Monat: April 2015

English Corner Endurance Test

On Friday we awoke in our room, which sadly was still cold.
The heater only seems to work for about 15min and then shuts itself down.
We headed towards the canteen to get something warm to eat for breakfast.
We were to afraid to try something new, thats why we settled on chicken burgers,
we already knew were a treat to eat:

burger

Afterwards we were off to electronics class, where we learned about logic gates.
To our surprise we actually understood some of the material the teacher tried to teach 🙂
A glimpse at the teachers computer screen revealed, that she had the tools to watch
the screens of every student in the room and remote control them:

eye
Even though they have those surveillance tools, they don’t really seem to care 🙂

For lunch we had our trademark beef noodles, that we grew very fond of.
For me it’s the best thing we have eaten so far.

While working on our network design we had to create with real Cisco devices,
we were told that afterwards we should go to the English Corner together.
The English Corner is located in the Remni University campus. It’s a small park
where Chinese citizens, foreigners and students gather every Friday afternoon to
practice their oral English skills.
We did not really knew what to expect and as soon as we set foot on the premises
we were approached by dozens of Chinese citizens from every angle. They were coming at
us like bees. Soon two large crowds gathered around me and Alex and we nearly
talked to them two hours straight. The conversation topics ranged from German Education,
to German History to the Chinese former „One Child Policy“.
It was overwhelming and exhausting, but very educational and
definitely helpful for our English skills!
Exhausted, but pleased we took the subway home, grabbing a cold Yanjing Beer on the way.

Gallery:

 

Till next time…
Your Luke and Axel spreadsheet

The day of improvements

Today was a really great day, because we now have a fast and stable internet connection in our room! And we did some other improvements to our room the last few days.

But first things first. As usual we started early in the morning and met with Li & Zhu to eat breakfast. A teacher from yesterdays meeting saw us and recommended some food for us, so we tried what she said. One thing was a bread wrap with a small slice of scrambled eggs and some vegetables inside (maybe cabbage sticks, but we are not sure). The other one was a soup with tofu parts inside. The bread wrap was good, but the soup, especially the tofu parts were not very tasty.

We then headed to our first lesson of the day, which was math. It was not like the math lessons back in Germany, because everyone was working on a PC using a software to solve the problems. We were also able to use it and got the right answers, but we did not really know the math behind it. And we were not sure if all the pupils knew. He for sure didn’t:

IMG_1974 „The day of improvements“ weiterlesen

Wednesday

We again woke up early this morning, having to go to class at 08:15 and eating breakfast 08:00.
Today we had burgers, which tasted quite good, mcdonalds quality, but for only 10Yuan!
Strengthened by our healthy meal we headed towards JAVA-class. We were greeted by our friendly teacher „Melody“. The lessons were quite interesting, learning about access modifiers.
Each student had his own computer to work on and a live broadcast on screen of what the teacher was doing. Giving the students the possibility to work side by side with what the teacher tutored.
Additionally the teacher had the ability to lock all students PCs to force them to listen 🙂

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top picture: full focused learning!
bottom picture: playing some games during breaks 😛

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After three 45min blocks of very educative java lessons we again headed towards the canteen
and ordered a soup I had noticed a day earlier. It was delicious and prepared freshly:

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Afterwards we rushed towards networking-class, but were quickly interrupted by our teacher Mr Chen who asked us to go to a Cisco meeting with him.  The meeting was held in Chinese, as well as the powerpoint and the handed out materials, fortunately we had a small private chat afterwards with the cisco representative, so not all was in vain.

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We ended our day at a local bar, having German beer and fries.
A little bit pricey, but with a very nice ambiance and most importantly „fast“ Wifi!

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Till tomorrow
die Pekinenten

 

First day of school

On Tuesday was our first day in the Beijing Polytechnic College. We had to get up quite early, because at 8 o’clock was the beginning of the first class. After waking up we went to buy two baguettes (8 Yuan (1,10€) each) and some butter, so we would have some kind of a breakfast. At 8 o’clock we met with Zhu & Li, who told us that we would have breakfast now in the canteen. OK, so double breakfast, no problem. At the canteen we had some dumplings which were quite nice and a „drink“, which was more like soup. But this soup/drink was not very delicious, we had to leave it there when we left.

Afterwards we had English class. There were about 25 students and one teacher, speaking to the teacher was very nice, because her English was very good. We learned that her husband is Canadian and she has two children, and that she doesn’t have a drivers licence for her scooter. Speaking to someone with very good English skills was very relaxing, speaking to Li & Zhu is always a little bit exhausting. In class we did a bit of a question & answer, the teacher and some students asked us various questions, about ourselves as well about Germany. We had the opportunity to ask in return and learned a bit about the Chinese new year festival (Spring festival) and tried to learn some of their names. To be honest, I don’t remember any of them. The English level of the pupils was ranging from quite good with only a little Chinese accent to not very good with a strong Chinese accent. Nevertheless we got around and had two interesting classes of English (each 45 minutes).

