Daily Life

1. Laundry

There usually are washing machine and dryer in basement or a laundry room close by. Ask your landlord or the realtor about it. The machines are mostly quarter-operated. The price varies from $1.00 to $1.50 for each time.  (Tip: If you are worried about the shrinking of your cotton clothes, don't dry them in the dryer. Just wash them and hang them up and let them dripping dry. It's always the dryer which causes the shrinking.)

2. Postal service 

The post rate for normal domestic letter is 34 cents, and 60 cents for international letter, no matter where. You can buy stamps in any post office, some ATM machines (which charge you some fee for it), or stamps vending machines.

If you want to mail a parcel, go directly to the post office. You can use normal mail, certified mail, express mail, or priority mail, etc. You can also mail stuffs by FedEx or UPS, which are different systems other than post office. There is one post office in every district. Check the White Pages to find out the one you belong to because you have to go there to pick up the parcels mailed to you. (If you are moving, you also need to fill out a moving form and hand it to the post office so that they can forward your mail to your new place after you move.)

There are post offices on BU main campus. One is located next to ISSO.  Another is on the basement level of GSU. BU medical school has a post office on the first floor of L-building.

3. Fast food, grocery and liquor

 
One McDonald in Kenmore square, another on west campus. A Taco Bell (Mexican food) in BU central. Get familiar with those most frequently used terms such as "for here" which means you will eat inside and "to go" which means you will bring the food to leave. Usually, a meal cost $3.5~$4.5. Don't eat them too much if your stomach is not used to the western food. You could also go to the Chef Lee (BU central) for Chinese food.  

Shaw's Market and 88 Supermarket (Chinese) are two major grocery stores around. Get the store's advantage card when you first shop there. It will save you $$ since you cannot get sale price without the card. The card is free. There are some supermarkets in Chinatown, where you can buy very authentic oriental food and groceries. There are also plenty of Chinese restaurants in Chinatown. If you go to Chinatown from BU, you can take the green line inbound T, get off at either Boylston station and then walk there, or Copley station and then change to No.9 bus which has a stop just next to old 88 supermarket.

You may want to explore Haymarket, an outdoor food (mainly vegetable and fruits) market open on Friday and Saturday. It is just like the "Free Market (zi4 you2 shi4 chang3) in China and more importantly, the prices are very cheap compared to that in grocery stores. Take any green line subway and get off at "Haymarket" stop.

Liquor (beer and wine) can be purchased in liquor stores and some grocery stores. Please note that the law requires that you be at least 21 years old to purchase and consume alcoholic beverages in Massachusetts, so bring your valid photo ID on which shows your date of birth when you are going to buy liquor.

4. Shopping

At your first arrival in Boston, you may feel that shopping here is not that convenient as in China. Yeah, before you own a car, you may have to take public transportation and spend some time to do shopping. In addition, the state of Massachusetts has a 5% sales tax on everything except clothing, textbooks and unprepared foods, which means you have to pay extra 5% tax of the original labeled price for everything except those previously mentioned. 

For some routine life stuffs, you could go to CVS, Seven-Eleven, Store 24, some big grocery stores (like Star Market, Stop & Shop, Osco Drug) or other convenient stores. CVS and Osco Drug are also pharmacies where you can buy drugs and medicines which may or may not need doctor's prescription. If you'd like to do bigger shopping, you could go to the following shopping areas or shopping malls which can be reached by public transportation,

Downtown Crossing. You can go there by green, orange or red line subways. Get off at "Park Street" stop if you take green line. Get off at "Downtown Crossing" stop if you take orange or red line. Some bus routes also go through there.

Cambridgeside Galleria (a shopping mall). Take green D or E line subway and get off at the last stop "Lechmere".

Watertown and Arsenal Shopping Mall. Take bus 70 or 70A from central square and get off at the mall.

South Bay Center (a small shopping mall). Take bus 8 at Kenmore Square and get off at South Bay Center.

