LAST WEEK IN WUHAN (II)

Thursday 9th April

Woohoo! 3 more days and I’ll be home! It has really been a long time, yet it seems so fast! From today onwards, there will not be any class for us. So, I’m trying my very best to enjoy my last few days in Wuhan. Also, make use of our free time to sort all the things out! Yes, time to pack our bags!

Friday 10th April

Yay! There was a closing ceremony this morning, at Gui Yuan Restaurant. We had lunch with Dr Zhu, some local teachers and students and the principal. We were divided into 3 big tables again, for the last time that we’re eating together. And there was Certificate Giving Session, Dr. Zhu called our individual names and we collect the cert from the principal. Lunch was really pleasant, we chatted with RenPing, the local student about many topics, like the common fruits in Singapore, the ideal guy for Singaporean girls, and we made comparison between the Chinese and Singaporean situations. There were unexpected differences. Interesting conversations indeed.

Saturday 11th April

Are you just as amazed as I am right now? Our 6-week immersion program is coming to a full stop in just a day’s, or rather, a few hour’s time. I could still clearly remember how home sick I was on my first 2 weeks here. And now, it’s the 6th week, I’m finally slowly getting used to the life here, and ta-daa, it’s now waving goodbye to me.
I have really learnt many things here, much more than I have expected. Before I came, I merely thought of coming to study maths, visiting places I have not been to before, totally holiday mood. But oh-so-wrong, I have learnt things like ways to adapt myself to changes, settling problems without my parents helping me, dealing with my own financial issues, laundry, getting along well with my friends who are also facing the same situation as I do, and so much more that it’ll take a long time to list down all. I somehow have a feeling that I am becoming a complete grown-up now. I am not as afraid of staying away from my beloved parents as before. Yes, I ‘m sure this is an improvement for me. I have been worrying if my trip to wuhan will be a waste of money and time. Just by looking at the awesome 22 friends that I have made during the trip, it’s so true that this trip is not worthless but priceless. Yes, Dr. Zhu has done his job as a good teacher at the same time a guardian; he has taken really good care of us.
There had been bad times too, for example, failed to take care of my belongs and caused damages, failed to take care of my health and had caused sickness, failed to plan my finance and cause overspending of money and failed to be a good friend and caused conflicts, etc. From all these failures, I am making myself to change for the better; therefore, bad times are valuable experiences as well.
I am leaving for Singapore tomorrow, returning home. I am sure that I’ll miss this place that I have spent 6-weeks in, and I know that I’m going to remember this for all my life – THE FIRST TIME THAT I STAY AWAY FROM HOME FOR MORE THAN A MONTH WHEN I WAS 18. Good title.
Alright, mum and dad, see you tomorrow!

LAST WEEK IN WUHAN (I)

Monday 6thApril

From day 1 of Wuhan trip, we girls have been looking forward to go to the new building for lessons, ‘cos it’s merely 2-minute walk from the girls’ dorm. And it’s the last week of the trip, we finally had this chance! It’s indeed very new, desks and chairs were all seemed untouched. The chalkboard was also super high-tech. Dr Zhu doesn’t have to clean the blackboard and sniff in all the chalk powders anymore, he could simply press a button and all the writings on the board will slowly disappear by itself. Amazing huh!

New classroom!

The magical chalkboard ;D

Tuesday 7thApril
Lesson moved back to the old class building ‘cos the guys were complaining, they walked for nearly half an hour to the new building and have to climb to the 5th floor, it’s torturing I know.
Steamboat for dinner! We had 2 types of soup, spicy and ginseng soup. The spicy soup was oh-so-hot! Not much difference from the steamboat in Singapore, especially the one I always use to go with my family, the food was really similar, yup, I missed them again. After dinner, my whole tongue went numb, but still as SHIOK as ever ;D.

Wednesday 8thApril
This morning was Paper-cutting lesson! We learnt to cut the very basic word of paper cutting, XIà happiness! The teacher thought us step by step and everyone’s turned to be different sizes, but all had made it! Yeheh! I can cut XI for your wedding now! And after cutting XI, the teacher wanted us to cut based on our creativity. So there we go! Cutting all the nonsense! But it’s really fun, folding the paper into four parts or even 8 parts, cut according to our creativity, when it time to open up the paper, to check out achievements, the feeling was really exciting, having not sure how will it turn out to be, will we obtain the pattern that we wanted? It’s indeed a fun activity ;D

My 'shuang xi' double happiness!

