Sometimes in life, fate strikes and it become clear that certain things were just meant to happen.
This trip to China was one of those moments.
My little brother (Tom) and I had been planning an end-of-HSC backpacking trip around China since June. We’d booked almost everything, timed it to be across the Schoolies period and were pretty much ready to go.
Continue reading “Back to the Middle Kingdom”
Also the name of an elective offered at Zheda, for the whole three weeks that we actually showed up to our elective classes before realising they weren’t assessable…
**IF YOU DON’T WANT TO READ A WHOLE NOSTALGIC MEMORY POST THEN PLEASE SKIP TO THE KTV STORY NOW, I PROMISE IT IS WELL WORTH YOUR TIME**
I’ve been back for a while now. Like a long while. Actually just did the maths and I’ve been back in Sydney for about 7 months. Despite this lengthy period of time between living the life in China and thumping back to reality in Sydney, sometimes the post-ICS depression still hits hard – especially when you’re going back through photos (which I made the mistake of doing in an attempt to find some decent ones to send to my Nan in Melbourne).
After about seven weeks of living in China I was lucky enough to get a visit from Mum, Dad and a reluctant Tom (who really would’ve rather spent his holiday hanging out with his mates but got dragged to China for a week instead). To get the holiday off to the right start, Tom’s plane was delayed out of Sydney and he missed his connection in Hong Kong, so instead of landing 45 minutes after Mum and Dad he was due in six hours later. Continue reading “Hangin’ in Hangzhou”
Coming back from Shanghai three weeks ago, I was surprised at the feeling of relief when we got off the train at Hangzhou East Station. My thought at that moment was ‘wow, it’s nice to be home’.
About an hour later when I got back to my room at College the enormity of this thought really became apparent – Hangzhou is really starting to feel like home. Our tiny 2×5 metre rooms have now become the centre of our world, home to girls’ nights in and girls’ nights out, tea time, movie nights, witness to our last minute exam panic attacks and frantic writing an hour before our UTS assignments are due… Continue reading “Life.”
Once again we’ve come to a long weekend here in China. With no real plans, about a week before I decided to join a bunch of my friends in a trip to Shanghai. We took the Friday off class to extend our weekend out to four days and headed off late on Thursday afternoon (most of existing on around 2 hours sleep after the end of exams party the night before and the 8am class we had in the morning).
Contrary to popular belief, China has an astounding amount of long weekends. This semester alone we have one in April, one in May and one in June. Caught up in the midst of class and UTS assignments (cultural report anyone?) we kind of forgot that the first long weekend was approaching until our teachers reminded us on the Monday. Whoops. Continue reading “Beijingin’ around”
Living independently for the first time has definitely brought with it a steep learning curve, not to mention the development of lots of new skills that I previously never realised were necessary for everyday life. Here’s a quick list of what I’ve learnt so far: Continue reading “Five things I’ve learnt on exchange”
