When we began classes we were given Chinese names that were literal translations of our names (in my case Qiaojina which is pronounced Chow-Gee-Nar) with no meaning, and after a few weeks of getting to know us our teacher wanted to give us real Chinese names with proper meaning and characters.

She went round the class asking each person if they wanted certain things in their names such as qualities or words (and thus some people came away with names like Cherry Blossom and Red Rose) and also tried to make them sound like our actual names (Jordan became Jiao Dan, the wonderful Fried Egg). The Cantonese people in our class had their Cantonese or English names converted into Mandarin and translated, with Lucy Liu becoming something along the lines of Rowing through Western Rain which sounds more like a Native American name than anything.

Some people got inside jokes for names, most notably of which was Cameron a guy famed for for his ability to manage to get dumplings every day without fail from this dodgy looking place (something he likes to call ‘Dumpling O’Clock’s), so soon as Zhao LaoShi got to him, our little gang in the corner called out “JiaoZi Dian!” and that is forever what he shall be known as.

Now fun and games aside, some of us really got a better draw than others. Sean became Incredibly Handsome; Ben is now Intelligent King and me? Well, I think mine was quiet apt. We’d already translated my last name into Money or Rich so I was quite excited to find out my first name, which was… pause for effect… Zhi Na (both 4th tone) which means Smart and Beautiful. So my full name is Rich, Smart and Beautiful. Nice one. It came really close to being something to do with dumplings though, so I’m pretty glad I lucked out on that one!!

6:07 am  •  12 April 2012  •  5 notes

Well, when I say ‘hospital’ I mean the bed in my dorm of the International College building - but the hospital is right next door and I did spend most of yesterday there, which was time enough to draft this blog as an email to my dad.

2 nights ago I developed a fever, I’d not been too well before that, but had seemed to be getting better, but I was incredibly cold and my friend told me that I was really hot. Next came a mostly sleepless night of feeling freezing then boiling and in the morning I was promptly collected by; the University of Manchester co-ordinator, Russelle; George Xu, the ZJU Co-ordinator; and a Chinese volunteer student clutching a medical Chinese-English dictionary, and was escorted to the hospital.

The experience there was really odd, half because I felt like I was dying a little bit, half because it was really odd. The waiting times are really short and you pay for a card and an appointment with the doctor (They spelt my name as ‘Pnce’, not even close.) before you even set foot into the clinic area. Then there’s a lightning fast waiting time compared to England before your appointment with the doctor. Now this was altogether quite strange - the office is not only shared with another doctor who is consulting their patient at the same time, but also a queue of people waiting who can all listen into your problems.

After a quick chat I was told I had to have a blood test (a stool with your arm stuck through a counter that was pretty much just a hole in the wall) and after one failed attempt at finding a vein I had the tiniest amount of blood taken and less than 15 minutes later I had my results back. My Chinese volunteer, Li Hu (Lewis), translated and told me they’d found something wrong with my blood. Going back to the doctor, he prescribed 3 days on an IV drip and the ancient Chinese traditional medicine of Tylenol.

The drip room was the oddest part. An IV is seemingly prescribed for every ailment so there’s a sort of waiting room with loads of abbotoir-like hooks hanging from the ceiling. And there you wait for your body to take in the IV.

Luckily, I don’t have to spend the full 3 days in hospital, just return for 3 hours every day to have it administered, but it’s still a great drain on my time - and at 450 RMB, it was also a great drain on my resources.

9:33 pm  •  10 April 2012  •  4 notes

9:17 pm  •  6 April 2012  •  1 note

So here we are at the dawn of my 7th day in China, and as it’s the weekend we have a lot of free time to do what we want. A lot of people are making the great adventures on the bullet train to Beijing and Shanghai, but as I’m travelling afterwards I figured this would be a great chance to see more of our host city, Hangzhou.

We met with some Chinese students at the main Zhejiang University campus (There are 4 or 5 dotted all around Hangzhou.) who are very kindly spending their day taking us around some art galleries, shops and perhaps a café to sample the Chinese version of coffee. We’re yet to try the Pizza Hut here, but we’ve heard very good things about it - apparently it’s better than our Western versions.

I feel I should apologise for not updating until now, our internet has been a bit touch-and-go, and there isn’t really enough time to update with the schedule they’ve got us on! Now we have free time, I can upload all of the blogs I’ve written and the photos I’ve taken, especially the Engrish - we managed to illegally access Facebook yeserday which was way more exciting and indulgent than it should have been, so there’ll be an entire album dedicated to it in no time!

