Sunday the 19th

The Zoo on Sunday (12th) was like must zoos kind of boring, there was a lot of animals that looked like they didn't want to be there and aside from the main attraction of Pandas I don’t think it done anything different to most zoos. The next two days were quite quiet as many people spent a lot of the time gathering souvenirs, studying or visiting the fake markets on Tuesday we had another field trip, this time to the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation who have help millions of poverty stricken people both inside and outside of China, their projects focus on microfinance and the health of Mothers and Infants along with disaster relief. To learn more about organisations helping to improve those living within their countries and culture we visited the Intel offices in China and learnt about their contributions and history with the project.

Unfortunately at this stage of the program I became ill and was unable to leave my bed for much of the next 2 days, thankfully it had cleared up by the Friday closing ceremony and I was able to attend and perform the play our class had been preparing as well as viewing the other classes performances. This was a lot of fun twinged with a bit of sadness as it was the last day we would all be together. We got together for some final photos with our teachers and to watch an amazing video made by David then left to pack and sort out some final things. This night was spent in the campus bar Lakers which we had been using over the weeks to meet up and pre drink before visiting the night clubs, people left gradually throughout the night as many people had different ways home this was a great opportunity to say goodbye to some amazing friends I’d made over the 3 weeks. I was getting the last bus to the airport and along with around 12 of us were the last ones left, I’m taking a day to rest and finish the blog in Zurich before heading back home to Uni and coursework, The 3 weeks have been an amazing experience and I would recommend it to anyone who had even a passing thought of visiting China, it’s hard to say how much Chinese I’ve learnt and I constantly surprised myself when people would say ‘how do you say menu in Chinese’ for example and without thinking able to respond or how in the airport on the final day going to order a meal and being able to rhyme off “gong bao ji ding he yi wan mi fan” (kung pao chicken with rice) without realising I’d said it in Chinese. I fully intend to continue to learn Chinese and have an absolutely amazing building block to work from.