Back from Korea, school starts anew
I’m back from Korea and really enjoyed my short visit there. The most surprising thing for me was that Seoul reminded me of my home in Canada. I visited two (of three) Certainly with differences, but I liked it a lot.
School in Tianjin has resumed, but with a twist now. My program is a joint-program between TUT (China) and TRU (Canada) and it’s not just students who get to go on exchange. Several teachers from TRU have come to China to teach our classes and it’s been fun to see some friendly faces I haven’t seen in a long time. I’ve started taking Managerial Economics and it seems to be an application of microeconomic principles. I’ve put my extra-curriculur language studies on temporary hold while I focus on school; for those of you who are new to my webstite I’ll be moving to Nanchang, Jiangxi in September to study Mandarin.
I’m still not certain if I will be required to return to Canada this summer. Going home for a visit would be a mixed blessing. Of course I miss my friends and family, but I’m not a rich man and could use that airfare money to take care of other expenses.
The internet connection in my dorm has been unreliable and slow all year, but it’s been totally not working since I returned from Korea. It just means it takes a special trip to the smoke-filled internet bar to catch up on email and my website. I really don’t like the internet bars in the local area and normally try to avoid them. In Canada, most teachers won’t even accept handwritten homework, but that’s the norm at my school in China; thus, students who come here are playing video games and smoking packs of cigarettes at a time. The environment isn’t very welcoming for working on a thoughtful essay. I’ve heard about some places that are very nice, but it seems they’re all far from my school. Playing video games after class is a very common activity for my classmates and guys like me simply are not the ideal customer for the owners of this place.
May 15th, 2006 at 6:47 am
Many Chinese students addicted themselves to Network Games which they spent a majority of of their time in.
As u mentioned, the Internet bars near TUT are really a awful place for staying in.
May 17th, 2006 at 8:33 pm
Yes, it’s really amazing to sit here and be surrounded by people playing Warcraft III, World of Warcraft, CS (Counter-Strike), and Freestyle (basketball). I have to work very hard to stay on top of my studies and have no time to play these games.
Today, one internet bar is putting new wires into the ceiling so the filthy bathroom isn’t working. The workers aren’t even near the bathroom so I cannot understand why it would be closed. It’s very unfortunate. The students sitting near me will be here for hours… I don’t know what they will do when they need a bathroom.
May 17th, 2006 at 11:20 pm
[...] I was just talking about how lovely this place is a few days ago. [...]