Life in the dormitory

I haven't told about the dormitory yet because I've had other things to tell, but I guess now it's time for a dormitory update :) Where should I start.... Well, compared to the chinese student's dormitory, our dormitory is a five star hotel or at least that's what I've been told. But compared to some international dormitories of other universities, we're not that high on the list.

My side of the room

The room I live in is pretty much the same size as the room you get in a Finnish student apartment. The only difference is that I share the room with another person. We both have a closet, a shelf, a desk, a chair and a bed on our own side of the room, and that's pretty much all the stuff you can fit into this room. In the middle of the building between the two corridors that run along the building, are the toilets, showers and "kitchen". Besides the furniture in our room, we also have cockroaches. We've only seen couple because my roommate had put some poison in the room before I came, but we do have them. And the most interesting thing in our room is the floor. There is this thin plastic floor thing on the floor that has been attached there with normal tape. At some points the plastic has been torn and there's also a seam in the middle of our room where the square shapes don't meet.

The dormitory gives us sheets for the bed that you can change to clean ones every time you want by going to the lady in charge of the sheets. The bed.... or should I say the "bed", is as hard as life. The bed reminds me about this rye bread commercial where a small boys is trying to cut a piece from a hard piece of rye bread and his dad says to him "well are you hungry or not". And in the end it says, "rye bread, as hard as life". The bed does not have a proper mattress and the dormitory only gives us this thin little thing they call a mattress. The "mattress" is as thick as a blanket, but luckily the dormitory gives us two blankets, so I have the other blanket folded on top of the "mattress". With the blanket I've been able to get a little bit of softness under my shoulders and hips, but if you sleep too long on one side that side will get numb.

The girls toilet has three stalls in it which are shared with the whole floor and the shower room has four stalls. The actual shower is a metal pipe that is bend down, so when you wash your hair you get a head massage because all the water pours down to just one point. And there is only one water drain for the four showers which is in the last stall. There is also two washing machines in the wash room that wash your clothes with cold water. You need to use these wash bags for your clothes because otherwise the washing machine would destroy your clothes. Now that I mentioned the water, I guess I should tell you the thing with warm water. There is warm water in the dormitory only from 6am-9am, 11am-1pm, and 5pm-1am. So, if you wake up at 9am and would like to go to the shower before leaving the dormitory at 11am, you have to take a cold shower. And if you were wondering, the warm water schedule doesn't have anything to do with the washing machines. They always use only cold water to wash the clothes.

The "wonderful" shower

I mentioned the "kitchen" before, so maybe I should explain that. We have a kitchen room, but although you might think that there would be an oven or something like that in a kitchen, there is nothing. The kitchen has tables on two sides and a sink, and of course a hot water thing where you can get hot water 24/7 because chinese people like to drink warm water. So, in other words you have to either eat out all the time or buy everything starting from rice cookers and hot plates. So, for six months I will be eating out :)

Although you might think this is not a way to live, it's better than sharing a room with about eight people and going to the shower in a public shower which is not in the same building and most likely not even in the building next to you. That is how the chinese students live here. You can see them walking around the campus with their washing stuff in a basket going to take a shower in a public shower some where around the campus.