Information for New Students

Safety

Temple is located in the city of Philadelphia. Choose a right neighbourhood to live. It's life threatening to live in a bad neighbourhood in Philadelphia. You may get housing information from our mail-list.

In case you are bringing cash with you to the States, please note that it may be potentially dangerous. In most of the banks, it's impossible to open a checking account without a social security number, thus you may,

  1. open a saving account
  2. rent a safety box (available in many banks or Western Union)
before you get your social security number. Or you just bring a traveller's cheque from China instead of cash.

Weather

Please visit this page and you will get the next 10 days' weather forecast.

Transportation

You can go to any place by public traffic in Philadelphia. you can visit SEPTA (the name of the transportation company) to find your bus, subway or train's schedule, fare and route. There are many trains passing through Temple main campus. Here is the one which you can take from Philadelphia International Airport to Temple. It is R1. By the way, the taxi is not expensive either. From the airport to Temple, the taxi fare is around $25 + $4 tip.

In case you want to buy a car for transportation. It's recommended that you buy it at auctions. There is a big and good one in Norristown (information attached below). It's usually a lot more expensive to buy cars from a dealer. In case you may want to buy a computer, you could buy it at auction websites like http://www.ubid.com for a lower price. You may also go to computer shows in King of Prussia (http://www.marketproshows.com) or Wilmington, Delaware where there is no tax.

Carriage Trade Auto Auction
1200 Ridge Pike
Conshohocken, PA 19428
Tel: 215-CAR-SALE
610-825-7085 		Circuit City
Store # 3158
4130 Concord Pike
Wilmington, DE 19803
Tel: 302-475-4081

Prices may differ very much at different places at different time in the States. You may read the reviews on the price, specifications and the quality of the product you want at these websites before you buy it.

http://www.dealtime.com/
http://www.pricegrabber.com/
http://reviews.cnet.com/
 http://www.dpreview.com/
http://www.steves-digicams.com/

In case that you need auto insurance, you may try this website:


http://www.insurecom.com/

With this website, you can get tens of quotes from different insurance companies in minutes. A good way to save money.

In case you should repair your car, here are the ones recommended by some Chinese student,

Say's Auto Service
Mr. Say P. Lao
850 West Tabor Road
Philadelphia, PA 19141
(Corner of Tabor Rd. and Wagner Ave.)
Tel: 215-324-5288 		Heng's Auto Repair
Mr. Heng Ly
1801 South 5th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19148
(Corner of 5th St. and Moore St.)
Tel: 215-465-8158

You may also call the mechanic--Mr. Wu, Jianpin by the number 215-280-9778 (Cell). He could come over to your door to repair your car.

Miscellaneous

Click here to see what you may bring to the U.S. and here to see Temple CSSA's policy to the new students. Subscribing to our mail-list-- Temple Chinese and acquiring information from the columns-- Bookmarks and Files in our Temple Chinese Yahoo Group should be very helpful to the new comers at the very beginning.

Welcome new school-mates!

In case you need any more help, please do not hesitate to contact Temple CSSA