Our first little steps in China

After half a year of preparation it was finally time to leave The Netherlands and leave for the (now I know) beautiful Xiamen. I left Deventer at half pas eleven last Wednesday with my parents and picked up my sister in Maastricht. From there we left for Dusseldorf were I we met Rob. After checking in and going trough custom (of course every freaking gate beeps when I go through :S) we set foot towards Xiamen. It all went pretty smooth and we didn't encounter any problems. The only bad thing about the trip was not getting any sleep at all. So when we arrived we were pretty messed up, and then we found out that there was no one waiting for us at the airport. We made a little mistake with the arrival time. The printed paper said that we would arrive at 16.45 so we added the eight hours of time difference and told the staff to pick us up around midnight. So they weren’t expecting us for eight hours!

We managed to find the address of our apartment but we were a bit afraid of the cost of taking the cab. We finally decided that it was the only way of getting there and took the cab. After a trip of 20 minutes we arrived at our apartment and the cab cost us (Dutch cab drivers pay attention) only 4,50 Euros! Talk about cheap! We quickly settled in our apartment and we met some of the other Dutch students who arrived a few days before us. We quickly hit it off and started to mingle under the pleasure of some beers. After we spoke for an hour or so we decided to go to McDonalds with the whole group. Unfortunately cab drivers always say that they know the place even if they don't... so everybody ended up somewhere else! After a few phone calls we managed to find each ocher and had diner. After that we went to the wallmarkt and bought a few things. It was there that I started to notice how special people find us. Everybody looks at us because we are almost the only western people around here. They don't even hide the fact that they stare at you and only a few dare to say hello. It is actually quite fun but it gets annoying after a while or while you're eating chicken... (you don't want people to stare at you when you eat chicken. You simply can't eat chickenwings in a charming way.). After the Wallmart we went home again and watched a movie with all the Dutch students. I decided at twelve o'clock to leave and get some rest.

This morning Rob and I got a free breakfast from the Dutch coaches to welcome us. It was a private dinner with only the Dutch coaches, Rob and myself. This was because the other students already had their introduction. After that diner we met in the lobby with the other students and had our first meeting. We spoke about the assignments and we were able to ask questions. At three o'clock we had the official CHECK-IT kick-off were we were supposed to be dressed nice. So we suited up! Sounds nice, but try wearing a suit on the hottest moment of the day (and it is hot here!!) and walk towards the CHECK-IT office. It was hot as hell and when we arrived at the office everybody was floating away in their own sweat. But hey! It was official so we had to look good, and who wants to look good must suffer right? So we met the coaches and Chinese students who were all wearing shorts and T-shirts... DAMN! So we were a bit overdressed and swimming in our own sweat :P. We could already notice the first difference in culture after the first few sentences. The Chinese students and professors value respect a lot. So it is a bit weird to see how they treat each other. In Holland students are used to argue with a teacher and prove their own point. The Chinese students are very neat and take the word of the professor as the truth. They won't argue or say what they think to a person that is "ranked" higher then themselves. It is all very formal and official, which has its charms but I prefer to talk with a teacher on a normal level instead.

Monday will be our first working day, we will have two weeks to create a plan for our assignment. This means we will have to write down what we will be doing and how we are going to realize it. I am assigned to the website of CHECK-IT and will be responsible for creating the promotion DVD together with Rob. I noticed that I am the only non-programmer student so there is a good change I will come back with a basic knowledge of programming! That could come in handy in the future :P!

Thanks for reading and I hope I will have more stories soon! Thanks for the last comments as well! It is always nice to hear from the home front!

Frenkie!

(Written on: Friday, 28/08/2009 on 20:15 )