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The next two classes were something which Li & Zhu called „Psychology“. Lukas and I think it’s more like social studies. We were in a big hall with about 50 students, in front on a stage was a teacher speaking ~200 Chinese words per minute, supported by a PowerPoint presentation. From some pictures and movies she showed we could guess that the subject of this class was something like „How to make friends“. Although we did not understand much, it was a funny class and we tried our best to participate… „First day of school“ weiterlesen

Eastermonday

Yesterday was Eastermonday in Germany, but here in China it was a free day as well. But not because of Easter, it was because on Sunday there was a official holiday so Monday was free as well.

We got up and went to a french cafe we saw another day to eat our breakfast. We wanted to get some „European“ food instead of donkey… Afterwards we went to IKEA again to buy two mattresses, because it feels like sleeping on the floor with the provided mattresses. They are very thin and the ground on which the mattress lies is made of metal, so we need a better mattress. It will be delivered on Wednesday. Then we went to a shopping mall (which looks totally like a European or American one) to buy some water and German beer, because Li and Zhu wanted to try some. While playing some poker, we drank our beer(s) and laughed a lot with our Chinese friends.

We then just took a shower and used the last hours of the WiFi to write some blog entry, because on Tuesday we would have to get up quite early, school starts at 8 am.

 

Our easter

Early in the morning Zhu & Lee waited for us to head into town together
and enjoy a delicious breakfast. Not far away from our College we entereda very small restaurant and were told to eat donkey.
The dish consisted of a small soup and bread with donkey meat:

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All in all the dish was quite delicious. A little bit greasy,
but tasted interesting and fresh.

After our donkey breakfast we headed towards the subways station
to travel to Tiananmen Square. At the entrance of every subwaystation
is an extensive security check, more thorough than at Tegel-Airport,
which is a pain and really time consuming.

We tried to enter the national museum as well as the forbidden city,
but both were that heavily crowded due to the Qingming Festival (Tomb-sweeping Day),
that we decided to try another day and only take a look from outside:

vorverbotenen

kunst stadt

 

Instead we headed towards the wangfujing market. After a quick detour at McDonalds,
we were prepared to enjoy the culinary delicacies Peking has to offer.The highlight was scorpion on a stick, which died on the grill before you own eyes.

skoprion_axel skoprion_luki

The taste was interesting to say the least, but all in all it was nothing one would miss.

Lee, Zhu, Alex and I ended the day with having dinner together at a small restaurant nearby.
I had handmade noodles with „meat“, which later, because I complained about the
indistinguishable rotten smell, turned out to be intestine…

From donkey, to scorpion, ending at intestine – nom nom.

The beginning

Our destination, 7353km away. We would travel this distance in a little more than nine hours.
7353
Alex and I met up at Tegel Airport on Friday at 6pm. After a Frappuccino Mocha at *bucks
we headed towards check in. Everything went smoothly, no complications with our luggage.

hää

flug

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The flight with Hainan Airlines was a straight flight with a duration of ~9 hours.
The ambiance in the aircraft was quite noisy, lots of people talking, chinese
elevator music in the background and hectic stewardesses trying to calm the crowd.
Nevertheless time flew by with a good amount of inflight entertainment and red wine refills.

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Tired but happy, we made it!

On our way out of the airport, after we fetched our luggage, we were greeted by our teacher Chen,
two Students (Li & Zhu) and one man, the driver?, who remained unknown to us. They were overly attentive towards us, immediately carrying our luggage for us. It was awkward. The 1/2 hour ride
to our college did not help either. Li & Zhu have only a very limited amount of English vocabulary and
our teacher Chen has a mixture of basic English and Chinese accent, which is very difficult to understand, too. Alex and I did our best to make conversation and Li & Zhu seemed to use a
prefabricated list of questions to help get things along.

After we arrived at the Beijing Polytechnic College they showed us our luxurious apartment,
located in the girls barracks, which will serve as our new home for the coming two months.
Normally this apartment provides more than sufficient living space for a total of eight students,
but fortunately we had it all for ourself.

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Overwhelmed by our impressions we were led to a restaurant famous for their delicious dumplings.
Our guides placing the order was a more timeconsuming task than one would imagine – total of 20min.
The dumplings were delicious and came in huge quantities.

nom

 

to be continued, n8n8

Let’s go!

These are the last hours in Germany. At 8 pm our flight will departure from Tegel-Airport. We will fly with Hainan Airlines. I’m really excited and looking forward towards our stay in China. We already got some pictures of our accommodation, it looks a little bit old fashioned but it will be alright I guess. From the information we got the student hostel where we will stay is here: https://goo.gl/VjLxpI

So what am I doing right now? Besides writing here, I’m putting the last things into my luggage and I’m constantly thinking whether I have everything. There will also be a (little bit to early) Easter dinner with my family before we drive to the airport.

And then it will be time to say goodbye and to say 你好中国 (Hello China).