The Trip of a Lifetime

It's now Saturday afternoon.  We depart tonight for the train, head to Beijing, and then fly back to the states on Monday.  I can't believe how fast this trip has passed by, but its also hard to believe how much I have grown and how much I have experienced on this seven week journey.  I wish I could journal some more about how bittersweet I am feeling right now, but I have to get out and experience my last day in Dalian, and my last two days in China :(

Every thing has been amazing for the last seven weeks.  There is not one thing that I would rather be doing at this point in my life.  Last night, we had a going away banquet with all of the students and faculty on the trip.  We were also joined by the President of the University.  We had a wonderful meal, sitting around the biggest lazy suzan i've ever seen, and played the videos that we created that show our experience in China.  The video took a lot of effort and time, but I am very proud of the final product and hope that you all enjoy it!

I'm having trouble posting the video, so if you want to see it, just send me an email!

The Comforts of a Chinese Family

Last Sunday, all of the people on the trip split up into three groups and met up with three, very welcoming Chinese families.  After hopping off of the bus at the home of our assigned family, we walked through a beautiful park-like atmosphere.  There were green grasses, lush trees, and flowers spread amongst a sidewalk that was covered by the canopy of the trees.  As I heard the sound of voices from above my head, I looked up and saw our loving family waving down to us out of their home on the sixth story.

When we arrived in the home, we were greeted with a loving kindness and quickly put on our house shoes so that we would not bring dirt from the streets into the house.  The entire family (Dad, Mom, and Son) were wearing silky looking pajamas.  One of the first things that they told us was to be comfortable and act like we are at our home. So, we sat down on the couch and made ourselves at home.  Shortly after sitting down, the Mom of the family brought out some fresh fruit for us to eat.  The fruit was delicious!  We had two different types of cherries, nectarines, and some really juicy watermelon.  It was a great way to welcome us Clemson students into their home.

After talking about things like life in America and comparing interests, we all went into the kitchen to make some dumplings.  The first thing that we did was get an overview of what we would be cooking with.  The dough for the dumplings was on the kitchen table, and the fillings for the dumplings were in the kitchen.  I started out in the kitchen.  The Dad had me cutting up Celery in no time! 

After cutting up some of the dumpling fillings, we all got a lesson in how to cut and roll the dough for the dumplings.  I was a bit rusty at first, but I think that I got a lot better after a few attempts.  Once the dough was rolled into circles, or hexagons in my case, it was time to fill the dumplings.  The Mom gave us a couple of quick examples, made it look real easy, and turned the table over to us ha.  We didn’t do to hot.  The dumplings that I made looked like tacos, but they got the job done. About 150 dumplings later, it was time to eat them.  They were delicious!

Just a sample of some of the dumplings that we made.  They don't look too bad from the picture...



For the rest of the night we all just hung out and had a great time.  We talked, I showed them some pictures from my life back in South Carolina, and we played this intense card game.  A lot of little things happened in between our arrival and departure, but the reality of the experience cannot be explained.  The family was so welcoming to us and treated us like their kids. 

This two guys in the back of the picture are the Son and his friend.  The friend is what helped set up the whole experience.  We rode to the apartment with him and left with him when it was time to go.



Gotta love the pajamas.  The Son spoke the most English, the Dad spoke a little English, and the Mom didn't really speak any.  We still had such a great time!


  



The Queen of Fruits

While eating this strange fruit that I had never seen before in my life, I decided to hop on the internet so that I could do a little research on the fruit and find out some of its health benefits.  The first site that I came upon was a site that had listings and pictures of a bunch of Asian fruits.  My initial goal was just to figure out the name of the fruit that I was eating (lychee), but then I stumbled upon this fruit that my roommate two years ago used to always talk about.  The fruit, which is called a Mangosteen, looked like something that I noticed at the fruit market by our hotel.  So, I hurried outside to make sure that it was in fact Mangosteens that the fruit market had on display, and it was!

The Mangosteen is one of those fruits that falls under the category of “Super-foods”.  The fact that I was able to go buy 5 Mangosteens for only 10 yuan is pretty awesome.  I have never seen these in the U.S., and my roommate that always used to try and sell me on this Xango Juice, which is made from the Mangosteen, charged like 25 dollars a bottle.  The Mangosteen has long lists of health benefits, and the benefits range anywhere from cancer fighting to acne treating.  This fruit is just loaded with health benefits!  A little research online will give you a better idea of how powerful of a fruit it is.  If you’re interested, type in Mangosteen health benefits into a search engine and check it out!

