Chinese food
Food, food, food. Chinese food. It’s different.
I’ll take the rice story first.
Yes, it’s true. Chinese people eat a lot of rice, at least in my family.
Since I’ve arrived here I’ve eaten rice 3 times a day, if not more. There are different kinds of rice: Normal rice, rice in water, rice in thicker water, rice in brown water, rice mixed vid vegetables, rice soup etc. I don’t know why the rice is in brown water sometimes and I don’t think I want to know actually…Anyway I didn’t like the wet rice in the beginning but now I like to have it at least once a day, for dinner I like normal rice better.
Chicken feet, it's just so so (马马虎虎 - chinese expression haha)
Morning rutin
Every morning, all Chinese schools have their morning exercises.
It’s different from school to school, but everyone has it and similar to each other:
Our school are divided by which class you in and you have to run in together in a nice looking way, otherwise you have to do it all over again – once a class had to do it three times.
Then the teacher will tell you some things to do, like take a rest – STAND STRAIGHT. Look forward. And after the teacher is satisfied we will do two dances. One student is on the stage doing the dances and all the other student stands in front, no need to look at the student on the stage since they had a special training day before school start to learn the dances – me on the other hand, stand there and trying to go with the flow.
Miltary Camp
DAILY RUTIN
5.30 - Get up and put on the military clothes that really smelled bad and where 5 sizes too big.
6.00 - The teacher blew the wistle and we all had to run down and stand in our lines, 2 for the girls and 2 for the boys. Now we had some morning training, maybe running or just the military training which was to walk from one place to another over and over again, left right left - left right left.
7.15 - Breakfast. And then clean the room if very clean, otherwise you would be punished.
8.00 - Once again someone blows the whistle and now the exercise before lunch lasted for 3 & a half hour.
11.30 - Lunch. And a break to sleep on and the military teachers would come to our room to see how tidy our room was.
2.30 PM - Afternoon exercise.
6.00 PM: Dinner
6.45 PM - Night lessons. Now you sit for the following hour on a small chair without a support for the back and still have to sit straight. If it's hard for the chinese student, imagine me who sits there almost falling asleep since I can't understand what the teachers we're saying.
8.OO PM - Take a shower, get ready for bed, practice a performance for the last day.
9.30 - The teachers blow a whistle and if they see a light in one room, they will turn the power off.
That's what my days looked like for the six days I spent at the military camp. The training was really boring and you got really tired - not because it was exhausting physicaly, it was just so boring that it felt like you were dying. We practice the same walking over and over again, all these hours every day. We turned right , turned left, walked a few metres. Stopped. Screamed out number. Went down on our knees. Stand up. Turn right. Over and over again. A lot of people passed out by the heat, at least one person a day. It was kind of terrible but they were soon back on their feet again - Chinese people are really good to get back on their feet quickly, in their education system they have no time to be sick if they don't wanna get stuck with a lot of homework.
The meals we're terrible. The food and the way of eating, both were just not good. You had to wait for the teacher who told everyone what to do, you weren't even aloud to fix your chair if he didn't told you too. We were over six hundred student in one room who had to sit at the exact same time and keep quite if we wanted to eat. On the last day we had to stand and sit 15 times before we were alowed to speak - the military teachers were so extremly strict.
On the last day we had a party and everyone performed - it was such a great finishing of a fantastic week! And yes, from what I've told you this week must seem terrible - but no. It was one of the most weirdest things I've ever experiences and I had so much fun. I got to know so many people and got really close to my classmates which I am so thankful for, they are such great friends and we had tons of fun at the camp!
AND, the military teachers we're so handsome!
Chinanna is back on track!
Today and tomorrow we will have something called "Sports meeting" in our school and today the opening cermony took place. Me, Oming and two chinese students together sang "Rolling In The Deep" and it's one of the most fun things I have done! When we came to the first chorus a crowd of people ran towards us and gave me flowers, glitter strings and one class gave me a pair of angel wings haha! One boy took one of the flowers from my hand and threw them away to give me a new bouquet , it was crazy! I really get a lot attention here since I'm the only one in the school looking different.
The opening cermony had other performances and everyone did a great job, people were dancing and every class in grade one (高一) and grade 2 (高二) had made their own special performance - it was great to watch!
Grade one, class ten - my class!
Me looking like a christmas tree after the performance, and here they had taken away half of my stuff haha!
Byebye!
