Countdown

I went to the visa office today to get an extension as mine runs out in less than a week. I need a little more documentation and I should be OK. I'm allowed two extensions from here in Nanning, then after that I have to get a new visa which I will hopefully do through the language college here. The two extensions, maximum thirty days each, will take me to the middle of March when the new semester will be newly underway. To get the school registration paper work all in order takes about a month, and I can only apply after Chinese New Year, so everything is down to the wire here.
Anyway, sorry to bore you with this stuff, but there are a lot of people back home sending up some words for me, so to you; This is my situation in full.

I'm just settled in the new apartment, still waiting on pins and needles to potentially go to HK (see above, need more documents). Our apartment is up in the mountainous region of southern Nanning. Every morning I can bomb a hill on my bike or skateboard which is really fun. Three bedrooms, one small kitchen, two free-range birds that poo everywhere. Our apartment is on the sixth floor. When you move in China, like at home, you often hire movers. The Chinese movers are usually people who have come from the countryside (a little shorter, darker, thicker accent). Two of them dragged a sofa out of the moving truck, a big three-person sofa. I looked at James (English friend James) and we motioned for the four of us to carry it. They weren't having it. With the help of his moving buddy, the one flipped the couch over, crawled under it (at one point you actually couldn't see him, because the couch is so big and he is so small), stood up, and proceeded to climb by himself up to the sixth floor with this sofa on his back (approx. 14 flights of 10 stairs, having to turn a corner after each flight). I lost my mind, he barely broke a sweat.

There are also close to seven million skate spots here, from my window alone I can see three really cool spots (pictures to come).

This last month has been the longest that I haven't studied Chinese since I started, weird.