9:09 pm  •  6 April 2012  •  2 notes

afterdarks:

Less than a week to go and I am completely unprepared and terrified. My friends ask me “So when are you flying out?” and all of a sudden I’m not saying next month or x amount of weeks, it’s “This Friday.” I was out at the SU and I came to the realisation that instead of being out with my friends and having a good time, at that exact time 7 days later I will be hurtling through the air over France and Germany. Not that I have a fear of flying or anything, just that it’s actually so close to happening.

It’s not so much the flying that has made me stressed and a bit worriedsome, it’s the total sense of unpreparedness it’s left me with. The problems with my visa (which I will get onto shortly) have made me miss a lot of classes and important meetings with my documentary group, and my university deadlines have meant that I don’t really have the time anymore to brush up on as much Chinese as I wanted to (I wanted to join the Intermediate class and I don’t know what the parameters of that are) or do nearly enough shopping. 

Now we’re in the final week, there are 5 days until I fly and I have to go out on 2 shooting days, travel to Manchester to sort out my visa with the rush service, go see The Hunger Games with Cathy, hold a ‘going to China, bye!’ drinks night for all my friends and do a buttload of shopping and washing and then pack it all into my suitcase and try not to cry. Everything’s a mixture of excitement, fear, anticipation and other things that I can’t even put a name to so I’m going to sign off with a gif.

 

Accidentally posted this to my main blog because I’m an idiot.

6:35 am  •  25 March 2012  •  2 notes

…and my computer is malfunctioning fabulously. It is completely refusing to run Rosetta Stone so it seems my pre-study studies have to come to an end, until I get my Lonely Planet phrasebook tomorrow that is! 

I don’t even have my visa yet, which is slightly concerning. Lloyds TSB had a little bit of a panic when the payment tried to go through and they put a block on my card that I discovered when I was attempting to pay for my weekly shop (as if the block i had to remove when I purchased the flights to china and the insurance weren’t enough to let them know i’m going abroad!) so I’m travelling to London on Wednesday to get it 100% sorted there and then.  I’m not panicking too much, I met a girl called Nea (a girl from my uni who is also on the SCP Hangzhou programme) and she got her visa on the 13th of this month after submitting it on the 8th which is only 2/3 working days, so hopefully I should get it before Wednesday.

As the departure date draws ever closer I’m getting more and more scared of flying alone. Luckily my first flight to Moscow is an overnight one, with takeoff set to be for 11:30pm, arriving at 5am local time so I’m going to bring Nytol and ear plugs with me so hopefully I can sleep if I’m warm enough! I’ve only got to wait for a few hours in Sheremetyevo International Airport as a girl on the course named Ieva is catching the same connecting flight as me so I’ll have someone to keep me company for an hour or two. Hopefully if we check in at the same time we can get seats next to each other as well, having someone to talk to on the 9 hour leg of the trip would be greatly appreciated! 

I’ve been talking to my mum a lot recently (Especially today, Happy M day!), and she’s been really supportive about my going abroad - I broke the news about applying with GEPIK and The British Council to teach in both China and Korea for a few years and she took it really really well. My best friend Catherine is coming with me so I’m really really excited for the future. I might have to change this blog to ‘Georgie in Asia’, not just China! 

7:00 pm  •  18 March 2012  •  2 notes

DISCLAIMER: This is nothing to do with China, but I fully support this cause and I’ve already got my posters and my action kit on the way. 

This man is revolting. He is #1 on the list of The Hague’s list of Worst Living Criminals and yet no one knows his name. He remains at large because he is completely shrouded from the public eye. Few know his name, even fewer have heard of his crimes. He abducts children turns them into soldiers for his rebellion, arming them with guns and forcing them to murder and mutilate the faces of anyone who stands in his way - often including their parents. He takes girls and forces them to be sex slaves. The ones too small to wield weapons are given whistles and are sent as the first wave, blowing on them in a bid to intimidate his enemies. Whistles against guns - definitely a fair fight.

He doesn’t do this for any cause or political purpose but to instill fear in people and secure his place in ‘power’. He calls his abducted children the Lord’s Resistance Army, AKA the LRA. He has managed to abduct over 30,000 children and force them to be child soldiers in Central Africa and yet nobody knows. Because his main defense is his non-existent infamy, Kony 2012 was created, a movement to bring him the same level of fame as the people who take up coveted space on our glossy magazines, when he has that the world must unite against him and demand his arrest. Governments cannot ignore the will of the people. 

