I'm sitting here at my laptop at the guesthouse at Shantou University, has been a rather full couple of days. Nice to get back online. Yesterday became a total non-event. Those of you watching/reading the international news will notice a typhoon that has swept through this area of the world. It pretty much split Hong Kong and Shantou down the middle, missing both thankfully. However it came close enough to spread trees, garbage bins and everything all over the roads, hence canceling our meeting. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise, all I could do was lounge around all day. Was great to sit and talk to Les, he is a pretty interesting guy, has done an awful lot. Will put it in an entry in the next couple of days.

So after a day of doing nothing, today was rather full. The University agreed to move me into the guest house tonight, so I spent the morning trying to jam pack my luggage. Got it done thankfully, and after a spot of lunch we were picked up and whisked off to Shantou Medical University for the meeting.

The bigwigs from the faculty were there, none of whom spoke a great amount of English. So Frieda, the fantastic lady in charge of coordinating everything, acted as an interpreter. Basically we just went over the contract. There was nothing to dramatic. Les got in a bit of a friendly standoff at one point regarding termination of contract, however no blood was spilt. I pretty much sat there quietly for the most part, not knowing a whole lot about Chinese contracts and laws. After a couple of hours we were all good to go, a few changes to be made, planning on signing on the dotted line on Monday. The third member of the team, a local teacher to take care of those students who know little to no English at all also arrived, her name has totally eluded me.

We said cheerio to Frieda and the head honchos, and were off to the University campus itself (which is located some distance from the actual medical school, thankfully for me lessons will be taught on campus). Upon arrival we checked out where our office was to be, an ex-laboratory, big, air-conditioned, should be good. Currently the campus is being used for National Service (military training), so the room was being used as a rest area. After giving the thumbs up on the office I was taken up to the guest house and checked in.

Talk about luxury, the guest house is basically a top class hotel on campus. It's used as both a hotel, and to house foreign guests at the university. It's fairly empty at the moment. But has conference rooms, business centers, a nice restaurant, all fairly swanky. The rooms (serviced) equipped with LAN, DVD player, TV, you name it, they got it. All rather nice. I get to stay here till Sunday when my apartment is ready. Will get some pics of it all tomorrow. Anyways, I headed downstairs, had some dinner, and have since been updating this little machine and basically chilling out.

Can understand this hasn't been the most exciting of entries... will try to hype it up a little tomorrow!