Today I went to the home stay office to get my classes and visa organized. I get there and they say it is now 3 weeks until the class begins. But I was able to change to a week of private classes from Oct 29 – Nov 2. And then I have a week of no classes and finally 3 weeks of group classes from Nov 12 – Nov 30.
I gave away my passport, a photo, and my registration form so I can get my Visa extended. It is going to cost $200 and I feel like this homestay guy is ripping me off again. This is more than the cost of getting the visa in the first place, which was good for two 30 day entries. I only need 30 days more, since I have to leave the country in December! I think it was a mistake to get a F (business/student) Visa. If I got a L (tourist) Visa, I think it would have been easy and less expensive for me to extend on my own. Someone is making a lot of money (I think mostly the government) on American visitors in China, which I think is $7 per day for me. And in China that is probably the 2nd largest expense after accommodation.
Later in the day I went to a electronics market because I wanted to get some cables to plug my computer to the family’s TV. The son came along with me and said he had a friend who works there. That meant I got a good price (instead of let’s double the price for foreigners). For little over $5, I got a VGA to DVI cable and an audio cable. I thought that was kind of cool, going to the source in China here for these cheap parts, bypassing all the Ebay sellers and everything.
The family has a nice 42" Sharp LCD television with a DVI-I input. I was able connect my computer at 1024×768 resolution so I can watch videos on the big screen. I have the Ratatouille movie on my computer that the family might enjoy.
I think I was an hour late for dinner today, but they brought out the food for me anyway, which was nice of them. I noticed the father is not very talkative. I think he speaks the least English out of everyone; maybe just a few words from what I can tell. Today the daughter was taken to some English class or something. It is hard to get details on what is going on with that sort of thing. I’ll try to take some family and apartment photos some day.