Great Wall

Today I went to the great wall again, with Carola and some Teachers and 2 kids :)) The weather wasn't that great but i loooove the great wall! It's awesome. We went to the very famous place jinshanling changcheng, so there were many other foreigners. At least 60% of them German :D And today was the 'China Aids Walk' supported by some Condom Companies haha, that was SO weird! Many people joined them, also many foreigners, but it wasn't that crowded though :)) 

Here are some (MANY) pictures!

A Day In School

Normal School Day (Thursday)

This is how my school life looks like J I picked Thursday as example.

I am in senior 1 – gao yi, most of the students are 16 too. We are in Class No. 5, but we only have like 1 or 2 lessons per day (+morning the lesson) with our classmates.

Arts, Music and Ballet Class are with the juniors. They are 13/14…

The Chinese lessons we have in our small classroom.

Sometimes we also just stay there instead of having class with class No. 5 because it’s extremely boring and in the small classroom we can use our phone :D Or we stay on the sportsground in the sun and chat with the students who have PE class :) Or we just stay at home and come to school for our Chinese lessons.

We only have one Chinese teacher that comes every time, the others tend to forget us or to have ‘important meetings’ sometimes. The Junior students change their schedule like every week so we also have these lessons very irregularly which sucks a little. School is very boring anyways, but I’m very grateful for the Chinese lessons, I’d actually like to have more, 8 isn’t really much…

Carola and I have school 5 days a week from 07:00 to 18:00. The first lesson is morning class-> learn by yourself. From 07:50 to 18:00 all students then follow their schedule.

The Chinese students have school 6 ½ days a week and they have evening classes. Which means after dinner, at 19:00 they have school again until 20:30.

In School Carola and I are allowed to have our cell phone but only in the small classroom. We are not allowed to use it in the big classroom or listen to music there. The Chinese students are not allowed a cell phone at all!

In school we must wear our school uniform, if we wear the school’s jacket we are allowed to wear our own shirts, but only with a little cleavage! And also we’re not allowed to wear earrings or to paint our nails.

3rd Week of School (11.9-14.9)

Birthday Grandma

Sunday Septeber 8th

Today was my host mothers mothers (lao lao) birthday. She got 74.

We left home at 10:30 AM and drove to the city to buy a cake (Chinese always get a cake for birthdays). In China you just go to the bakery choose a type of cake and they will make for you. Awesome: DD We waited about 20 minutes. I filmed the women while making the cake :)

Then we went to a restaurant where we met my host mothers brother, his wife, the grandmother and her husband, my father and my sister (she came directly after school).

There was a lot of food haha :D On birthdays you always eat noodles (instead of rice) after the dishes, because noodles are long with means long life. The grandma got the special birthday noodles, which are extra wide.

Military Training

On Wednesday September 11^th the military training started. We had to be in school at 8:30. It started with School meeting where all the rules and stuff was explained, but basically it was just one hour of boredom. Then every class was assigned to a soldier. At 9:30 we started the standing: straight back, hands attached to your legs, no moving… marching with arms in 40 degrees angle to your legs and fists. Carola and I didn’t understand anything and just copied our classmates’ gestures haha.

We ‘trained’ for three hours. September 11^th is our classmates LiuXionas Birthday. She invited us to eat with her and 10 other friends. She ordered 5 dishes and rice for everyone, some friends got beverages and cake. The cake was like the grandmas cake freshly made and full of cream.

We had training until Sunday. It started everyday at 7:50 (the soldiers usually arrived at 8) lunch break was from 11:30 to 14:30 and ended approximately at 5. But Carola and I always left at 4 to attend sports class until 18:20.

In the morning and after lunch we had to stand still for 20 minutes, but our soldier preferred us standing for 30 to 40 minutes. Awful! If you feel sick you can ask to sit down, you don’t have to maintain standing, but actually nearly nobody does that.

After the standing we trained mostly marching or running. Which is extremely difficult with 57 people because it should be synchronous.  You actually don’t do much in the training, but it is exhausting anyways because you have to stand the whole day on the sports ground in the burning sun. There were 2 or 3 10minutes breaks in the morning and in the afternoon, and sometimes the soldier allowed us to sit for 2 or 3 minutes.