A child does not chose when, where or how it is born, nor does it choose its circumstance. These children did not ask for this, this is not the will of any deity - no ‘higher plan’ and this serves no purpose to the growth of mankind. A man has been getting away with something in Africa that would have had him on the front page of every newspaper and the first thing on the lips of every reporter. How he has gotten away with stealing the innocence of more than 30,000 children over the course 20 years with us all coming to aid them is completely beyond me - especially in a world that we so love to see as progressive, modern and civilized.

These children need not be invisible, Joseph Kony’s atrocities need not continue. Something can be done about it, but first they need to be brought into light. Please get involved and help raise awareness. Take half an hour out of your day and watch this video. Share it with your friends on Facebook. Reblog this post or share it twitter. Whatever is in your means, do it. Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come - that time is now.

We will not stop. We will not fear. We will fight war.

(Source: invisiblechildren.com, via afterdarks)

8:24 pm  •  6 March 2012  •  307,992 notes

For some reason I thought it’d be smart to do my university work all this week and totally missed doing any of my Chinese studies. Now I am paying for it. 我在学习,我答应！

University agreed to give me a grant to help with my finances and costs of studying in Hangzhou! As I was meant to be going with Matt before he dropped out, it was agreed that we’d get £600 (¥6000) to split between us, but I don’t know if this means that since he’s dropped out if I’ll be getting the full £600 or just £300 (¥3000) instead. I don’t know if that’ll be how it works but we shall see! 

Next Wednesday Cathy is coming with me to get some little things for the programme. I’ve written a list and I don’t know if I’m being a bit too over-the-top with what I need to take but I’d rather be safe than sorry! I’ve been debating under-packing and only taking enough clothes for just over a week and a half because there are washing machines and dryers in the International Halls at Yuquan Campus in Zhejiang University so I might just brave them! I’ve looked at the virtual map of the University and it looks absolutely amazing. So excited to go! 

25天，直到我到中国去！

11:59 am  •  4 March 2012  •  1 note

Ok, that might be a slight exaggeration, and at least I’m not getting Typhoid or Hepatitis A now but just let me have this, OK? 

I had a little freak out with the Nurse, I explained about my phobia and she was really understanding and reassuring, she told me it was no worse than the HPV and suggested I look away and listen to my music, and after a glass of water and a talk about all of the vaccinations I was going to be having everything was all fine. She was about to give me a Hep B injection first and then my Typhoid but then suddenly stopped and told me they actually cost money (£75 dear god.) and she completely forgot to tell me. I won’t lie, I was completely relieved - Hep B would have been a course of 3 injections over 3 weeks and (I’d probably commit) instead of having 5, I’ve only had 2 now. 

Once we’d gotten over that she gave me my Typhoid, telling me that I was lucky enough to get the last shot in the clinic and that everyone else would have to have tablets. I’d worked myself up a fair bit and was shaking but it wasn’t that bad, I didn’t pass out so that’s one up my Polio booster! 

Next came the Hep A, and after a little break she told me it wasn’t as bad as the first one. She lied. The thing had DOUBLE the amount that was in the first one and stung like a motherbitch. She’s booked me to come back in 6 months to get my booster and I won’t have to have another one for 20 years though. UPSIDES! 

Then we had a little chat about Malaria and told me that there’s very few cases in China, but to just keep my mosquito repellent on me, and told me something very interesting - did you know that mosquito repellent doesn’t actually repel, make you smell unpleasant or make you seem in any way unappetising to them. They make you invisible. As in the mosquito is flying along and doesn’t even know you’re there. Why can’t they make this for snakes or poisonous spiders or something similar!?

I have this handy little vaccine record card now as well, so I can keep note of what I have, what I’ll need and when I need them. It’s full of these little symbols as well, so if I go out shopping and the word for something completely slips out of my head then I’ll just whip this out and be a complete pro.

END OF MAMMOTH POST

7:13 am  •  24 February 2012  •  2 notes

And it’s made me realise how terrifyingly close the trip is. I decided to brush up on my Mandarin before I go an started the Rosetta Stone dvds, I’ve got 45 more units to do in only 37 days! 

PROTIP to all language students: Don’t learn a language and then rarely speak it for the next 3 years because you’ll forget almost everything!

Seriously, this is my life now.

There’s a pre-departure briefing in London on Saturday, which I’m looking forward to. It’s going to be a good chance to meet people before we’re all thrown together in a foreign country, and it’ll be nice to happen upon familiar faces at the airport. I know I can have a pretty abrasive sense of humour as well, so it’ll wean them  all into me!! I’m also hoping that my questions on how much to pack will be answered as well - I take far too much when I go home for a weekend, imagine how bad I’m going to be in China! 

11:27 am  •  21 February 2012