Mark Blog 2
Oh man, what a crazy foreign exchange! Zheng Zhou is one jumping joint. Everyone had a unique experience, but I’ll give you some of mine. We all got picked up at the train station and our first impression was that this was not Raleigh. Zheng Zhou feels busier than New York City and more stressful. Simply there is too many people, too many cars, all moving too fast. There are absolutely no suburbs in Chinese cities, at some point you go from sky scraper to farms. It’s a great experience to totally turn our world upside down. Thank the Lord our exchange students rock at English. The average Chinese student practices English all the time, at least several hours a day. There are no other foreign languages, just English. Learn English or fail. We still tried to mix as much Chinese as possible to talk to the parents. Many of us got taken to buy pirated DVDs (usually a dollar or less, I got season 1 of 24 and two other TV shows for $15). Many of us went out to exotic Chinese meals including hot pot. At night we would hang out and enjoy the city. My family took me to the Yellow River, China’s oldest University and the Shao Lin Temple (and out to lunch and dinner every night). At school, we painted bamboo paintings and learned the history of Henan province, as well as visited the local museum nearby where they exhibited the new Chinese space rockets alongside classical artifacts and relics. We also took a field trip to Song Mountain, which was very beautiful. Tomorrow we wake up early to head by train to Beijing.
The exchange was a good time to see how to live in a Chinese city at the ground level, use our Chinese to communicate our needs to our providers, and give us an individual experience as opposed to the group one (especially John, his kid was the anti-social one so we never saw him practically the whole time). I’m glad to be back in the group though, we held a birthday party for Mr. Killmer today, Happy B-day Special K! I did get a chance to buy some sweet traditional Chinese clothes today as well, and see a Chinese Mega shopping mall for clothes. It was tough to say goodbye to our exchange students for the last time, but we are glad for the good times we had together.
Mark
Oh man, what a crazy foreign exchange! Zheng Zhou is one jumping joint. Everyone had a unique experience, but I’ll give you some of mine. We all got picked up at the train station and our first impression was that this was not Raleigh. Zheng Zhou feels busier than New York City and more stressful. Simply there is too many people, too many cars, all moving too fast. There are absolutely no suburbs in Chinese cities, at some point you go from sky scraper to farms. It’s a great experience to totally turn our world upside down. Thank the Lord our exchange students rock at English. The average Chinese student practices English all the time, at least several hours a day. There are no other foreign languages, just English. Learn English or fail. We still tried to mix as much Chinese as possible to talk to the parents. Many of us got taken to buy pirated DVDs (usually a dollar or less, I got season 1 of 24 and two other TV shows for $15). Many of us went out to exotic Chinese meals including hot pot. At night we would hang out and enjoy the city. My family took me to the Yellow River, China’s oldest University and the Shao Lin Temple (and out to lunch and dinner every night). At school, we painted bamboo paintings and learned the history of Henan province, as well as visited the local museum nearby where they exhibited the new Chinese space rockets alongside classical artifacts and relics. We also took a field trip to Song Mountain, which was very beautiful. Tomorrow we wake up early to head by train to Beijing.
The exchange was a good time to see how to live in a Chinese city at the ground level, use our Chinese to communicate our needs to our providers, and give us an individual experience as opposed to the group one (especially John, his kid was the anti-social one so we never saw him practically the whole time). I’m glad to be back in the group though, we held a birthday party for Mr. Killmer today, Happy B-day Special K! I did get a chance to buy some sweet traditional Chinese clothes today as well, and see a Chinese Mega shopping mall for clothes. It was tough to say goodbye to our exchange students for the last time, but we are glad for the good times we had together.
Mark
1 comment:
Watch out, those DVDs don't always work in the USA players.
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