Study study study

I don't have very much to write since my life is'nt very interesting at the moment. All I do is study, I just got home from a 3-hour study session at the Hope café, an international style café/restaurant at campus. The test is on Monday and after that we will celebrate doing fun stuff. I want to go to KTV, we have been talking about going for a while now and after the test seems to be a good time. KTV is a kareoke place you can find everywhere in China, Chinese people love kareoke. It's a good concept; you get your own room with TV, microphones and a huge selection of songs; both Chinese and western, then you can order in food and drinks. This is what I'm looking forward to while studying. 加油! 

Mid-terms coming up

I'm back again after even more internet trouble. My new and hopefully last solution is a VPN-tunnel. I can't explain how it works because I don't know but I pay 150 SEK for 3 months and then I can reach my blog and Facebook.

The room mate announcement might have been a false alarm. She told me that she would move in tomorrow, and now it's been 5 days since tomorrow. But you never know...

My workload is starting to get heavy. Zhang Laoshi told us that we have mid-terms next Monday. Or, to correct myself, she answered our question when we asked if we weren't supposed to have a test sometime soon. I just love the advance planning. We have no idea what the test looks like, we only know that it will take the whole day. Thus far we have completed two books with a total of 28 chapters and approximately 500 new characters. I have a lot of study to do.

Yesterday it suddenly got cold. Really cold. It's hard to describe it, but it's just a different type of cold than at home. The trees have beautiful colours though; red, orange, yellow.. But the cold is killing me, and mostly when I'm inside. My dorm is freezing. I have to sleep in a fleece and ski socks and I don't want to remove the comforter in the morning. If it's like this now, how bad will it be in one or two months?! I should probably ask if they can put on the central heating.

And so it happened at last

I was on my computer writing an email this afternoon when someone knocked on the door. It was a Colombian girl who asked if I was living alone. She is living on the 4th floor at the moment and she didn't like her Russian room mate because she's too quiet, so she wanted to change rooms. Then she stepped inside and saw that my stuff was all over her side of the room. I apologized and she didn't seem to care about it. I have been living in this room for 6 weeks without a room mate, and I have kept all my belongings on my side. When I got back from Shanghai I thought that if nobody had moved in yet, I would have the room for my own during the rest of the term. But apparently not.

All I know about the girl is that she is from Colombia, and she seems very nice and friendly. She is probably a good room mate, but it's just that I'm used to living on my own now! Somehow I also look forward to having a room mate, since that is what you are supposed to have. I hope that we work well together and will become friends! I'll keep you updated.

Voting for 班长

Today was an ordinary day in school. Until Zhao Laoshi told us that on the 27th of October we don't have class because we are going to Xiang Shan, the Fragrant Hills, north west of Beijing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiangshan_Park <--- Link to Wikipedia here

When travelling in a group in China one needs to have a well-organised structure and good leaders. Therefore, the main event of today's class was to choose who would be ban zhang, which literally means class chief. I was put in charge of the votation, and our Laoshi was very excited about this important election. I made everyone write two names on a piece of paper, one girl and one guy. Then I carefully counted the votes during complete silence. We were all about to burst out laughing, this felt so silly when the average age of the class is 22.

Eventually the results showed that Max from Canada and Rachel from America became the ban zhangs. This was hillarious since Rachel just before the votation asked Zhao Laoshi if it was compulsory attendance on the trip. It wasn't, but now she has to go. Anyway, that was the main event of my day. Something that would be very important before a class trip, if we were all in middle school.

Shanghai tour and Sean Kingston concert

My week in Shanghai was wery intense and fun, I wanted to do as much as possible in one week. I stayed at Captain Youth Hostel, the hostel with the best location in Shanghai. I had my breakfast on the 6th floor, on a terrace on the roof with a view over the Bund, where I could see the Oriental Pearl tower.


 I visited both Anna's and Sofia's dorms, I strolled around on Nanjing Lu, the busiest tourist street in Shanghai, visited the Expo and explored the nightlife of Shanghai. My last night in town we went to M1NT Nightclub, one of the most luxury clubs in Shanghai. It is located on the 25th floor with a view over the entire city, which is amazing night time. We spent our last money on the 200 yuan entrance ticket for Wednesday night when Sean Kingston played. It was a fun experience, but the best value for the money was not Sean Kingston, it was the classy club.

The Trio

I already miss Anna and Sofia but we have decided that the trio will get together soon again. I had a really good time in Shanghai with them. Shanghai is a busy city with even more people than Beijing. It is more modernised and more like a western mega city. Even though my friends study there I don't regret my choice. I really recommend a visit to Shanghai, but if you want to study in China, choose Beijing!

Shanghai Expo 2010

This year the world Expo is held in Shanghai. It is an opportunity for countries to show off and display their innovations. As we remember from the Beijing Olympics in 2008, when China is in charge of an event, they make it louder, greater and more memorable than anything before them.

My plane had barely left the ground in Beijing before the tv screens in the cabin showed a commercial about the Shanghai Expo. When I landed in Shanghai two hours later I was completely brainwashed with info about the Expo. Everywhere around the city there are booths where you can by tickets and ask anything about it. The Expo, that opened in April, ends in a couple of weeks and this was my last chance to visit the lavish event.

The exhibition (a word that is not enough to describe the extent) is built on a huge area, which made walking amajor part of the day. The booths were placed in geographical order. Some countries didn't even cross our minds to visit, since the lines were about 3 hours. China's booth is almost impossible to visit, of you don't have a VIP ticke or want to wait for 7 hours or more.

I went o the Expo with my friends Anna and Sofia, my friends that I are studying in Shanghai, and their friend Lukas, who is alo Swedish. We found out that if you brought your passport you got VIP access to all the nordic countries and didn't have to line up for them. We stayed at the Expo for 7 hours and saw many beautiful and cool presentations of different countries. In my opinion, the Swedish booth was a bit of a disappointment. The majority of all countries presented the positive things about their country and described it, whereas Sweden only focused on innovations and preventing climate change.

Some pictures from the day!


Lukas, Anna and Sofia



 


Three Swedish girls on a Swedish dalahäst

 



The Swedish Pavillion



The Chinese Pavillion

  

Long time no see!

I deeply apologize for not writing for so long. The problem is that blogspot.com is one of the sites beside Facebook that is blocked in China. I therefore have to find proxys to break through and my proxys haven't been working properly.

Anyway, I'm back. And I'm back from a week in Shanghai, a fantastic week with amazing friends and lots of fun! Check out the following posts.