Day 30

Day 30- Wed, 24th Sept 2008

Today, we had an early day. Not studying but it was supposedly a discussion regarding building and environment btw the Chinese students and us. Oh dear, that sounded already so awful. I was thinking that if we were allowed to speak in English, which would have been an easier task than to try and translate the terms in Chinese and think of things that should be said.

As we walked to their built environment building, I dreaded and hoped that it would be over soon as it was an arduous task. When we entered the classroom, it was awkward. They clapped for us and sat at a row at the back of the “meeting table”. It was like a conference meeting. Die. The tone of it was so serious and brave dina did the most speaking on behalf of our NP group. Ha! They were surprised with our “good” Chinese but there was 1 Chinese female student whom I felt was very condescending towards us, Singaporeans. Probably she was curious but she spoke in a rude manner? She gave comments that made me feel that we are a rude bunch of people who do not have any manners. Thanks ar.=_=. Towards her, we remained quite polite and the teacher from them explained clearly that we are not like what she thought. Anyway, I believe there was some sort of language barrier which still existed as our Chinese were not as fluent and if we were able to communicate with them in English, there will not be such misunderstandings and we could fend for ourselves better.

One of them asked a dumb question, “Is the Chang e(mid-autumn folk legend character) of Singapore’s legend a male or female?” – Supposedly, in this story, the maiden (chang e) after eating some elixir, she flew to the sky and away from a man. Like duh, how can the chang e be a man. =_=.

We finally ended up having our own chatter groups which has a good mix of both the Chinese students and us. My group has 2 girls and a guy who stays at Hei Long Jiang (he says the journey back home takes 30 hrs by train=_=). Poor thing. Anyway, it was such a waste that we had not met with them earlier as they knew the place better. We ate together for lunch and visited each other’s hostels. It was a far cry comparing our hostels and theirs. WAH! We are fortunate man!