For this blog, I decided to give you a small insight as to how easy it is to get fruit here, and how interesting some of the fruit is.  Here are some pictures of the strange fruit that I have eaten and the place that I pick the fruit up at.



This is one of the fruit stands that I pick up produce from.  There are about 6 or 7 of these stands within a 3 minute walk from my dorm room.  Talk about convenience!



Close up shot of some fruits.  Check out all of the Watermelons in the back left!  The Watermelons in this area are amazing.  One day I bought a half a watermelon and ate the entire thing outside of our apartment.  The looks I got from the Chinese were priceless.

This is the Mangosteen, also known as "Queen of Fruit".

If you turn the Mangosteen over and look at the bottom, you will see these little petals on it.  The number of petals is the amount of fruit slices that will be inside of the fruit.  The more petals, the better. 



This is what the inside looks like.  Notice how there were six petals on the bottom, so there are six pieces of fruit inside.  The two big pieces have seeds on the inside.  The more petals on the bottom, the less likely there is to be a seed. 



The Fruit is sweet, yet tangy.  The texture is a bit strange, but the taste makes up for it.



The rind of the Mangosteen is what contains most of the health benefits.  The rind is highly concentrated with xanthones, which is one of the most powerful antioxidants on Earth.  Inside fo the tea cup is chopped up rind to make some tea!  The tea is still steeping, so I'll probably give it a try tomorrow.  Oh yea, the rind is unbeleivable bitter.  It is normally just put into pill capsules, but there are also other ways to prepare it.  



One of my favorite fruits from possibly my favorite place.  People from New Zealand are called Kiwis, the national animal is a Kiwi, and the country produces some of the best Kiwi fruits around. 

I had never seen one of these until coming to China.  This is the Lychee, and it is what helped me to discover that there are Mangosteens at the fruit market.

This is the fruit inside of the outer shell.  It has a Jelly-like texture to it and tastes very sweet.

I'm not even sure what this fruit is.  I bought a bag of them, tried one, and have not touched them since.  The texture is too different for me and the taste is somewhat bitter.  It tastes mostly like a berry.

These bananas saved my life!  The week that no one could keep any food down, I ate these every day and drank water.  I do not eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner anymore because I am well, but I still go through about 5 bananas a day. 

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As Time Goes By

It’s hard for me to believe that it has been well over a week since my last blog.  Time is absolutely flying by!  I’m not even sure what happened to last week…

On our way back from our amazing trip nearly two weeks ago, a couple of people started getting sick.  Actually, it all started about a day before we left to come back to Dalian.  Two kids got sick about a day before we left, and were either on the toilet or in their bed for the entire day before leaving.  When we started to head home on the plane, one more person was not feeling well.  By the time we landed, two more people were feeling sick!  People were dropping like flies, and it was not looking to great.  The side effects seemed to be similar to the ones people get with food poisoning, but man, it lasted a lot longer.

A couple of days after arriving back in Dalian, everyone on the trip had been hit by this sickness.  It is mainly stomach problems and a feeling of daze in the head, but it is not very quick to go away.  I lasted pretty long without getting this little bug, but at once, I got hit. I felt it for two days, thought I was completely healed, so I started eating the Chinese way again, and then started to feel queasy again.  It’s been up and down for me and a lot of people on this trip for the last week and a half.  It’s as if our stomachs just can’t take anymore of this Chinese food.

For the last few days, I decided that I would drink a lot of water and maybe have a few bananas throughout the day.  The first day of this was successful, then the second day I decided to try and eat some bread, along with bananas and lots of water.  Then, last night, I decided to go all out with my first KFC experience!  Well, I rushed into eating to quick!  I’m back to bananas, kiwis, bread, and water until I’m all well again.  I think tomorrow will be the day when I’m all finished with this little bug!

If only KFC looked like this in the U.S.!  Of all of the places in America to eat at, KFC, McDonalds, Starbucks, and Pizza Hut are the ones that I have seen in China.  Suprisingly, KFC is extremely popular here.  The four places listed are all extremely nice for China, and are some of the nicest places to eat at in terms of price and cleanliness.  Every one of the four companies that I have seen here have been at least 2 stories.  Oh, those bikes to the bottom right are for...delivery! haha McDonalds also delivers.

