No.1 High school

Checked out of hotel early in the morning around 8am so didn’t have time for breakfast. Then walked to the university and had Chinese lesson which was nice, really enjoyed it. We checked into the university accommodation, the international students hotel in room 1811 sharing with Roxy. We unpacked a bit and then went to the German bakery for lunch where I had a pretzel, a pain au chocolat and a almost real bruine bolletje. It was so nice, quite pricey for China but really so yummy breads.

Our room on the Nanjing university campus in the 5 star Xi Yuan Mandarin hotel which is the accommodation for international students

Later at 13.30pm we boarded buses and after literally taking 20 minutes to get out of the university street, after causing a crash on the main road, we finally headed towards the Nanjing no.1 high school. There we had a short presentation about the history of the school and a tour around the university museum and also had our picture taken with the Chinese student volunteers. We were each assigned to a local student and they took us around the city. This was so lovely.

My partner was called Vera or “Si si” as her nickname. She was 17 years old but I really thought she looked more like 13 or 14 years old. She was very sweet and could speak English really well. She participates in a lot of English language speaking competitions where their spoken English is judged. Her next one is this Sunday. Vera lives 1 hour by subway away from the school. She leaves every day at 6am and gets back home at 6pm in the evening so quite long and tiring days. Even in the weekends, she has extra English tutoring at home with an American teacher, she calls it foreign lessons. Her parents want her to wake up at 7am during the weekends but she usually wakes up at 9am, which she also thinks is too late.

My buddy Vera

She took me around the Gan Xi residence, had dinner at a local restaurant and walked around the Confucius temple looking at the little stalls and buying some souvenirs with our names on them. I had a really nice drink, think it was called glue rice ball drink or something, it was very sweet and sort of jelly rice balls in it.

Vera at the Gan Xi Residence

Rice glue ball drink

It was a really good experience to be with local students today because they could tell us all the tips and tell us what’s good to have, for example the rice ball drink and this other sort of soup I had at the restaurant.

Rice and bean soup

 

Vera and her classmate friends

Vera’s dream is to become a film/tv producer and she would like to study at university either in Beijing, Shanghai or abroad. Her English accent was really good and she was easy to understand unlike most Chinese people I’ve spoken to.

I got laughed at in the lift of the hotel by two Chinese women. I have no idea why. They said something, pointed at me and burst out laughing. It was a bit strange.

In the evening we went to Ellen’s bar and then to a gay bar with a drag show. I joined some Chinese people at a table and they gave me lots of snacks. They were really friendly and kept on smiling and saying things to me, but in the end sort of gave up because they realized I couldn’t actually speak Chinese, so sad. It was funny to see the drag show. The “ladies” looked really good and it was even hard to tell that they were actually men. The he-she’s were really convincing. Some guys sang on stage and other men/ladies came up and put money, 100 RMB each, into their shirt, pocket or pants.