ipod touch question

I bought my ipod touch 5 about two months, maybe three ago. Since I live in China and the postal service is unreliable, I had it sent to America. So a few days ago, a friend brought it from America to me. I turned it on, configured it, and it worked for about maybe half an hour, I was able to see the different apps and use the camera etc. However, I did not download anything onto it yet. All of a sudden it stopped working and it has been stuck on a screen that shows a USB cable pointing to an iTunes logo. After connecting it to the computer and iTunes, it said that my ipod need to be restored and updated. I clicked on that, and after 30 minutes of downloading the update, it said my iPod was in recovery mode and needed to be restored. I clicked it again, but it started downloading the update again.
And it has been in that cycle on and on and on. Does anyone know what to do? I would be much obliged

PS It will not restart, when the screen goes off, it just comes back on and has the same thing on the screen.