Despite the rough last couple of days/week, the great experiences in China have not diluted.  I’d say that my most memorable part of the last two weeks, besides being able to experience the same explosive stomach problems with twenty people, is the day that I went to go play tennis with some of my Chinese friends. 

When arriving at the first court with two of the four Chinese students that I would be playing tennis with that day, we hit the tennis ball around for about five minutes before deciding to move to another court. Ha, the two guys that I was with suddenly realized why that court is free to play on.  The court was asphalt, had lots of cracks in it, and had an extremely low net.  So, they called down to the courts that are all of the way across campus in order to see if there was a court open for us to play on.  Thankfully, a court was available and so we walked down and met the other two players that we would be playing with.

After about a 20 minute walk, we were all finally able to play some tennis.  We had such a great time.  We played doubles, singles, and tried to help Shayne (one of my Chinese friends’ English name) and Geo learn how to play.  The greatest thing about the entire time that we were all together is the feeling that I had when I was with them.  I felt really free and like I was not getting judged one bit by any of them.  Also, while playing each other, no one was getting mad when they messed up or weren’t playing well.  They all just laughed and had a good time.  It’s hard to put my finger on what was so great about this day.  I felt like I fit in with them and they accepted me so quickly and were all so interested in everything that I had to say. 

Unfortunately, I started feeling a bit queasy from the stomach bug and had to depart ways with them before our trip to get coffee.  Coffee after being active in a game of tennis is something that I am not very used to, but next time we play, I’ll make sure I’m feeling better so that I can join them. 

On a different note, we only have a little over a week left in China.  It’s quite sad, but I am ready to go home and enjoy all of the life that awaits me back home.  From now until then, I will try to complete a couple more blogs.  I’m not completely sure what to write about, but I want to make it a little bit different from what I have done in the past.  I should post another one this weekend at some point.  I’ll be out taking some pictures on Saturday if I get the chance.  I hope time slows down a lot this next week!

The Most Beautiful Place in the World?

For the last five days, I was on the most beautiful trip of my life with a bunch of the people that I am studying with at Dalian University of Technology.  Every year when a different group of people study in China through Clemson, a mid-break trip is planned for all of the students and teachers to enjoy.  This year, we headed out to Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous region—the largest province in China.  It is located in the northeastern part of the country, so it was about a 4 hour plane ride from where we go to school in Dalian.

The first place that we arrived at on our trip is Urumqi.  Let me just say, I never thought that life could be anymore different than the places that I have been to in China prior to this mid-break trip.  I thought that I successfully made it through culture shock and was well on my way to feeling completely comfortable in a foreign environment.  Well, I was wrong.  While being in a foreign country like China, it is a normal thing to be stared at while walking around.  Places like Dalian don’t get to see too many Americans, but they do see people from other parts of the world because of the college and its convenient location.  However, the place that we first arrived at on this mid-break trip was an entirely new experience.



The first thing that I noticed while driving from the airport to our hotel is the language spoken.  Most of the province is made up of the Islamic religion, and is also bordered by all of the Stan countries such as Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, etc.  Accordingly, there is a large amount of people in the area that speak Arabic language.  Mostly all of the signs seen in this area have the Chinese symbol, and also the Arabic writing under them.  We pretty much flew out to a completely new country. 

We did a couple of activities in this area, like walk through the market streets (which I didn’t think I’d make it out of alive), attend a great performance arts show (which I got to dance in front of about 1000 foreigners!), and just stay at a very interesting hotel.  We only stayed in this area for about half a day and one night, so there wasn’t too much time to do anything.  However, I experienced culture shock for the first time.  I was absolutely worn out after only being in this place for a couple of hours!



I'm not even sure if this is Arabic.  It sure looks like it, though.  Most signs had both Arabic and Chinese symbols.



  

I did not see this Sheep get killed, but i did see it get skinned on the street in front of a lot of people.  It didn't even phase these people.  Later, we saw another sheep get killed in this street.
  

