My Campus!

I have arrived at the Chinese University of Hong Kong for the Summer School programme. Here I will study Chinese (Mandarin) for three weeks. The campus is stunningly beautiful. The whole area is built on a hill, with buildings scattered through the forested hillsides. The campus is a city in the city. Everything you need to survive, such as a supermarket, canteens and even a hairdresser, you can find within the campus. A few pictures can illustrate this...

My dorm room. Nice and spacious.

My roommate: Ming Pan. He is a Cantonese native who lives in Sydney.

This is the view from our dorm room.

Here we are taking a tour around the campus. Note: very sweaty.

The main campus, with fancy entrance.

Yes, there is even a swimming pool.

The gym at my hostel. I just have to take the elevator down 7 stories to get there. Time to start working out again!

Fully equipped washing room.

Bathroom on the 6th floor.

On the orientation day, those who wanted to had the opportunity to take a test to determine their level in Chinese. Because I felt my Chinese had improved a lot since I first came to China, I took the test. According to the teacher, my speaking is good enough for the level 2 class, but my reading and writing is only at the of the level 1 - upper class. That makes sense, since I have only been practicing Chinese through speaking with locals. My reading and writing did not improve by a lot. With this feedback, she offered me the choice. I could start in the lower class and go up one level if I felt that I could handle it, or I could start in the higher class and drop a level if it were to hard. I chose to start in the higher class. Tomorrow I'll find out if I can handle it!


P.S.: The weather in Hong Kong is not very pleasant. It is too damn hot and humid here for me. I am pretty much permanently sweating while I'm outside. Good thing there is AC everywhere.