Sat & Sun -> LuShan Trip

(Some pictures taken from Aqilah 's blog ;D)
Yupps, exactly like that time we went to the 3-day 3 Gorges trip, we woke up super early, gathered at the bus stand with our big big bags, getting ready to our 2-day LuShan trip!
The time was actually quite packed, we have quite a few of the scenery spot to visit in this 2 days. That was the reason that our tour guide had been rushing us almost all the time.
Our first scenery visit was to the BaiLuDong Instituition. It was a school a few hundred years back. We visited the classrooms and the garden, which reminded me of some Chinese Ancient Dramas (gu zhuang xi).

The name of the school is BaiLuDong, which means Cave of White Deer in chinese. There was a statue of a deer in the school, and they even have a cage with real deers in it. But 3RMB has to be charged in order to look at the deers, & i chose to save the money and take picture with the fake deer.

And outside the Insituition, there was a Zhuang Yuan Qiao (Bridge of Scholar). People believe that whoever crosses this bridge, he'll have awesome scores for all of his upcoming examinations. ;D As Kiasu students, how could we miss the chance?

Okay, after this, we headed to HOT SPRING!!!

It was a very big place for hot spring, with many different pools, milk pool, ginseng pool, fragrance pool, alot more. And the service there was really good, we could simply ask the waiters for drink and they will send it right to us in the pool. When we were not wearing our slippers they will chase after us with the slippers to let us put them on.

The only thing that we girls were not used to was that the female bathroom was combined, everybody showers at 1 very big bathroom. I was initially shocked to see so many undressed ladies walking around. But we just couldn't bare to show our bodies just like that, so we showered with our swimming suits on. ;D

No pictures of hot spring 'cos camera was locked up in the locker.

Alright, dinner after hotspring was rather fine, restaurant food as usual.

After dinner, we head to the hotel. We were told that it was merely a 2-star rated hotel, i was initially worried about the cleaniness, but it was totally fine! Everything basically looked purely white, the bedsheets, bathroom. And the room was pretty big. The arranngement was 2 persons in a room, but we 3 girls always are the special case, and we thought that we might have to combine 2 beds again just like that time in cruise. But nope, we were given a bigger room, with just nice 3 cozy beds ;D!

Ta-da, 3 beds! No need to squeeze!

Me, watching their local tv programs.

window view!

End - Of -Saturday
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Sunday

I really slept too well the previous night. It'd been 1 month that i dont have to climb all the way up just to sleep. But still, i couldnt sleep as much as i wanted, we 've got to wake up really early cos today is the only day for us to visit Lu mountain. But first, we are going to Xun Yang Lou, it's looks a bit like Huang He Lou to me lei! A tower with statues of some local historical heroes.

We reached at the base of Lu mountain in the afternoon.

Not forgetting to take a group photo!

Name keychain--thousands of chinese particles. I've bought 1 for my cousin!

We took a cable car to get to the top.

Me and lihong were in 1 cable car!

Statue of Libai! Who had written several poems about Lushan.

Gigantic waterfall ;3

Top of the mountain, this is the source of the waterfall.

Yay! At the peak finally!

We took the cable car back down, and spent another 6 hours to return to Wuhan city.

-End-Of-Lushan Trip-

Fri

Friday 3rd April

This morning was Chinese Economic lesson which started at 8.15am. We actually woke up on time but just as I was about to wash myself up, I received a call from Amanda, asking me if we’re going for the class, I suddenly felt a desire to go back to sleep because I was really too sleepy. So I told Amanda that we’ll not be going for the Chinese class. I went back to sleep right after that and slept till 8.45. I kind of felt a little bit guilty for skipping class this morning. Hope that this doesn’t happen again, in the end, we girls get our punishment by having 5% of IS module deducted. Sorry. ;D
Me and lihong went to the salon with the guys to get our hair dyed, since we were having 3 hours break before the industrial visit. But the hairdressers were really good at talking, they tried so hard to convince me to do some changes to my hair, and they actually succeeded, I reminded them not to make it too attention-seeking. Lihong also got convinced by them to rebond her hair, so after the guys were done with their hair color, me and lihong were still stucked on the chair, having a long way to go. Lihong was playing with her handphone games while I was chatting with the young (& cute) hairdresser who was doing my hair for me. When we chatted about our ages, I was so shocked when he told me that he is only 16, which is even younger than me. It’s the first time for me to get my hair done by someone younger than me, this is so unexpected! However, despite his young age, he assured me he’s quite skillful. He told me that he has given up all his time for his career, and he’s still learning.
And3 hours later, Dr Zhu began to keep calling us to ask us if we are reaching the gathering spot soon, when we haven’t even started on our hair-coloring. We realized that we were running out of time so we hurried the hairdressers and made them really stressed. Half an hour later, we were finally done while the rest of the class has already been waiting the both of us in the bus. Okay, so this is the second thing that I feel sorry for, for today.
Then we set off to our industrial visit. We went to an animation company, the insideof the building was beautiful. Really like those kind of big offices we see in TV dramas. ;D We were brought into a conference room, 1 of the staffs showed us how animations were produced by their company. Countless number of processes is needed to have 1 animation produced, like special animation effects, sound effects, etc. Then we were allowed to explore their offices of different departments. All the staffs were very engrossed with their work, some of them were drawing using the computer, some of them were examining the structure of the pictures, oh-those-professional-stuff!