When walking around the market street after we first got there, we got what seemed like the death stare by everyone that we passed by, and people that we were about to pass 100 feet down the road.  We might as well have been Aliens standing on a huge stage with a spotlight on us.  Talk about uncomfortable.  We got mean mugged to the max.  Groups of people stared at us like you wouldn’t believe.  They would lock eyes on us until we were too far away to be seen.  We even got followed by some people.  I’ve never felt so unsafe, but I’ve also never felt so excited. 

For the rest of the trip, I’m pretty sure that I saw some of the most beautiful natural landscapes that I will see for a very long time.  We first headed out to this place called “Heavenly Lake”.  Wow.  This place was incredible.  It was about a four hour drive to get to the National Park (I’m not sure if it is a National Park or not, but it should be, and we had to enter through a building to access the huge park), and then about an hour ride once inside the park.  We were in a huge tour bus and went through extremely windy roads to get to the main attraction, the Heavenly Lake.  The lake is around 7,000 feet above ground and is filled up by the ice that melts off of the mountains surrounding it.  The water was the prettiest natural color I have ever seen.  It had a greenish-blue color to it and was clear and very fresh looking.  While at the park, I was able to go down and fill my big water bottle up with some of the Heavenly Lake water.  I drank it all the next day before heading out to the desert.



Breath-taking!  It looked even better in person, as expected.



The view from down at the bottom.  It cost about 7 dollars to go on a boat ride in the lake.  We went on one and saw some amazing views.  My camera died before the ride, so I was able to take it all in and not worry about pictures!



My experience at the Heavenly Lake area was blissful.  Everywhere I looked, and everywhere I explored was just amazing.  We arrived at this mountainous region at around 12:00 PM, and were exploring all of the way until 10:30 at night (there is only one time zone in China, so the west stays bright out very late).  At around 10:00 PM, James and I snuck down the mountain that our Yurts were on and even took a dip in the Heavenly Lake.  It was so great.  I miss the place.  We were all alone out in nature with no one hours away from us except for people in the little Yurt Villages that were few and far between in the area.  While we were in the park, we took a boat ride on the lake, hiked up the steepest mountain of my life (and accordingly the scariest), saw the most stunning waterfalls of my life, swam in the freshest water I’ve ever seen or tasted, and slept amongst animals that left poop droppings all around the area that were the size of large softballs.  Oh, I almost forgot, we also got to see a night sky that was completely lit up and absolutely covered by stars.  I don’t know if I will be at a more amazing place than this for a long time, but I sure hope that I will be!



Standing directly outside our Yurt.  It's about 9:30 at night in this picture.  James and I just came back from a huge hike and are about to go down to the Heavenly Lake for a swim.



Yurt living at it's finest!



We saw thousands of Windmills on the way to the Desert!



The next morning we got up around 7:00 and left at 8:00.  When you are in such a beautiful area like this--waking up to snow capped mountains and turquoise blue water--it is hard to start the day off without a huge smile on your face.  I walked out of the Yurt, looked to my left, and quickly remembered were I was at and how blessed I was/am to be in such a place.  Alright, so we left the Heavenly Lake area and headed out to the desert.  I am not going to talk about this that much at all.  It was no doubt an amazing experience, but what all can be said about the desert?  I will post some pictures of our two days in the desert, and try and explain some of the two days by putting captions under the pictures.  We had such an unbelievable time in the desert. 



About 7,000 people used to live in this ancient city that was carved through the desert rock.



On the following day, we rode through another ancient city, while being pulled by a donkey.  The town that set up this tourist attraction was extremely poor.  I felt a bit sad during the ride.



We got to ride Camels through the desert one day!  This poor Camel had a limp hump.  Notice how I was holding it up in the picture ha.  The Camel ride was quite the experience.  It took me up a huge hill to get to the spot in the picture.  It farted and pooped the entire way haha



We drove about an hour from the Camel riding out to another part of the desert.  The hike to where that guy is standing at the top of that hill was absolutely brutal.  The sand was over 150 degrees, very soft, and I had Crocs on.  The hot sand got trapped in my Crocs every step of the way and I had to empty them out nearly every step. 



This is the view looking inward at the Desert.  The tour guide told us that the Gobi Desert is the second largest in the world.  It sure was hot!  to the left of me, which is out of the picture, is the dune that we hiked up. 



