Blogs from Anhui, China, Asia - page 9

Hello Everyone! This is Jennifer again, and we are back from over a week of vacation as our students were taking the College Entrance Test (the Gao Kao). I know it has been a long time since I have written. I am still angry about the other blog website access being “taken” away from us, www.blogger.com, so part of my absence has been some sort of rebellion at having to start up again on a different website. But, I have missed writing and I do have some great things to tell you about... so here I am! We just got back from a mini-trip which took us from Shanghai to Hangzhou and then on to our ultimate destination of HuangShan (Yellow Mountain). The purpose of starting in Shanghai was for me to find some shorts ... read more

Xuijiahui has become familiar and people have found their favorite places to go for restaurants, cafes, bakeries, xiao long bao. This past week in cooking we made a delicious sweet and sour chicken that I definitely plant to make at home. On Thursday night the SJTU students threw a welcoming party for us at the Minhang campus, the main SJTU campus (I am at Xinhui). We sang the Ramblin Wreck song and put on a couple other performances; including a Backstreet boys song (which they all knew) and one of us even break danced. They provided most of the entertainment with some karaoke, band performances, a song from High School musical (some fo the volunteers told me they learned several of the musical's skits in P.E.) and games. Its interesting interacting with people your own age ... read more

At the main entrance, we had to pay an entrance fee of 115Y (student discount) while Cherry and Se Young also had to pay 80Y more for a cable car ticket. They didn't like the idea of hiking all the way up the western (front) path with their back packs. The other two girls Se Won and Helen decided to take the cable car after 5 minutes of hiking up stairs. Joey led us for a while at a decent pace, each of us sporting 2.5 Liters of water and all of our other extra weight! It was going to be a workout, but I was extremely excited. We tried to speed past group tours (which we didn't see that many of at first) and didn't stop for the first 30 minutes. Our first break was ... read more

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. So much has happened in the past week that I want to tell you about, but first I want to give you all a run down of what a normal day here is like. 7:00 : I wake up, shower, and study for class 9:00 - 12:00 : Class with Zhu Chen (my chinese teacher from hampshire) 12:00 - 2:00 : We go out for lunch, maybe go to the store. Sometimes I study to prepare for my one-on-one afternoon session with Fang Laoshi. 2:30 - 3:30 : One-on-one with Fang Laoshi 4:00 - 7:30 : A little free time in the afternoon, usually spent doing homework. Maybe a trip to Jia La Fuo (Carrafore), the big french walmart about a 10 minute walk from our apartment. 7:30 - ... read more

The past two days have been very busy, so I will do my best to recap for you all. Here goes: Yesterday we were officially able to leave our house and go out into the city of Hefei! But first we had class. The building I have class in is on the other side of campus and takes about 15 minutes to walk there. It was so refreshing to see people and get out. The campus is huge, and the dorms are so cramped. We are lucky to have an apartment and most of us have single rooms. The Chinese students live six to a room, its very tight living quarters with very little privacy. Our class is on the sixth/top floor of one of the foreign language buildings. Its quite a climb. Zhu Chen, my ... read more