Departure Friday 9th August
The time has finally come where I have finished packing and ready to fly, well almost – I am frantically trying to download multiple series onto my laptop to pass time on my 12hour BA flight from Heathrow Airport to Shanghai Pudong Airport!
Unfortunately the plane was delayed by 3.5hours however I soon forgot about this when I was upgraded to Business class! Along with the upgrade, I met a group of other SCP students who were absolutely lovely (we stood out like sore thumbs, all 20 odd year olds nervously huddled together amongst the Chinese business men & families).
Saturday 10th
Finally landed in Shanghai and met with fellow peers, we all got along straight away and you soon find out you have more in common than you could have imagined. It is safe to say Manchester University chose candidates with similar accomplishments and interest. We all had our first Chinese lunch together in the airport, whilst waiting for our bus at 3pm to take us to Zhejiang University (amongst the top 3 universities in the country!).
Zhejiang University Student Advisors, who we were able to reply on for the next 3 weeks, met us at our meeting point. In total there were around 70 students that were making their way across to the University on Saturday (there was also a choice of arriving Sunday and transferring the university, but it seems everybody had the same instinct, to arrive a day early in order to settle in).
It was a nice surprise at check in to be allocated individual rooms (we thought we were sharing). The first thing I learnt was the logic behind Chinese room numbers anywhere you go… I was allocated room 2411 translated as follows:
(2) = the building (4) = the floor (11) = room number
As soon as I arrived in my room I put the air con on! You have no idea had humid it is! We later received our Chinese SIM cards and canteen cards (both had money on to get us by). We also bought 4L bottles of water to brush our teeth with for the next few weeks as brushing your teeth with the tap water is ill advised.
We has dinner in the international canteen, this is not advised! Though it was our only choice, it was not the best insight into the food I would be eating for the next 3 weeks. There are many other, better canteens to eat at on campus!
Sunday 11th:
9:30am campus tour (the 14:30 was cancelled as it would be too hot). We were shown where the supermarket/fruit store/post office/bank /bars/stadium were located. The Chinese student advisor was lovely, wrote down the main shopping area for us!
We later walked around HangZhou all afternoon to discover the city, which would be our home for the next 3 weeks. We were sure to drink plenty of bottled water (an average 3.5L-4L per day).
