Campus of Jiao Tong University

I want to start out by writing a few lines about the dorms that we are living at until we move somewhere else. Unfortunately, it is very loud here. They are building a new house right around the corner and the construction workers seem to be working 24-7. Besides, the employees seem to be unable to speak with low volume, which makes it very hard to study in our rooms. I’m so glad I brought earplugs! It’s also not the cleanest place that I have ever been to, but oh well. The good thing is: using the washing machine only costs about 20 Cents.

This is me in our room:


and the shower:

The campus is very nice and well-kept. Yesterday and today, we went running on our campus and we experienced that it is huge. We were running for about an hour and I am sure that we haven’t seen everything, yet. Even a highway crosses our campus. I really like the buildings and that they look new.


We have seen a lot of Chinese students wearing camouflaged clothes. We asked a friend and he explained to us that all students (male and female) have to go through military training during their first two weeks at the university. At the end of those days, they march in the footballs stadium and show off what they have learned. We went by the stadium by accident and watched the little parade. Seemed a little strange to me to see this at a university campus, but it reminded me of my year in South Carolina, USA, when I was in the marching band of my school. Here is a picure of them standing in line. You probably have to click on the picture in order to see it better:


Right now, I have to study for an exam which is coming up on Friday (engineering mechanics III). I would rather go sightseeing and check out some places in the city, but there is no time for that. I can’t wait until Friday night when the exam is over. Then I won’t be that busy anymore and hopefully keep the blog updated a little better.
And I hope we can finally manage to eat healthier food. Our nutrition schedule really needs to change. In the mornings we usually eat toast (untoasted of course…we don’t have a toaster) with marmalade or Nutella. Lunch is horrible. We started out by buying a water boiler and eating instant meals. Although they are all supposed to taste different, I got sick of them very fast. Thus I decided to eat bread again for lunch, but this time with sausage. At least we have bought lots of fruits and vegetables that you don’t have to cook. And one of us brought some vitamins that we take in the mornings. In the evenings we eat at restaurants, but generally it takes too long. This is why yesterday we decided to order pizza and today we ate at KFC. I’m really looking forward to having our own apartment and being able to cook! We talked to some of our Chinese friends and they said that they will teach us how to cook Chinese. I’m excited about it and I hope that we will start learning soon!

IN: the weather: still around 30 degrees celsius!
OUT: studying engineering mechanics

P.S.: By now I do know that you guys are not able to write a comment unless you have an account for this website. Thank to everyone who wrote a comment and sent it to me via email :)

My first few days in Shanghai

I know that it’s about time for a new post, but I’ve been kind of busy during the last few days. But now I want to let you know what has been going on here in Shanghai.
Our arrival was great. After filling out a few forms in the airplane we had to go through some body scanners that were checking our body temperature. The government seems be doing a lot in order to keep the swine flu out of China. Luckily, we all passed the first test. Immigration was no problem because we had all gotten our VISA in advance and after we had picked up our luggage and gone through customs, there actually was someone to pick us up and take us to the dormitory at the university campus.
The rooms are not great, but it is a place where we can stay for little money and there is air conditioning. Outside, we have been having about 30 degrees Celsius during the last week. Furthermore, we have one desk per person and also internet access. Please don’t ask about the connection speed…
In the evening of our arrival day we went to a Chinese restaurant near the university. We just picked one randomly and it was a lot of fun to eat at that place. In almost all restaurants at which we have had dinner so far the menu was written in Chinese characters, which means that we couldn’t read it. Luckily, at our first night the waiter knew two English words: meat & chicken. That narrowed down our choice and we pointed at random items on the list. We ended up with some pork, chicken, ribs and a plate with vegetables. And we loved the food. So far, I haven’t had anything to eat which I disliked! I’m always thrilled around dinner time because every time the food is so different and still good. On our second day we went to dinner with a Chinese friend who had been to the University of Karlsruhe during the last semester. His name is Kaibo and he is a great guy. He was incredibly friendly and helpful and made our first days great. Kaibo, if you ever read this: you’re the man! Thank you so much!! We told him to go ahead and order food for us since (again) we weren’t able to read the menu. This was my first time to try swine ears without even knowing :) But I can’t complain. Except for the gristly part, it didn’t taste bad! By the way: 5 people ate dinner including appetizer and desert and we only had to pay about 17€ total!!
Speaking of food: the procedure of eating is a little different over here. Usually, several dishes are ordered and placed on a rotatable platform. Then you rotate the platform whenever you want to try something from the other side. That way, everyone gets to try some of each dish. If you can’t imagine, look at the pictures below.