But know I won't be able to write anything for 1 week or more since tomorrow I will go to a military camp with my school ! I'm super nervous since I think it's going to be really hard but very excited to see this camp that every chinese students in grade one have to take part in !
See you next week!
At school (again haha)
Still I don't have internet at home, only in school or at starbucks, so right now I can't upload any pictures...
Everything is great here, the school is taking really good care of me and today I need to go and fix my visa, my teacher is going to drive me there! They are so friendly here and I feel really welcome.
Today my exchange student friend Omid has his birthday, so were going to celebrate it in some way! As it look now I'm going away on a military camp with the school between the 16 - 22/23 September, I really hope it's the 22nd since the 23rd is my birthday!
再见！
My city
I live in Changzhou which is located in the southern part of the province Jiangsu. It's a small city with almost 5 million inhabitants. It's rather near to Nanjing and Shanghai which are to big cities in China.
My apartment is really high up and you can look out over a big part of the city even if the building is not located very near to the city center. The city center is big! There are a lot of KFC's and McDonald and also there are clothing shops like H&M and Chinese brands.
Then you can also shop clothes in the underground center called "FashionLady" - here there are stores you can bargain and buy cheaper thing, some bad quality and others good. The real expensive shops like Prada and Gucci are in an shopping center on top of the underground center.
I haven’t been around the whole city yet, but I really like it here. It’s big enough for me and there are a lot of fun things to do!
Cheap China
The greatest part of being here is how cheap everything is! 1 yuan = 1,2 sek.
If you wanna take a bus, it costs 1 yuan. A taxi for 10 minutes, 10 yuan.
0,5 litres of coke is 2,80 yuan. Ice tea is 2,50 yuan.
In Sweden I wouldn’t care about 1 sek. Here it can give you a ride home.
Since it’s so cheap, it’s really much fun being here! You can do all kinds of stuff with different people like going to the cinema, ice-skating or grab something to eat. And it doesn’t cost a thing.
In Sweden that would have cost almost 100 yuan.
I buy water every day, since you can’t drink the tap water here and at home I only get hot water…one bottle of water costs 1,5 yuan.
You can buy facemasks here , 5 for 10 yuan.
I haven’t gone to cut my hair yet or taking a massage but cutting your hair doesn’t cost more than 50 yuan and a massage is under 100 yuan.
So to say the lifestyle here is really easy and fun!
Cheap China
The greatest part of being here is how cheap everything is! 1 yuan = 1,2 sek.
If you wanna take a bus, it costs 1 yuan. A taxi for 10 minutes, 10 yuan.
0,5 litres of coke is 2,80 yuan. Ice tea is 2,50 yuan.
In Sweden I wouldn’t care about 1 sek. Here it can give you a ride home.
Since it’s so cheap, it’s really much fun being here! You can do all kinds of stuff with different people like going to the cinema, ice-skating or grab something to eat. And it doesn’t cost a thing.
In Sweden that would have cost almost 100 yuan.
I buy water every day, since you can’t drink the tap water here and at home I only get hot water…one bottle of water costs 1,5 yuan.
You can buy facemasks here , 5 for 10 yuan.
I haven’t gone to cut my hair yet or taking a massage but cutting your hair doesn’t cost more than 50 yuan.
So to say the lifestyle here is really easy and fun!
在学校
Valentines day
Last week was “the seventh evening of the seventh moon” here in China and every
year on that day you celebrate “Qi Xi”. On this day, a story says that two
lovers who are separated from each other by the milky way are able to meet each
other – only this time once a year. That’s why this is like Chinese Valentines
Day!
My sister and I
星巴克
Hi, waiting for Cordelia at Starbucks right now, we are going to go shopping !
I need to buy some appropriate clothes for school , what I'm wearing right now is not allowed, even though it's like 26 degrees celsius here, it's so hot!
星巴克
Videoblog
And about that thing to drink in the video, I have know idea what it was but it was okey.
Host mothers birthday!
This week, my host mother had her birthday. We celebrated it with a lot of delicious food and cake. A cake which we ate at the same time as we ate the fish that was served for dinner, that’s how you do it in China. After we finished dinner I was so full and then they bring out more food, now we ate hot pot. It’s really good but very spicy! And now I ate duck blood and it was actually really tasty.
Cake - that red thing on the top is tomatoes!
FOOD
More food...
Duck blood !
学校
Sitting at Huang 老师 Office and waiting for Omid to come so we can meet the principal and then I'm going to meet my class! I'm really nervous and excited , most excited for that we have Internet at school!!!!!!!!!!!