It’s now back to school for me and the rest of the Clemson group.  We all had the time of our lives on the trip, and are still having the times of our lives now, except studying in between.  While on the trip out west, I became aware of what an opportunity it has been for us to be in the area that we were at.  If I did not have three fluent Mandarin speakers on the trip with me, none of that 5 day trip would have happened.  Without that crucial link in the group, a lot of things would not have been possible on this trip.  I did not see one American, or even anyone outside of Asian descent while on the trip except for my group.  What an opportunity.   

An Eventful Weekend in the Beautiful City of Dalian

It seems like it has been quite some time since the last blog.  Nearly four days have passed by.  A ton of great experiences have occurred between Friday and twilight on Monday night.  I have decided to do this entry a little bit different than the rest.  Because of all that has gone on in the last few days, I have decided to just post some pictures of some of the beautiful beaches that I have seen over the last couple of days.  Before I do that, I will give an extremely short summary of what has been going on.

                Last Friday was a big day for the Clemson crew.  We all headed out to the beach for our first real beach experience.  The idea to go to the beach, in the location that we did, was brought about by one of the Clemson teachers that teach the students Chinese.  I am not in this class, but I wish I was.  Anyway, we all headed out to the beach, with the professor, and had a great time.  After exploring and looking at the large rocks that are on the beach, we all sat down at this little beach-side bar.  In the time that we were at this little bar, he ordered us about 50 Lamb kabobs, 15 Pint size beers, boiled peanuts, trays and trays of squid, and some soybeans.  We all had a blast! This professor is determined to show us all a great time in Dalian.  He wants to take us all out for Korean Barbeque soon.



A sand that is very rocky is a sand with a lot of great skipping stones!



We found a bunch of "sea-glass" at the beach.  A beautiful "Shell" to match the nice, blue skies.

 

             Friday night was a night dedicated to the social scene.  Almost all fifteen of us students went out to the bars together, and split up as the night went on.  The first bar that we went to was this bar on the beach (much different than the one we went to with the professor).  This one is an actual bar where the main purpose of it is for people to drink.  There are options to get meat on a stick at this bar, but food is not the main purpose of it.  This bar is what helped us figure out what the plans for the rest of the night would be.

                While at the first bar, we met up with these girls from France, Scotland, and the UK, and decided that we would hang out with them for the rest of the night, since they have been students at Dalian University of Technology for about 8 months now.  We figured that they now what there is to do at night in the city, so we took a cab and went to the next place.  While arriving at this new bar/club, we met up with a bunch of other people from all over the world; Anywhere from Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, to Russia and Germany.  After being here for a while, the entire group went to this intense dance club.  I’ll end the night there.  We all got a cab back to the hotel at about 6:30 in the morning haha.  I don’t normally go out like this, but it is all part of experiencing a new culture and a very diverse group of people.  There is something so attractive about being able to hang out with people from every part of the world, and dance with all of them while listening to American music.  Haha, gotta love America.

                This might seem contrasting from the last couple of paragraphs, but on Sunday a couple of us went to Dalian International Christian Fellowship.  I’m pretty sure that is what it is called.  As the name implies, this Church is for internationals, and not for the Chinese.  If I had any choice the Chinese would be allowed to come to, but they are only able to worship as a group in the government approved Churches.  I’m not too sure how it all works, but I guess this Church is approved.  Who knows.

                Anyways, this Church is on the 30^th floor of some building!  When we arrived on the 30^th floor (the elevator only went to the 29^th), we walked into a room full of love.  We were met and greeted by people from all over the world.  The ones that were not able to greet us, were in groups of about 5-10 people praying and speaking in tongues.  We arrived a little early, so we must have caught the last half of some type of worship. 

                Once the service started, we worshiped for about 35 minutes and then listened to the pastor preach.  The service was on Ephesians chapter two.  She talked about how even though many races were represented in that room, we are all one in Chirst.  She emphasized how we are all brothers and sisters and all have one spirit.  It was a very great sermon for the occasion.  There were probably over fifty countries represented at this Church. 

                After Church ended, we all ate with the entire Church.  Before we ate, the pastor asked if there was anyone new in Church today, so I stood up and got a big applause from about 125 people.  So, after the service we ate at this table with some of the leaders in the Church.  After every service, a meal is prepared by one of the members of the Church.  We ate Taiwanese food, next week they will eat African food, and the next week some other type of food from a different country.  We all had such a wonderful time!