IN: Chinese food, friendliness and helpfulness of the locals
OUT: cars that honk their horn for no reason, scooters with headlights switched off while it’s dark outside

Here you can see the typical set-up when eating at a restaurant. In the middle you can find the swine ears that I was talking about:


This is another way of eating your meal. It is called "hot pot". You cook the meat and other foods in the pot in the middle. Everyone at the table uses the same pot. It is similar to "fondue", but you don't use just water for the cooking. The red half is a very spicy soup, the other one is milder and you can actually taste the spices. Very yummy:

Dubai

Hey everyone!
I was writing this while sitting at the airport in Dubai. My laptop batteries died before I was able to upload this, so just read what I wrote a few days ago:
We got here this morning at 6am local time and our next flight to Shanghai is going to leave in a few hours at 2:50am. As you might have recognized, we have had a lot of time to spend here in Dubai so far and of course, we didn’t just stay at the airport. Luckily, we were able to store our luggage, so we only took our backpacks filled with swimsuit, towel, camera and a few other things and went sightseeing.
First stop: jumeirah beach!
By the way, it is not only hot over here (35 degrees Celsius = close to 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade), the humidity makes it feel even worse. You don’t have to do much and you will start sweating like crazy when you are outside. So the beach seemed like the perfect place to go.
The taxi driver was pretty nice and since he used a taximeter, I believe that the price was fair. At the beach we had the idea to spend the day at that part of the beach that belongs to the 5 star Hilton hotel. So we went ahead and asked how much that was going to be. The answer was “two fifty per person for the whole day”. In our eyes that seemed great because 2,50 AED equals about 50 cents and we decided to go in and pay. We also found out that towels were included in that price, also the use of changing rooms, showers and the hotel pool!! We thought that we were very lucky, but then it turned out that “two fifty” meant two hundred and fifty which equals 50 Euros. That was a little too much for our budget and we went to the regular beach. I admit, it was kind of naïve to think that we could stay at the Hilton beach for that cheap, but we were still pretty disappointed.
Anyway, we found a place to lie down at and it was crazy hot outside. There’s nothing wrong with that, just the fact that the water seemed to be even hotter than the air which made it impossible to cool off. That’s why we left the beach right after our last water bottle was empty and we decided to go to a place with air conditioning.
Second stop: Dubai Mall! The largest mall that I have ever seen and just the food court seemed to have the size of the mall near my hometown. Not only the 1200 stores inside this 4-story-building were very impressive, but also the humongous aquarium and the ice rink inside (!) the mall. All in all, it seemed very American, which was a little disappointing in my eyes. I got to eat at Taco Bell which I hadn’t done in quite a while, but that’s about it. All the other stores weren’t much cheaper than German stores. The fountains outside were pretty impressive. It reminded me of the fountains in front of the Bellagio in Las Vegas, but from my point of view the show in Dubai was better. The tallest skyscraper that exists on this earth is right next to Dubai Mall. It was unbelievable how high it was (800m). My neck started hurting after a little while. But I heard that the construction of a taller building in some other country is already in progress.
Of course, we were hungry by that time, but since “Ramadan” is taking place right now, Islamic people are not allowed to eat until the sun has set. This means that 4 hungry Germans have to wait until 7pm until they can buy anything to eat. Seems unusual to us, but there was no other way for us than to wait and eat when it was time for dinner.
We waited outside and watched the sunset:

















After the Mall, we went to Dubai Creek, a small river that is situated in the middle of the city. We were told that a nice thing to do would be to cross this river by water taxi. So we did. Water taxi seems to be another word for an ancient small ship. It was pretty scary, but a nice experience and it only cost 20 Cents to go from side to another. Eventually, we took the taxi to the airport and took a shower at a hotel (man, this felt good!) and got some rest at the hotel bar. 10$ for one small beer was expensive, but they had wireless internet and we were tired so we stayed until it was time to catch our airplane. In summary, Dubai was interesting and there were many things that I hadn’t seen before, but I don’t think that I will ever want to live there. If you want to fill up your car, one liter of petrol only costs 0,30€ and the buildings were amazing, but I wouldn’t want go there for more than a few days. Now it’s time to go, I’m looking forward to Shanghai and I’m very excited!

Tobias

Here you can see us (me, Flo, Andi and Sven) in Dubai:





(if you click on the picture, it will enlarge!)




The world's largest skyscraper...

















...and me right in front of it:

The Great Wall of China 2.0

Unfortunately, my laptop batteries died at Dubai airport. Now that I am in China, the Chinese government doesn’t seem to like this website. I have no access to it. I guess it is blocked. Luckily, one of my German fellow students has found a way to overcome the Great Wall 2.0! For more information (in German), check this out:
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-56756404.html
Thank you for your understanding!

Tobias