Thurs

Thursday (2nd April)

Today is the exchange culture concert for us NP students (including the Chinese studies' students who are having their 6 mth attachment here) and the local university students & each group has to prepare some performances for the concert. We'd decided to sing a group song and play a skit about Singapore.

The song we decided to sing was Take Me To Your Heart by Micheal Learns To Rock, which was my mum's favourite song last year when she kept on playing it at home repeatedly, so i didn rly need the lyrics when we were rehearsing the previous night. Aziz and Fareez sang solo for the first few verses and all of us sang together for the chorus. & for the very long music part, Shakir represented us to express our feelings for the chinese people, the touching part is that he spoke in chinese.

For the skit , Aqilah did almost all of the background work, she searched for the pictures that represent Singapore, did the powerpoint slides and thought of the plots for each scenario. All the scenarios are usually seen in Singapore but not in other countries, like Kiasu Sgpreans chopping seats in Kopitiam, getting fined for smoking in public, etc. There were quite a number of scenarios so that each 1 of us will have a role to play.

I was the narrator for the skit, although i am better in Chinese, but it was seriously the first time that i present something in front of so many people in chinese. I was really scared that i might have misuse some chinese words, like what i usually do when i speak very fast and my friends will always correct me for the stupid mistakes. But luckily, i spoke quite slowly and tried to think for a few seconds before i rly shoot everything out.

I think overall the skit was rly well-played, Edward made the audience bursted into laughter when he spoke the 4 versions of the Yellow-Line MRT-stn announcement, and when ram played as a pregnant lady standing in the train, when he stuffed the pillow and 2 balloons in his shirt to pretend as fake boobs and tummy, it was rly hilarious.

And i could see that the other group of Np students who are in the Chinese Studies rly missed home, cos they've been staying here for months and when we showed them the ppt slides, they were all very excited. So our skit not only provided more understandings for the local students, we've only made some of the other sgprean students felt like they're back home for a moment. ;D

Reheasing for the skit for the last time.

The concert hall, while waiting for exchange culture program to start.

It's going to be our turn! Aqilah was reminding us our impt roles. ;D

Sit back and relax, concert is starting.

4 MCs. From left: NP Chinese Studies student, Local student, NP Chinese Studies student, Shakir NP EE student (our representative).

Day 24

Hey peeps!

Today we had Chinese calligraphy class in the morning.

And i'd realised that Chinese characters are really very unique.

Like what the calligraphy teacher had told us, only the Chinese people make the characters we normally use as a tool of communication into a form of art. How special is that.

It always seemed so easy when we watched the teacher write using the Chinese brush (Mao Bi).

But when it was our turn to try out, we even had problem holding the brush, we need to apply the right strength for different fingers, keep our wrists straight, &.... many rules to follow.

Alrights, picture time!

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Okay, i'm gonna briefly blog about my past few days.

On tues,Agnes, lihong ,&i went for clay art session!

The shop is just a few steps away from our dorm and the price is only 25rmb,

&it was rly cool, i kept imagining i was like yijeong while doing the clay. ;D

But it was rly not that easy, we kept on redo and i believe the guy who was teaching us was losing his patience rly soon.

The clay was rotating rly fast and we have to keep our wrists still, and slowly press our fingers onto the mud to obtain the shape we want. After 3 hours, my vase was finally done. But it still need some drying up process, so i'm only collecting it next week.

Will post up the picture of my vase once i have collected it.

;D Okay, i'll stop here for now! Tmr is saturday, gonna slp till i 'm happy.

