Korean as a second language

In my class of foreign students in the Chinese language progam, approximately 70% are Korean. Another 20% are Japanese and the remainder represents the rest of the world. My entire floor is Korean with the exception of myself. I do wonder why it seems that all the Koreans on my floor smoke - the downside being that they tend to leave all the windows in their rooms and corridors open overnight, making the building very, very frigid. Oh, and they seem to all know each other, judging by the nightly parties that go on down the hall.

A good thing is that the majority of the English speakers that I've met are British or Australain - so they have quite the sexy accent. Yes, even the guys. There's actually one fellow who has the same mannerisms and speech pattern as Hugh Grant, and resembles him to boot. In any case, most people that know me know that along with my search for a girl over 6' tall that will date me, is one that also has an English accent. Instant +2 pts. Even better is that there are actually overseas Chinese from the UK and Australia with said accents. WOW.

I didn't know quite what to expect in terms of living space prior to coming to China. I had gone to Taiwan before and lived in a student dormitory at "Ocean University", which was quite the character builder. If you turned to face the bunk bed across from you, you could feel your roommate breathing on you. And it was the first time I had encountered "sea cockroaches". Like actual cockroaches that roam the beaches, and occasionally your dormitory room. Of course, we had to use squatters. My squatting skills are actually squat, so I had a very difficult time, plus I have knee problems. Fortunately, I found the lone sit down toilet on an uninhabited upper floor that was my little secret.

But the dormitories here are actually quite good - at least the ones for foreign students are. I have my own room, my own bathroom, nice bed coverings, etc. It's fairly new and kept clean. They actually clean your room daily, and wash your bedsheets for you once a week. The bad part is that they start at 8am sharp and they need to get their cleaning equipment from the room directly adjacent to mine.

The weather hasn't been terrible, but the evenings have been somewhat cold. My room in particular has been chilly, and I thought it was the norm until some of the other students mentioned that their rooms are so warm they can walk around in their underoos. It turns out in order to get the room to 15-20 degrees Celsius, I had to turn the thermostat up to 30 degrees Celsius. By now, I should have known to try that earlier.

I've been here not yet a week, but somehow, it feels much longer. I feel like every day is an adventure. It's quite exciting.