Good Morning, Shanghai!

Good morning, Shanghai! After a night’s rest, the first day of classes began! We are lucky enough to have a shuttle that takes us to and from the hotel and the East China Normal University (ECNU), or else the walk would have been at least half an hour from the hotel… .and in this +40 weather, I would have died very easily.

The weather is just hot – too hot for words. All you have to do is to go from indoors to outdoors and you’re absolutely done. It’s like a heat wave smacking down on you, multiple times.

I got to meet some of my classmates, a few Chinese who resides in Italy and Germany, and the others are from Korea, Russia, Ukraine as well as Spain. There is another Canadian that is coming soon as well as a few Japanese who will be joining us at a later date this week. I am overly impressed with how many foreigners who are so interested in Chinese and are willing to spread the language and culture to the people in their countries. I hope that this next four weeks will be a unique experience for me as I learn more about my own culture and language in depth with people from all over the world!

During the opening ceremony, I was the first to speak up, of course being nervous and not sure what to say, the big G provided and I managed to go through the “speech”. After I went, a couple of the teachers from my group went… the difference between us… I forgot to thank the school for giving me the opportunity to study here… oopsies. But, no big deal, I got my point through and hey, my Chinese skills ain’t that bad after all!

We got distributed student cards and I discovered the BEST thing ever – the access to Wi-Fi! It’s tough with Facebook and Twitter being blocked in China, but it’s nice to be able to talk to the people that I love. Hopefully once I start bringing my laptop to campus, I will be able to update my blog more often!

For lunch today, we went to the cafeteria nearby, reloaded our meal cards and spent time walking around campus… biggest mistake ever. After lunch, we ran back to our classroom (which is about 15-20 min away from the cafeteria) and rested in the classroom with AC. I am thankful for random AC here and there, if it wasn’t for AC, I would have died a long time ago. Yay for AC!

In the afternoon, we learned how to do Chinese knots…. Still not the best at it, picture to follow, but it’s part of Chinese art and I hope I can master it one day. For those who know me REALLY well, I am not good with crafts… I started crocheting during spring break and gave up after 5 minutes…. I persisted today and made the eye and wings for a dragonfly!

Day 1 of the training finished today, I wonder what is in store for tomorrow!