet in the apartment has been down for two or three days. when i got back to the hotel, a guy came in and cleaned the filter in the AC but i don't think that was the problem. i'm now reading these articles and they are actually really interesting so far. a lot of it is way over my head, but i'm gleaning what i can. tomorrow might actually be our first normal workday with no interruptions. i won't know what to do with myself!