Coming to Pittsburgh may be easy -- all I needed to do was making sure I that got on the airplane with my luggage and everything. But it is certainly the opposite of easy when I have to live at Pittsburgh in the following eighteen months -- I need some helping hands. Fortunately, with the help from a junior high school classmate, I was able to get in touch with a couple who have been living in Pittsburgh for more then six years. Ben is a current PhD student; Iman, once a student at CMU, is now an "analyst" of the U.S. stock market. They have given me so many valuable advises that I am starting to feel like home. Actually, it's totally different from what I felt at home in Taiwan: I have to prepare my own meals, which will involve shopping and cooking. Iman is particularly helpful in this area. She taught us how to cook - like cooking fried dumplings, and how to conquer shopping malls - like WAL*MART - during midnight.