Day 10-黄鹤楼 and 古琴臺

黄鹤楼

The view from the top of the yellow crane tower which is 5 story high and it must have had a beautiful sight; however, the clouds had blanketed the view. Which was such a pity, we had to be ready by 8AM and its very rare time that you’ll see us awake!

We were rushed like herd of sheep to the next place which was LUNCH at a five star hotel! (Finally no more dumplings)

After lunch, we were chartered to yet another tourist destination, 古琴臺, on the way there, we cross the Yangtze River bridge which had a really pretty sight (my student leader brought us there the night before the trip) but because of the fog we couldn’t really see much and it is a pity.

古琴臺 had a really pleasant surrounding with background music coming from the guzhen in the main tower to the very cloudy scenery. The tour guide was telling us the life story of bou ya. The one story that really caught my attention was bouya travelled by foot to the tortoise mountain only to find his friend ZhiQi dead. Buoya played on his lute for the very last time for him, just before breaking it and swearing that he’ll never play any instrument ever again.

Following古琴臺,we went to a park which had old people everywhere, everything moving so slowly, even the time it seem forever for 5 minutes to go by however the bronze statues there were really cool. It showed what people did in china many years ago.The statues remind me of those along the Singapore River at Clarke Quay where there are bronze statues of the people in the early 50's in Singapore.

Day 9-Steel factory

Assemble at 8 AM, you might think 8 is an auspicious time, but for me it’s NOT! Ever since I heard of the time I wanted to cry,I have to wake up even earlier than I normally do for lessons.

helmets for safety








End product



Anyway we headed to the steel factory where they make steel sheets from scratch.
Melting-> cooling->Rolling->Quality check->Store.
This is pretty much the process of making steel. Watching the process of it was pretty boring as we couldn’t hear what the guide was talking about, however looking at the steel come out from the machine (which was all handmade by the way) to the cooling process and rolling process its definitely a sight that I will not be able to see in Singapore because Singapore doesn't make steel due to space constraints and all we have to get our steel from other countries. Maybe they come from China?


Miss Zhang our IS teacher

IS lesson was pretty interesting, learning about china history, politics and economy was good exposure however the slides that were given was really dry. It didn’t have colour or pictures so it didn’t really catch my attention. The one thing that caught my attention was the part on communism,The Communist Party of China was founded in May 1920 in Shanghai, and came to rule all of mainland China after defeating its rival the Kuomintang (KMT) in the Chinese Civil War. The CPC claimed 75.93 million members on 9 October 2009 which constitutes 5.6% of the total population of mainland China.The shocking part was that the teacher was part of a communist group when she was younger. And joining these groups are of your own freewill however they prefer to choose those who are more incline in their result VS those not so smart ones.

After lesson we went on a search for 冰糖葫芦 at some street that the local students told us.We're getting use to getting around, all we have to know is the bus stop's name, we check out which buses get there hop on to the bus and listen out for the stop ! Pretty much the same as SG, just that the bus doesn't stop at every stop and they don't have a recorder to tell you the current and following stop, and I think SG should implement it because it's really useful !


the bus ceiling is very very low :/ and we look like giant's







The street was pretty much like Chinatown during Chinese New Year, rowdy, crowded rowdy and just pure squeezzy!
Wudi, our local friend came to meet us after his lesson and brought us to this river and if i didn't hear him wrong the river is called 长江 which is the one that we're going to tomorrow!




the bridge with train tracks at the 2nd tier and road on the top tier

He told us that that track was built in 1949, and i vaguely remember him saying that many people go there to commit suicide which i think is dumb cause why end your life just like that? Just make changes with life and it can go on smoothly, dying would not change anything. The problem will still be there and left for those you left behind to settle it for you.


孔明灯, to write your wishes and it will float up into the air like a hot air balloon.

Day 8 – yet another adventure

Morning’s lesson was pretty dry, maybe because we just did tutorials and practical. Miss Neo was really nice to give us the afternoon off as many of us were SICK including me. The flu bug has conquered! 

After talking to Mr Ng Ho Chuan a few days back, he mentioned how great the other 10 other streets were, so we decided to take a walk after our lesson since we ended pretty early and we didn't have much to do.

We took 3 hours to reach in total to reach 键设八路 ! A huge disappointment as we were expecting a lot from what we heard from Mr Ng anyway we took it as an exercise since we’ve been doing little exercise besides mouth exercises and running to class every morning we piratically sit the whole day! FATS FAT FATS!

The Mail truck


键设六路


键设七路 and we continued all the way to 键设八路


FINALLY @ 键设八路

Reflection:
Talking about punctuality, I will be following it very piously reason being, I don’t want to get fined it’s just not worth it! Back in Ngee Ann, we took punctuality pretty lightly; we came in anytime we wanted and didn’t really bother but here we can’t! We have to seize every second here as our exams are coming! Also our little walking trip to the 8th street of 三弓路 has made me  realised that China is really really huge, they are just streets located side by side of each other but we still took 3 hours,I can climb bukit timah hill within 2 hours that includes going up and down, this just goes to show that CHINA IS HUGE! we gave up on the 9th and 10th because it was getting late and we were exhausted!
 

