Library

Last Friday I went to Xianlin campus (where the college students live, I go to class where most of the graduate students are) of Nanjing University to hang out with some of my friends that live there. When asking if they wanted to hang out, they responded with "Of course! You can come visit us whenever you want! But we have a lot of homework to do!" It was a lot of fun, they took me out to dinner and we walked around the campus and chatted. Besides that, we spent the whole time at the library. The shocking thing for me as an American college student: as it got later and later on a FRIDAY night, the library got more and more crowded. There literally was not one seat open (as far as I could tell) when I left the library at 10:00 pm. "It's like this every night of the week," Xinyi said, "Everyday after 4:00 pm it's almost impossible to get a seat." She asked if it was like that in the US and I said, "Usually only during finals time." And then she said:

"Oh during finals time you have to wake up at 5 am and get in line in front of the library by 6 am and take a number. They have as many numbers as there are seats in the library. If you get there after 6:30 am you probably won't have a seat for the rest of the day."

This is why China is crazy.