First Impressions

This blog post was written by Tom Abbott, studying in China for the summer. 

 

The first thing I noticed when I stepped off of the bus was how much commotion there was in the city! There were hundreds of people just on the campus alone that were riding bikes and mopeds. Mopeds are a huge thing here and they even have paths along the road for people to drive them! After we were taken to our rooms and we unpacked, we met up as a group with

Professor Jason Hu, who was in charge of setting up our internships, and we went over some logistical stuff with him. After the meeting, I stuck around and practiced some Chinese with him, which really boosted my confidence that I would actually be able to speak and be understood while in China! The first couple nights of sleep were definitely a struggle.

The first night we arrived, I went to bed around 10:30 pm and woke up at about 2am, thinking it was7am or 8am and was time to get up. I then woke up at about every hour until around 6am when I decided to just get up. The second night my roommate and I returned to our room around 6pm and were just lying around. Ben ended up falling asleep, as did I, for what we intended to be a half hour or hour nap. When we both woke up four hours later at 10pm we both knew that our idea for a short nap had not unfolded as planned… The funniest part about sleeping the first couple nights here was that when our group got together the next morning for breakfast everyone had the exact same thing happen to them as Ben and I did!

Our third day here the group travelled to West Lake and

walked around the entire lake. It was absolutely beautiful, but we underestimated the time it would take to make our way around the lake! It is a big lake… We all agreed that we would pay many more visits to the lake before heading home. All the stories about the locals staring and wanting to take pictures are pretty accurate. One of the guys in the group, Matt Fitzpatrick, was pulled aside by a group of Chinese folks who claimed he looked like a movie star!

As for the food, everything has been delicious, but it is quite different from the Chinese food in America. Coming from a guy who eats chicken, rice, and veggies for 75% of his meals, I can honestly say that food here is nothing like that in America. The cafeteria in the international dorm provides a wide variety of foods for breakfast, lunch, and dinner that make it easy to try numerous traditional Chinese dishes. So far my experiences in China have been very good! I have even found a gym where we and some of the other guys who are interested can go and workout for very cheap.