Guys, how much money do we get for our stipend?
Well, for NSLIY, they gave us $165, so I'm assuming it would be around the same for CLS.
- ONE MONTH LATER -
Stipend emails are out! How much money did yall get? Dalian got ~600.
Wait... 600 US or 600 RMB???
US :)
Oh my god was I shook to the core.
Our stipends were released on a rolling basis, so a lot of us were bugging the people who already got the email to tell us what it said. Unlike NSLIY, where museum tickets, baggage fees, and transportation are paid for us, we're expected to pay our way for CLS, which is why the stipend is much larger. Those of us living in dorms get an even bigger stipend (Xi'an get $810) because we have to pay for all our meals. Host families are supposed to feed them breakfast and dinner, which is why their stipend is smaller.
Stipends aside, we've also be getting emails about webinars and travel details. 10/10 would recommend watching. At one point, they brought up our living arrangements. They said that students living in dorms will be in the international student dorms, which means having a privet bathroom, air conditioning, and wifi. (blessed). Honestly, I'm so relieved for the AC unit.
As for people with host families, they said that host families are not required to give us AC or the wifi password...yikes! I can't imagine them saying no, but I like the security of knowing I'll actually have AC and wifi.
The other major topic of conversation has been phones and whether or not we should go ahead and buy a sim card. I know they're going to give us a program phone with X amount of data, and I'm hoping the sim card will fit in my actual phone. The program phone I had with NSLIY was too clunky, and I had to change the language of the entire phone if I wanted to text my host family in Chinese. By the time I had switched the language over and set my host mom "I'm on my way home; I'm a longjiang" I was already home. Sometimes my host family would forget to text my program phone and not my wechat and I wouldn't see their message until my phone reconnected to wifi, so that was great.
The reason I might get a sim card for my phone is because the plans are cheap, and I don't want to accidentally run out of data if I put the program sim card in my phone. I'll probably just turn off roaming and hope for the best.
And lastly, an update on my visa. Apparently the Chinese embassy rejected my visa application (big surprise) because they need my Chinese name under both legal name changes and Chinese name even though that is no longer my legal name. Also, for some reason, duration of say never printed on my form. Thankfully, this wasn't a big hassle (unlike last year) since all I had to do was retype two pages of the application.
I haven't heard back from them, so I'm going to assume everything went through. Fingers crossed. 23 days until PDO!