Two Years Ago - settling in

Some of the first shots of our university that Jane took out of the car window as we first came on to campus to drop off our stuff before heading off to language training, followed by what they look like now:

2009:


2011:


2009:


2011:


Here, the change in the photos aren't terribly big, but the changes in our minds are huge. The first picture from 2009 is of a random building. The first picture from 2011 is the 西华大学第三食堂.（Xihua Daxue di san shitang - Xihua University cafeteria #3, which, according to students, is the cafeteria with the best food, though it's a bit more expensive.)

The next picture from 2009 is a fence with some bikes in the foreground and some buildings behind it. The corresponding image from 2011, on the other hand, is nothing other than the University's side gate, which is:

• where we pick up our organic vegetables twice weekly,
• where we're 95% likely to run into a friend or a student if we stand there for more than five minutes,
• our passage to cheap restaurants if we're too lazy to cook,
• the way to the market, the stationary store, the hair salon and the bus,
• and, in the words of a previous foreign teacher who blogged before we got here, "the place where the University ends and the Real China begins".

What a difference two years makes, huh?