Thursday, 12 February 2009

• Outside the Tourist-Friendly Zone of China - Attending University

  Guest post submitted by figachewy
  written three years prior
  
  Right now I'm staying at Hainan University and I gotta say it's nice to be finally getting the "college experience." It's fun just being in a new place with other students and just exploring the campus.

  Here's a picture of my dorm building. The white dude randomly doing tai chi is my friend from Michigan, Aaron.

  

  
  In China, it's always hot during the summer. When I first got here, it was like 37-39 degrees celsius (which is in the 90s for F). Even worse, the weather is super humid. Night time temperature here on the island of  Hainan is probably the same as the day time. I have definitely never sweat so much in my life. It's so hot in fact, that people don't even use dryers -- they just hang their clothes out, like in this case:

  
  

   

  There's also a beach close to the university. It doesn't rival Kailua or anything, but it is swimmable. I've swam in this water several times already, and haven't needed any amputating. Here's two of my friends posing on top of a raft at the beach.

  

   

  Here's me with some fellow UH students and some local Chinese eating "Chao Bing," which literally translates as "fried ice." They have these things that look like stoves, but instead of cooking stuff, they freeze... you can think of it like a Jamba Juice made in a wok. The great thing is that you can pick whatever fruit or juices you want to be in yours. My friend in the front left, Gao Feng (means "tall wind") for example, had a beer chao bing.

  

   

  Just this past weekend, I went to the zoo. It was a pretty fun time. Here I am about to go feed the elephants some apples.

  
  

  
  

  Here I am at the bird petting zoo feeding ducks. Shortly after the picture was taken, they were slaughtered for our lunch.

  

  
  There was one bird there that I thought was the ugliest, most foul-looking thing I've ever seen. ... but at least he had a good personality and a sense of humor.

  

   

  One of the cooler parts of the zoo was the monkey island. It was an island just full of little guys like the one below. I tried starting a conversation by telling him how we shared approximately 98% of the same DNA. He ignored me and proceeded to scratch his testicles.

  

  
  They also put on a little show where monkeys were doing tricks like raising flags, playing basketball, and dancing. Like in America though, show business is tough here. It's so tough that if the monkeys mess up on a trick, they're shot and killed on the spot, as you can see.

  

   
  Finally, here's Ernest, Jon, Me and Kiki getting our picture taken with a snake. The snake freaked us out at first, but after playing some ice breaker games with him, we felt a lot more comfortable.

  

  Alright, well anyways guys, I've gotta head back to school and get ready to pull a muscle or two in Wu Shu class. Zai jian!

  Did you attend college in another country? How was your experience? If you haven't, in which country would you want to attend college and why?

  
  

   

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