First Day in Hangzhou, Study China begins

This morning I had to leave Beijing for my train down to Hangzhou. Decided to regain some sleep at the hostel as everyone else had left for the wall at 7am. Had some fruit for breakfast seeing as I was seriously low on any kind of vitamin by now. Once again another high speed train for 6 and a half hours. 

Made it into Hangzhou station by 9pm but turns out Hangzhou is a lot busier than I was used to and so getting a taxi became the next leg of my journey. Over an hour of queueing got me into the backseat of a legitimate taxi finally. I say legitimate as throughout my wait I was approached countless times by taxi drivers offering to take me back but at a fixed price. I found out later this price is more like 3 or 4 times the standard rate.

International dormitories Zhejiang University

A short taxi ride and a few points in the right direction got me to the international dormitory for Zhejiang University. Turns out I was probably the last person to arrive and so I was greeted by almost all my course friends sat in the lobby beers in hand. Only one thing for it I figure.

Bags went straight into room and I went straight out to find beer. Not long after we were on our way out to a club which turned out to be one of the best in Hangzhou. Being the only ‘westerners’ in a club has its advantages. One being your dancing (whether it is good or not) will most likely be the best on the dance floor. We managed to recreate an Inbetweeners Movie style situation whereby any dance move we pulled out was instantly imitated by anybody around us.  Although surrounded by western friendly Asians and Russian dancers I had started feeling the effect of the long day creeping up  on me again so pulled out at a respectable 3am to prepare for the first day of lessons.

The next day began with an orientation lecture where we were introduced to most of our lecturers and advisors. A hangover cloud hung over almost everyone in the room and so nobody really paid much attention but still we got to find out about all the rules that we would no doubt end up bending and breaking.

For the beginning of the course we had all been given a food card with a small amount of money added to it to get us by. It was first used at the University cafeteria on our campus. The food was fine but chosen with a pot luck approach but seemed to be pretty okay.

Smallest beer ever!

This afternoon was the first language lesson. Our teacher spoke pretty decent English and was plenty patient considering the level of Mandarin that we all held. At this point I can comfortably say Hi and how are you? Not exactly fluent but turns out its pretty hard.

This evening the University held an opening ceremony followed by a buffet style meal. This was amazing. Any food I could think of plus industrial sized ice cream tubs. Also possibly the most adorably small cups of beer, clearly the Chinese were not the biggest drinkers.

By now I had seen a lot of the area we are staying and it was clear the University campus that we were in is pretty awesome. Running tracks, sports courts for pretty much any sport and swimming nearby. Not to mention the rooms being pretty decent too. Somehow we managed to get given a football by someone and having not done any sport since arriving I was keen for a game. It was a pretty decent way to meet the guys on the course and also play against some of the locals too. Not too mention sweat out some of the alcohol in my bloodstream still. And then sweat some more.

Shower, Shop, Club….

…Bed

Some of us at The Vineyard