Banking

1. Open a bank account

There will be several bank workshops during orientation to help you open a bank account. You can open an account at Bank of America.  Bank of America is the most popular bank in New England. They have two on-campus offices at BU, one is located inside GSU, the other is in Kenmore Square.

All banks have office Branches as well as ATM rooms in their base areas. In order to open a bank account, you need to go to an office branch to talk with a service representative. Bring your identification documents (such as passport and I-20 or IAP-66) with you, together with the cash money you want to put into your bank account. For Bank of America, you may consider to order Classic Value Package. Decide the amount of money you wish to put into the checking account and the savings account. The service representative will fill out the forms for you as you directed. If you have a large amount of money, you may consider putting some into a CD (Certificate of Deposit).  CD yields higher interest rate. Once the accounts are set up, you will receive a temporary check book and a bank card with an access password.

2. Checking account and savings account 

A checking account enables you to write checks to pay your bills. A savings account enables you to save money and accumulate interest on your savings each month. BE AWARE that when you write a check, the funds will be withdrawn from your checking account. Banks DO NOT automatically transfer funds from a customer's savings to his checking account. If the funds are in the savings account, be sure to make a transfer to the checking account before you write a check. There may be a substantial charge (from $15 to $30 per check, depends on different banks and if the amount on your check exceed your credit line of your checking account, which is called overdraft (tou4 zhi1) protection), if you write a check that is returned to the bank because you don't have enough money in your checking account.

When cashing a check, you will have to endorse the back (sign your name on the back of the check). You could cash it either in bank offices or on ATMs.

3. Bank cards (ATM cards and debit cards) and ATMs 

Most Banks issue plastic cards whose purpose is to enable you to perform many transactions yourself, 24 hours a day, by either automated teller machines (ATMs) or telephone. These bank cards are usually free, and are associated with the funds in your checking and savings account. Through the selection of a secret password, access is restricted to the cardholder. 

You can do a lot of things with the bank card, such as withdrawals of cash, deposits, obtaining update information of your accounts, making electric payments and transfers or even purchasing stamps on ATMS or telephone just by pressing a series of buttons.

There are two kinds of bank cards, ATM cards and debit cards. If there is not any "Visa" or "Mastercard" logo on your card, that is a ATM card. You can use ATM card to get full access to the ATM machines. Some stores accept ATM cards, so you can do shopping at those stores, just slide your ATM cards and then input the password. But the store or the bank may surcharge you certain fee for the transaction. If there is a "Visa" or "Mastercard" logo on your bank card, that means your card is a debit card. Besides having all functions of the bank card, the debit card can be used in the same way as a credit card. You don't need to input password when you make payment. But unlike the credit card, however, you are not borrowing the funds from the bank. You are using the funds from your own checking account, that means the purchases will be charged directly from your checking account. To some degree, it is more convenient than credit card since it saves time for you to write and mail a check to the credit card company every month.

4. Credit cards update 

Credit cards means you are borrowing money from the bank through a line of credit which you apply for when you are doing purchase with the credit cards. The bank where you obtain the card will send you a monthly bill detailing your purchases during  that period of time. To avoid to pay the interest and the late-pay fine, you'd better pay the amount in full by the due date. The credit cards may or may not have annual fee.  The most widely accepted credit cards are VISA and MASTERCARD. They are accepted worldwide. There are competing credit cards such as American Express and Discover which are also widely accepted within US. American Express has special promotions for students, including travel discount coupons, calling cards and store coupons. Discover offers 1% cash back.  Usually at the beginning of a fall semester, some credit card companies will come to BU to solicit new customers. Simply sign up and wait for replies. You might consider to apply for the cards without annual fee.

Accumulating too many credit cards without using most of them is not wise.  Be very cautious when someone asks you for your card number and expiration date. It's possible that he/she will use this to make purchases through telephone and charge everything to your account. It is very difficult to retrieve the money back once theft like this happened.