Goldilocks

My bed in Wuhan may have been too hard, but my "bed" (really more like a cot) here is too soft. Well, I can't really say "soft" because the springs poke through unmercilessly, but it definitely is not firm enough. Now I wake up with upper back pain instead of lower back pain. Upper back pain is a change of pace for me, but it still hurts and makes sleeping difficult. My plan is to talk to the good people at the health center and see if they can procure a better mattress for me, since I'm living in campus housing and can't exactly replace the bed myself. Unfortunately, I think too hard is much easier to rectify than too soft, and I'm afraid they might just try to give me a newer but essentially the same mattress. I'm not holding out much hope for something that is just right.

Of the five people in my flat, I'm the only girl. There's a guy from Greece (Yiassin) studying music theory, a guy from Pakistan (Imram) studying law, and two guys from China, one (Alex) studying financial math and the other (Hao) studying biochemistry (I think). Neither of the guys from China play Weiqi, but I plan to use them to help me practice Chinese when my class starts. Hao has already been here for a year and has learned how to cook for himself, in quite an elaborate way. Alex just got here and made noodles for the first time tonight. He had watched his mother do it once. When he finished, he declared it was just like home and took a picture with his cell phone to post online.