The first great beach-like area that we went to today (monday).



                This blog ended up being a lot longer than I expected!  My fingers just wouldn’t stop typing ha.  Today we went on a tour with some Chinese students and saw some beautiful places in Dalian.  I will post some of the pictures to give you an idea of how beautiful this place is.



The view from this bridge was pretty amazing.  The bus dropped all of us Clemson students and our Chinese partners off at the beggining of the bridge and picked us up on the other side.

This is the view from the bridge.  The picture doesn't do the scenery any justice, but this gives a general idea of how pretty the Dalian coastline is.  The drive is very similar to the drive on The Pacific Coast Highway out in California.





This is the final beach area that we went to today.  There were a decent amount of people on this beach.  To the right of this shot, there was a group of 10 chinese guys in speedos playing volleyball haha.  There are many islands in the oceans here like the one's in the picture.  There are also a lot of these little boats at the beaches.



A Successful First Week in Dalian

I could not ask for a more beautiful, Friday morning in Dalian.  The blue skies are out, I aced my first exam, and I have a great weekend ahead of me.  

Nothing better than a blue sky day in China!  Dalian has more than other places in China, but not near as many as South Carolina!

Before I get into the plans for the weekend, I want to talk a little about our experience yesterday teaching at the local high school.  The high school that we taught at has over 3,000 kids in attendance, and is called The Senior Middle School Attached to Dalian University of Technology.  What an experience.  We arrived at the school at around 3 o’clock and went and sat down in a classroom to wait for the kids to finish up doing whatever it was that they were doing.  We then proceeded to go outside and take pictures with the president of the school and some of the highly regarded students at the senior middle school.  After about ten pictures, Caitlin and I (my partner) got paired up with three students from the school who would be leading us to their class to teach.  I thought to myself, “If the class is going to be anything like these three students, we are in for a great time!”  

We arrived at the fourth floor of one of the buildings, took a right down the hallway, and then walked into a completely full classroom of fifty students!  All of the students applauded when we walked in the room.  We would be the teacher for the day.

At first, Caitlin and I were pretty nervous about talking in front of this many students, but the wimpy attitudes soon wore off after we began to talk.  For the first twenty or so minutes, we talked about what schooling is like in America.  We explained the basics of the school system, and then went deeper into what our high school experience consisted of.   We explained the length we went to school, how much we studied, what we did outside of school, and what we did on the weekends.  All pretty basic concepts, but WAY different from how these kids experience school.

The kids at this school, and most schools in China, have much competition in high school.  There is no time for anything other than studying.  From 7:00 in the morning to 7:00 at night, these kids are in school, studying and memorizing countless ideas.  When it is time to go home, there is also studying to be done.  So, any type of sport played, at least for this school, is probably done during the school day.  I’m not too sure how much free time they get during their 12 hour stay at school, but we did see many people outside playing basketball, volleyball, and soccer in this big concrete playground.  This is most likely when an organized sport is practiced.

During the class that consisted of about 50 minutes of talking, we tried our hardest to ask the students about what high school is like in China, and about what they wanted to know about life in America.  Our class was too cool for school.  Most people, I could tell, did not want to be in school any longer.  A class period with Americans coming to talk meant a class period to sit, relax, and do nothing.  Thankfully, the three students that brought us up to the classroom had many questions and were really interested in America.  I don’t know what we would have done without these three students.  Thankfully, I brought a PowerPoint slide of pictures to show them towards the end of the class when we started to run out of things to talk about.  From what I hear from my fellow study abroaders, we had a dud class.  Maybe it was our teaching style.  Maybe our class wasn’t as advanced in English.  Who knows…

After class, we headed outside to play some basketball! I’m not sure how this happened, but we ended up playing the girls high school team.  It was so much fun!  None of us were prepared, and none of us play basketball, so it wasn’t too bad of a match up. However, we definitely gave them a lot of practice.  My height against their height was a huge benefit ha.  I packed about 10 balls during the 30 minute game haha.  We all had a ton of fun and took lots of pictures with a bunch of random students afterwards.  They must think I’m the next Yao Ming!  