-Part 2

Alrighto, lets continue with my 3 gorges trip.

After touring around by the wooden boat, we bus-ed to another scenery spot.

I have forgotten the name of the place, i only know that the name appeared in the story of Three Kingdoms(三国).

It was the place where LiuBei（刘备）stayed in in his elder age. When he realised that he was too old and not as fit, he did not have the energy to support his 2 young sons, so he committed the children to Zhu GeLiang（诸葛亮）'s care.
Xiao Tan the female tour guide told us this little story about that place. I know some of the characters in SanGuo from the movie Red Cliff! Haha, useful indeed!

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Yupps, this marked an end to our 3 gorges trip.

After that we bus-ed back to the cruise.

After dinner, we had a farewell party in the cruise restaurant.

All of us sat in 1 big round, played games, had snacks, & some performed.

Overall it's a happy ending for me.

The next morning, when we woke up, our cruise was already reaching Yichang.

And finally, we took the tour bus and spent another 6 hours plus back to Wuhan, Hua Zhong Shi Fan University.
We slept early that night, to get ready for school the next day!

;D

Cruise Trip to 3 Gorges （三峡）part1

So, on friday morning, everyone woke up rly early, 5 plus, carrying our big big bags and set our way off to cruise. We needa stop at jingzhou first cos the bus journey was superrrr long. We were sleeping like nobody's business, practically noone was listening to the tour guide's explanantion. For me, i seriously slept through the whole journey, which was about 4-5 hours, couldnt rly rmb. When we reached Jingzhou, we first visited a temple kind of place, with statues of some historical heroes. I didnt rly have the right mood to listen to the stories about the place cos that day was release of results. Most of my friends had checked their GPAs , some were contented, others rather disappointed, i didnt managed to check cos i didnt noe it would be out so early in the morning. I knew i didnt perform well for some of the modules, so i was alr prepared for the worst.

LOL. i was literally sleeping soundly.

Looking out from the bus (Lh took this pic), we passed by many villages to reach to Jingzhou city.

Reached our first scenery spot, we saw many cute little children running about! They 're all rly young, only around 3-4. So cute.

I have seriously nth to say abt ram.

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Okay, after visiting that spot, we headed for our lunch at 1 of the best restaurant in the city(this's what the tour guides said).

After lunch, we visited their museum. The 1 i remembered most was in the coffin section, where many ancient coffins that the archeologists digged out were displayed. There was a really big coffin, and inside the coffin, it was divided into several parts. It kind of looked like a small little house with different rooms rather than a coffin. The museum guide told us that it was for people who were in extremly high position. There was even the skeleton of that person who used that coffin. Looked rather scary :/

Okay, some pictures taken at the museum.

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And finally, after museum, we started our around-2-hour journey to Yichang, the place where we board the cruise.

The original timing of the boarding time was 6pm. We reached the dock before that, but we were told to wait for the officers to settle some issues about the cruise. There were fightings and quarellings, neither the tour guides nor our teacher could do anything. They could not even ensure us that we are boarding that cruise that night. We just blindly waited from 5 plus till 9plus and we could finally board the cruise.

Well, the issue was actually pretty serious, some of them really started fighting. Dr. Zhu said these kind of commotions are rarely seen in China, so tourists out there, no worries coming to China for holidays. ;D

Our room in the cruise!

2nd day in cruise was completely pointless, cos of the foggy weather, the cruise could not move at all, so we were stucked in the room, the only entertainment for us was dai-diiiiiii!

At night, i was at the deck, appreciating the night river scenery, in the cool breeze.

C-O-Z-Y!

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We could finally step out of the cruise on the 3rd day, we took a smaller boat to Bai Di Cheng 白帝城 where we could see all the beautiful natural sceneries.

On the smaller boat!

Can see the wind was super strong.

Nice mountains!

Hoho, meet edward!

And Amanda!

Xiaoliu, the tour guide.

Aqilah, Kitming,Agnes,Hukun,Kangqi!

The cave.

When we reached Bai Di Cheng, we put on the life jacket and sat on the boat, this boat is totally electricity-less. It was rolled by some local strong middle aged men.

We toured around the river, listening to the local guide telling about their local religion, the Tu Jia Zu (土家族)culture. Their life is really completely different from ours. The young people need to walk for about 4 hours to work every morning, around 5am. Can you urban people imagine?

They still gotta walk back after work! Unbelievable.

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I will continue the rest of my cruise trip next time. ;D

Take care everyone.