The day after arriving we spent a lot of time getting to
know the surrounding area and meeting the new arrivals before attending our
welcome meal, filled with a lot of the stereotypical Chinese dishes including
sweet and sour dishes, various types of beef, noodles and of course “mĭfàn”
(rice), as usual in Chinese cuisine there were some dishes which required a
second look including a full fish, head and all and for many the prawns were a
new strange dish which just happened to be the nicest at the table.
After various team building games which included my room-mate
performing my favourite version of Barbie girl to date we were told we had the
rest of the day free. At this point we split off into various groups and each
made our own plans, after much thought I decided to join the group looking to
experience the nightlife of Beijing and thus after a few of the 青岛啤酒 (Tsingtao beers) we decided to try our luck
with some nightclubs, I'm not sure I'll ever know if the plan was to go to the
nightclub called Mix or the one called Vics, but the similarity of the name
along with the proximity of the clubs effectively split the group into 2 only
to thankfully meet up after an hour or so of confusing phone calls. This was a
great lesson in prior planning and having written addresses that would see us
organise every day out from then on which much greater success than the
stressful first night.
The following morning with many students nursing minor
hangovers we attended our Opening ceremony where we heard from representatives
from BNU, the British Council and the organisers for Study China including our
lifeline on the trip Lucy. Once the opening ceremony had finished and the
slightly rainy group photos were taken we split into our Language classes and
began our first lesson.
In our first lesson we were introduced to our teachers who
were friendly if a bit eccentric and given our Chinese names to use throughout
the 3 weeks, in my opinion 罗佳宁 (luó jiā níng) was certainly one of
the more difficult to pronounce and will require some mastering. The most
difficult task when entering these classes for me was to get away from my
Northern Irish accent, while not as broad as some is still limiting when
attempting to pronounce “nĭ hăo” and instead saying “knee how”. After a couple
of hours of sounding out the basic syllables and learning about the various
accents which can be the difference between referring to your mother or to a
horse I was feeling confident about the next few weeks of learning.
After my language lesson I separated from many of my
classmates attending the Teaching module and joined my room-mate
The first day of classes has left me looking forward to all
that’s coming and all that I can learn.
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