The entire high school experience was priceless.  A majority of the kids enjoyed having us there and genuinely appreciated us coming.  I can talk more about some of what I took away from this and what I learned about the Chinese school system, but I’ll save that for someone who is interested.  I know some people might not be as book-smart in the United States as these kids, but I have a lot more appreciation now for how we are taught in America.  The ability to pursue extracurricular activities and have free time to think on your own is invaluable. 

The test at the beginning of the day today was part verbal test, part written test.  The verbal part of the test was a bit stressful, as I have never had to take a verbal test.  We all had to be extremely prepared for this part of the test.  It would be terrible to be asked a question by the professor and not have a clue as to how to answer it.  We all did great.  The written test was a breeze.  I am much more a visual person than verbal, so seeing the words on the page and having time to think about the question was simple compared to hearing a question and having to answer it instantly.   

We will be heading out to the beach in a couple of minutes, so I need to end this blog here.  How nice it is to be on the weekend in a foreign country like China!  So much to explore!

Oh, School...

It’s Wednesday night in the beautiful city of Dalian, and Elbert is snoring away the night like usual.  It’s amazing how my perceptions about school change once the classes finally start.  So, on my last blog, I was really excited about classes starting.  When I look back on it, I don’t think that it was so much because of the fact that classes were starting as it was that I would be a part of a Chinese University.  I am still extremely excited to be enrolled here and able to be amongst all of these scholarly DUT students, but class, not so much excited.

Not the best looking pic, but this is the view from our hotel.  The campus is most of that area to the front, and also a lot more that cannot be seen.  Notice the mountains in the background.  Dalian has mountains like this surrounding the city.

Let me first off say that I enjoy my two classes, a lot.  For my first class, which goes from 9:00 to 11:40 each day, I have met three Chinese students that are majoring in Human Resource Management.  (We all went out to lunch together today at this delicious restaurant!)  HRM is the title of the class that we are all in, and the professor that is teaching the class is an extremely accomplished individual.  He is one of the better teachers that I have had in a long time, yet because he is such a great teacher, he expects a lot out of the students. 

It’s very interesting being in a class with only 5 students, one of which is me.  In a class that is somewhat discussion based, and with only two people that speak fluent English, being on top of our game in terms of what we are talking about in class is a must.  There is no hiding in the back of the room behind the students that spend all day studying.  It is just us two, directly in front of the teacher, with nothing holding him back from asking us questions about the material to get a feeling for how prepared we are for class.  Basically, we both have to put in a lot of time to get prepared for these classes.  It’s about 3 hours of work each day for this one class.  Bummer…

The next class that I am taking is a class about Chinese culture.  I enjoy this class greatly.  We meet up on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and go for about 3 hours.  For this week’s class, one of the activities that we have to do is go speak to a high school class and share some things about what life is like in America, and especially what it was like in high school for us.  We all have formed teams of two and will separate out to the different classrooms when we arrive tomorrow.  We are supposed to speak to them for an hour, so I’m hoping for a class with many questions!  It should be a lot of fun.  School in China is much different from school in the U.S., so I believe that when I explain what high school was like for me, the students will be very intrigued and dying to ask more questions.  I am very thankful for our school system and the amount of freedom that we receive.  The school system in America does I pretty good job of helping students develop creativity.

We all got partnered with a student from DUT today.  This is me with my friend, Grace (American name).  We went to two museums.  This one had a lot of paintings and old artifacts, while the second one had things of nature.  It was a very interesting experience. Her extracurricular activity is dancing, but mostly studying.

I’m pretty exhausted and need to sleep before my long day tomorrow, so I’ll post a few pictures of some things that we have done. On a quick side note, the price and quality of food here still amazes me.  I have to completely stuff myself to eat a meal over US 1.50.  I also must admit that I have grown extremely fond of rice.  Rice has become my bread.  I have big scoops of rice to go with 2/3rds of my meals.  I’m diggin’ it!  

The group that I am here with all went up to this restaurant on the 20-something floor of a hotel.  It was a buffet style restaurant with all kinds of different variety's of food, including seafood!  Also, unlimited beer.  To top it all off, the room spins so that you get a great view of all of Dalian.  The City is beautiful.

 

More of the city.  This view is from outside of the Natural Museum that we went to.  It was a bit smoggy today, but it was still quite pretty in person.  Right on the ocean