Days 5-8, Will -Shandong University, Mt Tai Shan and Qufu

hey

 Last time i blogged i talked about my home stay experience, we moved on the next day we went to the shandong university, we toured and had a look at how the chinese differed from our university system, they all were very positive and happy to see us.

 We started by having a talk from one of the tutors at the university then got shown around by the english students, the university was very similar to our own except for the fact that they work alot harder than most english people, because it is a great honour for the chinese to get into uni. We visited there dining room which we were told was the largest in asia, it was 5 floors tall and very large and busy. We finished the university tour and then just stayed at our hotel for the night.

 

Shandong University 2

 

The next day we visited mount taishan which is a very tall mountain near a town called qufu, most of us climbed the mountain which was incredible steep and harsh to climb, around 3500 steps, we got some amazing pictures and had some amazing experiences. That night we went to the town of qufu and visited the local market and walked around the streets and saw alot of poverty in the back alleys.

In the morning we visited confucius’ birth place, which was a very large temple with many gates and important looking buildings. After the temple visit we visited qufu university which was smaller and poorer but still all the people were very happy to see us and very welcoming, we saw some interesting pictures all round campus of the students who all have to do 2 weeks of military service, it is quite shocking to think that everyone in china can be conscripted for military service it means that they can have an army of over 800 million people if they need it, seeing these pictures in the university really brought that home.

 

Qufu University

 

That night we drove back to jinan and visited a very impressive water fountain show, and went into a huge underground shopping center that was a chinese wall mart. Overall its all going great and i dont really want to leave, i probably wont blog before we come back so i will say we are going to tour quingdao and then go on to maybe another university for the next day, after that we spend two days in beijing then we will come home.

 see you then.

Will

Days 5 & 6, Sophie – Shandong University and Tai Shan

hi again,

well so much has happened over the last few days, we have been to sooooo many places. We have visited quite a few universities, well it was the same university but different campuses. We went to Shandong University. We met a lot of students there studying English and learning all about our culture. This gave us a chance to ask the students questions about the university and about the culture of china in general, from the view of them as students. It was quite interesting actually to here about the sort of things they do in their free time. In fact compared to young people in Britain they do not seem to do the same activities and have the same social life. The chinese students did not tend to do much in their free time which involved going out of university. They mostly were involved in clubs or sports being held around the university. This seems very different from Britain, when we have free time from college or university we tend to do alot more activities and have maybe more freedom. We go to the cinema, have parties, go to thorpe park and places like that. Chinese people do not seem to have that option as much as we do.

Shandong University

 

Another thing we did was go to Tai Shan Mountain. From the bottom of the mountain to the top was 7000 steps to climb it. We were given the option to climb the mountain with 3200 steps from the top or get the cable cart up to the top. hmmm i choose to climb the mountain by the stairs. This was one of the hardest things i have ever done, the steps were really quite steep, and i must admit it was a lot harder than i first thought. However i am so glad that i managed to actually climb it, it was such an achievement to get to the top, and the views whilst climbing up was absolutely amazing. We then however had to get the cable cart down, i think i would rather have climbed the stairs down, i am petrified of heights and the thought of going down in the cable cart scared the life out of me, but i did it!!!! i made it down, yay

 

the group i feel is getting on really well i feel we are a family now, and i am going to miss them all when we go home in four days. We have really bonded as a group, however we are all getting quite tired now and could do with our own beds and a good night sleep. I am missing my lovely friends so much and seeing my family. Also i really have a really really really really bad craving for Swede, so a nice roast dinner with swede would go down really well when i get home xxxxxxxxxxxx