Hrm...

Thursday, October 25th, 2007



So, continuing on from yesterday…

How’s the weather you must wonder. Well it’s been on and off I suppose. I wasn’t really well prepared to come to China, packing wise. I basically just threw clothes in a suitcase and left. While I was packing I asked my dad how the weather was in the winter here and he said it was just like summer. Not even thinking about that, I just threw summer clothes in my suitcase. But when I went home one last time before I left for the city again, my mom asked me why I wasn’t bringing a jacket. I told her my dad told me it would be summer while I was in China and basically called us crazy. So then I ran up to my room, grabbed some winter clothing and threw them in my suitcase. If I could go back , I would have definitely put a little more into packing! The weather is getting kind of cold here…or just colder. High 60’s, low 70’s, which really isn’t bad. Just a little colder than we were use to from the sweating heat, like when we would just go for a walk outside and come back drenched with sweat, oh, those were the days.

Let’s see what else…youtube has been blocked! They say it’s because the US is givng the Dalai Lama an award. Here’s an article about it, http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,2197690,00.html. Yea…so we found out youtube was blocked this weekend. Not that it’s an essential part of our life or anything, but rather nice when we don’t feel like doing much of anything else. Wikipedia is also blocked in China. But when in China, anything can happen, so we still get our resources.:D

On Tuesday, the international students were given the chance to go to the Volkswagon Factory and the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The Volkswagon Factory was about an hour and a half away from Fudan. It was actually pretty cool to be given a tour of the factory, or just parts of it. They didn’t allow photography during the tour so no pictures:( It’s rather interesting to see how each part is made and actually see the car being assembled. I don’t have a Volkswagen but I’m sure cars are assembled similarly. An interesting fact that we did learn was that everyday, 2000 Volkswagen cars are produced from their 3 factories. Interesting right? I thought so. Afterwards we went to the Shanghai Stock Exchange, which is nothing like the stock exchange in New York by the way. It was rather empty actually, but that also could have been the fact that we got there kind of late. But even then, the guy that gave us a tour said that the employee’s hardly come in anyway since we’re so technologically advanced, everything is done on the computer.

Hrm…I guess that’s all I’m pondering about at the moment. I don’t really have any classes today so I watched Life is Beautiful, applied for some summer internships, and updated my blog. But the days not over! I’m going work on my group presentation for International Political Economies and revise my paper for Westerners in China. This wasn’t as interesting as I thought it may be, but I hope you enjoyed anyway! I’m sure I’ll write sometime after the weekend since it’s going to be Halloween galore. So, have a good weekend!