We officially started lessons during our 3rd day in Wuhan. Almost every morning, we would have Chinese language classes from 9-10am, followed by a lecture from 1020-1230pm. After lunch, we have another round of lecture from 230-5pm.
We were banded into different Chinese classes based on our choice in the form WHU gave. Well, the "best" class consist of NTU and NUS students only. -_- The teacher was a language teacher from WHU and she looks very 慈祥 and nice! But then, we were shocked to hear that we may need to purchase textbooks. When we took a look at the textbook, we were :S because the chinese characters were all small and tiny inside the book, and we the words know us but we dont know them, so we all decided not to buy the book. (There's no exam anyway) Sad to say, I have such a poor learning attitude mans.
We learnt some interesting stuff like the origins for some words, surnames, dialects etc etc. It would have been a great help if I wasnt out late almost every night, slept late, and cant keep my eyes open during lessons.
We had our lectures inside a lecture hall in the hotel. All our classes were actually held inside there. well, it would have been nice to have some lessons within the WHU compound itself. Even though the lectures were separated into 3 different categories, like rise of central China, 3 kingdoms etc, but somehow I realized the contents of the lectures do overlap.
I was too tired to listen carefully during lectures, but I keep hearing the sentence about China opening up its economy in 1979, and hard and soft budget. The lecturers may tend to repeat what they said as well, so I switched off automatically. In the end, Qida was able to summarize everything the lecturer said within 2 minutes, and I could understand perfectly, compared to the lecturer's rattling for 2 hours.
Our first lecture
1 of our lecturers (He knows Lee Kwan Yew!!!)
Ration coupons used during the cultural revolution
Other than lectures, we had lessons in areas like chinese painting, taiji, etc.
After a few meals in school, most of us couldnt take it anymore (niao people like me for e.g) and we started having lunches outside school since we have a few hours of break. We would just go to those small eateries near the school like 蔡林记 etc etc. 蔡林记 was recommended by Liu Wei and I think its 1 of the nicest places I have eaten in, in Wuhan. The portions are as usual, huge, and delivery of food is quite fast and efficient. We had nice eating experiences there till 1 day, when Anna found something unpleasant inside her noodles and we stopped going there ever since. hahas. There's also another eatery where they have nice 炸酱面. Too bad I only knew about the place during my 3rd week there? Besides various types of noodles, the eatery also sells 点心, drinks etc.
Visited the banks of Hankou for the first time during the first week as well. besides taking the bus from wuchang, we could also take a ferry across the yangtze river to hankou as well. it was a windy and nice night. didnt notice the buildings on both banks as we were all busy taking photos. hahas.
Not to forget, we had a bbq dinner at a restaurant near school. all their food items are bbqed. amazed at the variety they provide, hahas.
Kee wei, becca and I
the queue was damn long, and the worst thing was, the waitress seemed to have forgotten to take our order after sometime. our mouths were almost wide open when she only took our order slip after sometime -_- someone was irritated by the waiter's frequent appearance to pour tea for us as well, even when our tea cups looked full. hahas.