High as a kite

Yes, it’s another update and another add to the ever growing wall of text that is my blog, but bear with me as I experience so many new things each day.

I stayed up very late tonight keeping track on football matches as my team – Lyngby Boldklub – was playing. Sadly they played like crap and lost (which is not a new thing, sigh…), but another Danish team qualified to the Champions League, so that was good.

Today I got up early and went to the Xixi-campus of Zhejiang University where I was to meet my philosophy professor. Zhejiang University is divided into many different campuses (yes that the plural for campus) and they’re all quite big. My language course will be held at Yuquan-campus that we live close by. It took me some 20-25 minutes to walk to Xixi-campus which is a really nice campus decked out with lush green trees, bushes and grass. As I tried to find my why around I passed students reading in the shade of the trees and the area seemed so tranquil.

After a bit I found the teacher that was supposed to introduce me to the professor and I got a chance to see the attendee-list for the class: It was all Japanese, Korean and Malaysian students doing Chinese philosophy as their major – yikes! The professor – called Dong Ping – turned out to be such an incredibly nice guy! I went to his office and we talked about my plan for my year here and what I wanted to do – and in Chinese! He advised me to wait with the philosophy class till springtime (Here at Zhejiang University they have 4 semesters on a school year) as it might be a bit too high for my current level of Chinese, but I might attend a lecture just to see how it’s like, but haven’t decided yet. Professor Dong also told me that I could do a self-study on Daoism (one of my big fields of interest) and then he’d give me some questions to answer each week and in the end I’d get a grade/credit that can be transferred to Denmark . This would be really great to do (if I can find the self-discipline) because then I can focus more on the language course and improve my Chinese for the philosophy-class in spring. So that’s my plan so far and tomorrow I’ll go find a bookstore and find a copy of Laozi (Dao de Jing) and start reading that in Chinese. The whole conversation with professor Dong was just such a nice experience both due to classes turning out great and due to having a conversation with a Chinese professor in Chinese! I was so incredibly happy and high as a kite as I walked back.

We had dinner tonight again and tried a new restaurant where we definitely will not be returning! Once again we got dishes without any meat, ordered the wrong dish and ended up with a broth kind of thing with chicken bits, shrimps and vermicelli in it. To top that off one of the restaurant people’s little kid was running around yelling her lungs out and stomping her wooden heels in the floor very loudly. This is the downside of the one-child-policy, you get these spoiled little brats. I felt really bad for Pablo who had a headache.

A German girl has moved into the dorm so more life is coming in, which is good. Tomorrow all the new students will have to attend a compulsory lecture on the laws and regulations on Zhejiang University at 9am and they’ll do it in English, Korean and Japanese, gah! According to Pablo it’s probably going to be 3 or so hours and to make matters worse its on a campus 30 minutes away from here. Tomorrow we’ll also be going out for beers and mischief, so should be a fun night hopefully.

Casper