Except the long standing our soldier wasn’t really strict, he laughed a lot - mostly at us because our performance looked rather awkward.

Haha, our class was a little incapable so we learned everything like one day later than the others, and on Sunday we still couldn’t really run or march synchronous.

On Monday there was an ending ceremony, but only the well performing students took part in it, which is why Carola, I and 6 other people from my class were sorted out hahah!! This performance was graded, each class was surveyed by the head teacher who then determined the ranking. My Class somehow managed to become 8^th (out of 20)…

My sister also didn’t perform well enough, but she had to go and watch the others though. I didn’t go, rather slept…  

I am extremely glad this is over now!! It makes absolutely no sense to me, why would you do that to the students? It’s terrible haha!! The teachers think this is good to show the students, who is chef and to ‘renew’ their discipline after the summer holidays. The students who have to participate are all new in school: Senior 1 and Junior 1, but some other Junior Schools don’t have a military training, that’s why it was the first time for some students and some were already used to it.

Arrival/Orientation and First Week of School (22.8-31.8)

Arrival and Orientation

August 22^nd

I got up at  8:30 and put toiletries into my suitcase. Then I ate my last European breakfast (I already miss bread a lot!). My father came from Germany to bring me to the airport. I was really happy he came J. We left home at 11:45, my mom, my dad, Markus, Naomy and me. I wasn’t nervous at all, just a little excited. At the airport we met the 2 others – Samuel and Pascal (actually we are 4, but one didn’t get his visa).

I didn’t cry when saying goodbye, I still think that it ‘s really strange that I was neither sad nor nervous. In Schipol (Amsterdam) we met 3 other people from Switzerland (French part) – actually they were in the same plane from Zurich too but we didn’t recognize each other haha ^^.  Two of them flew with Samuel and me to Beijing and one of them with Pascal to Shanghai. The flight to Beijing was long 9:15h, but we had our own entertainment system and I got my veggie food :D But still it was cramped and as usual – I don’t like flying. I’m never able to sleep on a plane, so I slept for only 3 hours. I was tired as hell the next 3 days in the camp.

August 23^rd

When we arrived in Beijing two volunteers came to pick us up. One of them was my local volunteer from Chengde J We drove to the hotel by bus with two girls from Sweden. It took us about 30 minutes to the hotel which was in the middle of nowhere (Beijing circle 6), that’s why we didn’t see anything of Beijing L

We were split up into Groups by region, I was in group No. 11.

We spent the first day waiting for it to pass and trying to stay awake, because there were students arriving throughout the day. I spent the whole day with Hedwige, the Swiss girl we met in Schipol. We talked to maaaaany many other exchange students that day and met new friends :))

Everyone was really nice and open-minded! There were 80 Thais, 60 Italians and 17 Germans and the rest were from several other countries. – a total of over 200 people.  

August 24^th

The second day we had orientation in the morning including a ‘Chinese lesson’ with Didi (Volunteer). In the afternoon we went to the Great wall ‘changcheng’. Our missing Swiss student arrived that morning so he could join us. We went by bus, it took us about 1.5 hours I think (I slept). We had to climb up the staircase and it was SO HOT that day. I died :D But I succeeded anyways and it was really awesome! The Wall is an amazing masterpiece! And you have a really great view. Poor workers / slaves 2000 years ago who had to bring every single stone up there. it’s so exhausting!

After the trip we ate in a Restaurant. Every group had it’s own Table J The food there was much better than the food in the hotel!

August 25^th

At the third day we had to say goodbye again. This time I was actually a little nervous and anxious about meeting my family. It was funny - all the girls suddenly wore long trousers (because of the families). A Bus from my School picked me and Carola up at 15:00. We drove 3 hours to Chengde where we met our families and went straight to a restaurant with them (Carolas family and mine). My sister was really excited to see me and my māma and bāba were very nice too! Especially the father is very warm-hearted.  

After dinner we went to the apartment of the family and I unpacked my suitcase. I’ve got a room for myself. It’s very small but nice J. The apartment is brand new, they moved in in July. I will publish a little blog post about it sometime J.

I gave the presents to the family this evening too. They didn’t show that much reaction but I think they liked it though.