Alrighty I know everyone's been asking me to post more pictures. It's been tough getting them since I actually lost my iPhone here toward the beginning of this whole adventure. Suffice to say, I've been relying on friends to send me pictures in the meantime while I get myself another device. On the positive side of it all, an iTouch here costs under $1,500 RMB which is roughly $220 Canadian, a pretty great price by Canadian standards. So tomorrow I'm going to the bank to get the funds and I'll have my own camera and ipod again. Can't wait. In the next week or so I'll post some more photos that will give you more of an idea of what the campus and this beautiful city looks like!
But here's some groovy pics to keep you entertained for the moment!
Here is a picture of Catherine and I practicing calligraphy during our first class in the library. It was a chilly and rainy evening but the library was warm and inviting, filled with students and books and learning. The instructor showed us how to draw the first stroke and we had to practice doing it for hours! Catherine and my roommate and I flew to China together on the first day. We have become good friends.
Here I am wearing my fancy work clothes on the first day! I look excited don't I? It turns out we don't need to dress like this every day but I am glad I came prepared anyhow.
One day Catherine and I were walking through the campus after lunch and we noticed this path that led through a forest-and eventually through these interesting rainbow frames! We decided to pose!
A colleague and I play ping pong in one of the buildings. Our Chinese supervisors are far better at this game than we are!
This is a restaurant in a strip located across the street from the campus. It gets busy around here at lunch time! This is a great place for Chinese style stew. You pick out the ingredients you want (meats, veggies, tofu, fish, etc) from a table of dishes and they fry it up and put a sauce over it. Unfortunately we did not realize they would put a very spicy and numbing chili on it unless you specify against it.
This is a glimpse of the area of town known as "Tai Hua" which is the downtown area of the city. From what I have heard, this city has been undergoing extremely fast development within the last few years or so. These tall buildings are going up so quickly, and all over the city too. Everywhere you look, you can see apartments and other tall buildings shooting up. Tai Hua showcases the best of Chinese consumerism-including a very large mall (at least by my Vancouverite standards) where you can find an H and M, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Subway, Scofield, several bars and clubs and restaurants, several kinds of markets (electronic market, an "everything market", etc), an extensive grocery store, (in China, you can find ANYTHING at the grocery store. Anything.)
and more. The area is very pretty since it surrounds the river and it features a sort of waterfront area. Of course, that's me in the tank top running down the stairs with my cohorts. I think we were in a rush to get some food because we were hungry. This place is breathtaking at night because all of the buildings and bridges and floating docks (some of them are RIDES!) are all lit up at night. And not the monochromatic, boring, still kind of lit up. No, no, we're talking Las Vegas style, where everything moves, HUGE Chinese Characters float around the buildings, and all the lights change colours and are just about every kind of shade of colour on the spectrum.
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