Pictures we took along the way

this reminds me of UP! all the balloons up in the air and up up and away!

A dog farm, it is pretty similar to those in pasir ris

Day 7 - Venture

Class as usual, 9AM till 4PM we were not late (:

Independence is what I want to learn from this trip, so all of us, Teeli,Yanting,Jean,Meixiu and I, we decided to take a trip down to one of the shopping centre nearby to get some basic necessity,with us and only us!


a crazy hairdo from the 80's

one of the more colonial buildings opposite "shao ping mao"

As the weather is getting warmer I sort of notice the trend of ice cream increasing ! Look at the cute ice cream truck ! If only the ah pek's in Singapore has their carts like that!

cute ice cream truck

Asian food fair, and that's a satay man OMG I MISS SG FOOD !

For once we had pizza hut instead of the usually dumplings, noodles or rice (which was great! I’m totally disgusted by them). They have a wider variety than Singapore however their service sucked. Even though we ordered altogether, Jean only got her food after we finished ours, which made her really mad (a hungry man is an angry man) and when the bill for called for they took less than a second to get back to us. because we took a long time to sort out the money as we’re not expecting it so soon since our food forever to come,the very impatient waitress was so “TSK” us and slammed the bill down and walked away.

Reflection:

If this situation happened in Singapore, the waitress would have been fired long ago and chances of her getting back into the same industry will probably be ZERO, but that’s not the case. We need to understand that we come from different backgrounds and thus having different behaviours. Maybe here in china they like to move faster than the people in Singapore?
Everything was smooth till we wanted to get back to the hostel. Ever since we got here, we’ve been going back by taxi, which means we don’t know where the bus stop to get back here is. We did find the bus stop in the end but only after 15 minutes of walking circles and carry 4 litres of water in the cold weather.

Day 6- Lesson and performance

Day 6 – chaos!

It’s the second day of school, and guess what!? Even though we stay just blocks away from school we’re late and we had to pay a fine! 15RMB each -_-
Time management, we need to plan that has to wake up at what time and there should not have any dilly dally in order to be punctual.

Class was cancelled in the afternoon cause we were given time to prepare for our performance for the china students. Teeli’s group and my group decided to join forces as we had similar ideas. Working together with them was pretty okay.

Mixing around with the different people in the class will help us during this trip, we can't be just mixing around with the people in our clique only, we have to go out and make new friend ! One way we get to work with different people cause in the real world, you will not be able to choose who you want to work with and you have to accept the fact that you have to work with.

Our performance was way better that ECE’s performance (no offence) as we put in more effort to prepare and plan. In some way or another we did use some skills that we learnt in project management and applying it onto this performance. Take example the time we start and the time we end the project. Even though it just a tiny project, it’s still one nonetheless

Day 5 - First day of school

Back to our normal school routine, waking up at 7 and heading to school by 9 and lessons ending at 4 pm every day. It being the first day we got lost and despite the cold wind blowing in our faces we were running about like crazy lunatics, and yes we were still late!

We had an introductory to project management by Miss Neo which followed by lesson proper. As she was going through I felt that everything she was teaching was rather familiar, and realised that I’ve studied those modules in the previous semesters. This is going to be a recap for me and hopefully I can score for this module!

It was really cold so we decided to get takeaway from the school canteen and ate in the comfort of the heaters in our own hostels  I LOVE MY ROOM'S HEATER ! IT THE WARMEST AMONGST ALL THE ROOMS! We continued with lesson after lunch till 3.30pm and we were free. The whole class had to stay back to discuss what to do for tomorrow's performance.while we were discussing about the performance,suddenly someone shouted“it’s snowing" and everyone ran towards the window to see.

The snow stopped for a while and it continued to snow even heavier after those huge snowflakes started to fall from the sky and we could see all us running onto the streets with cameras and happily enjoying the sight of snow.(even the guys) Due to the fact that we live at the equator, we aren’t able to experience 4 seasons so the sight of snow just enthrals us! But I’m glad that I am living in sunny Singapore because the weather here is just too extreme, it could be hot one day and the next day negative temperature. It may be hot and humid there but it’s better than freezing our butts out.

Snow





Reflection:
During the performance discussion, I felt that everyone just wanted things to suit them, they didn't want to hear other options or opinions, maybe we're just not use to how others work since we're all from different courses, different levels and different classes, this is something that we should work out, so that we can live happily together for the next 5 weeks or so! On a lighter note,after suffering so many days of cold, it has finally paid off! We finally get to see snow, not that its so magical, its just that I've never seen snow before, and its quite cool that I get to experience it with my friends.