Day 7

Day 7

Yay we finally got to shop in china but it was a old street(老街). But at least we got to have free time shopping. So the first shop we went to was a shop selling some traditional biscuit and tea leaves. I bought a packet of the biscuit as it tasted really good. Then we went on walking down the street and bought even more food. Then we reached a shop selling fan.  It wasn't any ordinary fan with random pictures on it. We get to write something about us, e.g our name, then the guy will make a poem out of it and write in on the fan. It was really cool and I bought a couple of it. 

Actually there wasn't much to see and buy in the street as every store sells similar things, especially the food, even the price were all the same. So 30min of free time was enough for us to finish shopping and we went onto the bus and took a few hours of bus ride back to the airport. 

That was how our trip in china ended. I've learnt quite a lot about china in this trip and also got to bond as a class. Of course there's conflicts here and there and friendship were ruined in this trip. But I'm sure there's much more we gained from this trip. I felt that the trip was a really fun one even though there were bad times, like the circus, but looking on the bright side, I definitely learnt a real lot from the trip.

-yida :D

Day 6

Day 6

Today we went to some village which also show the life of past people. To be honest I found it kind of boring as we had been to similar place like this for the past few day, like 宏村. 

But something different today was we got to have a lecture. The lecturer was from a hefei university, and he gave us a talk on hefei. He pretty much summed up the whole of our journey these few days. He also went further telling us the life of china and things we didn't get to learn during the trip last few day. The thing is that it was a night lecturer at 9+ and I was abit tired so I couldn't really focus then. Nevertheless, I did learn something from the lecturer.

After the lecture left, the teacher decided that we should have a circle time since it was the last night in china. In the circle time, many of us talk about the trip; what we enjoyed, what we gained etc. it was kind of awkward actually but I didn't really care because I was falling asleep. Then we just went back to our room and I finally get to sleep in peace. 

-yida :)

Day 5

Day 5

We woke up super early at like 5am today to go and watch the sunrise. The tour guide say it's only a 50% chance to see sunrise in this season. Luckily, we got to see it! It was really beautiful, just imagine seeing the sun rise from the angle of a tall mountain. It was really a unforgettable experience. 

We then pack our stuff and left huang Shan. We took the cable car again down the mountain. This time I wasn't that scared as compared to yesterday. I managed to see the awesome scenery when taking the cable car.

After we left huang Shan, we went to a village called 宏村. It was just another village which the people in the past used to live in. We once again learn their lifestyle and nothing much.

Lastly we returned to our hotel and as usual, did our reflection. It was a boring day and I only enjoyed the sunrise and nothing else :(

-yida :)

Day 4

Day 4

Today we went to 黄山. It's a very tall mountain with beautiful scenery. We took the bus and went up the mountain halfway. We stopped halfway to take the cable car. Taking the cable car is a very exciting, and also scary experience for me. In the cable car, we can see very awesome scenery which we don't get to see in our daily life in singapore.  But Why scary? Well, it's because I have height phobia. I've always avoided cable car, and other things like roller coaster, as I was afraid of the height. However, today I finally took the first step to take the cable car. At the very start, I was scared, I didn't dared to look outside at the scenery. However, after the encouragement from the teachers, I tried to peek outside the window, and it was actually really beautiful. I couldn't help but to keep seeing it, and my phobia for height was gone naturally. 

After that we went to climb to the peak of the mountain and we enjoyed the scenery from there. Sad thing is there's lots of weird and disgusting bugs there so I was bothered by it the whole time.

It was a really great day as I learned that phobia is just an imaginary fear, which can be conquered easily as long as we think of it in another way.

-yida :D

Day 3

Day 3

Today is definitely one of the most awful day. We first went to the museum. It a pretty big museum with thousand of valuable bronze stuff left from the past. The museum wasn't that interesting to me so there isn't much to talk about.

After the museum, we went to the China Intangible Cultural Heritage Park. It was a outdoor park featuring the life of people in the past, like their houses and their form of entertainment. I saw many different stone wall with unique design/picture on it. Many of them were the picture of sun wukong. We then reach a stadium-like place. There were many animals there, chickens, horse, dogs etc. I didn't know why they were there until the show start. The first show was the chicken fight. Chickens were let out free and left there to fight until the time run out. Blood were everywhere on them but yet they still must fight to protect themselves. It was so cruel but it was the first time I watch such things so I was surprised instead. It wasn't until some of my classmate walk away feeling angry, or sad maybe, that I realize it was so cruel. However it does stop here, after visiting more places in the park, we came to our last stop, which was a circus. It wasn't any normal modern circus, it was a traditional real circus. At first, it look cool, the performers were doing awesome tricks and we were all enjoying the show. Then they brought out lions, real lions. They ordered them around, making them to do different actions.They roar when they refuse to, but still did it in the end. After awhile, the lions started to not obey them, and simply just sat there not doing anything despite several orders from the performer. Then they use the long wooden stick and hit them, hard. They literally hit it so hard. I was too shocked to do anything and I didn't want to continue watching it so I just went chatting with my classmates. It was really saddening to see this kind of animal abuse. We left halfway through the show. The class was very depressed after the circus show. Some were even so mad at it and I felt that their reaction were really too...... overboard. 

From this trip, I've learnt a lot. This is the first time I've seen animal being abused so badly, I didn't know animal abuse still exists. Imagine them being hit everyday, and forced to do things they don't want. Also I learnt that we should really control our emotion sometimes as it doesn't always happens that everyone will give in to you when you're angry/mad/sad.

-yida 

Day 2

Day 2

So today we went to hefei 45中学, and I met my adorable buddy, lefan. He started introducing me to the school by taking me to a walk around the school. There's classroom, obviously, and a few activities room such as history room, economic room and English room. These room are used for special lesson to allow the students to learn better. The first thing I noticed in the school is their classroom. The classroom is as big as our classroom in rv. However, they have a total of 60+people at least in one class, while we only have half of theirs, 34. Their tables are also much smaller compared to ours in rv. This shocked me as it is unbelievable to have so much students in a small classroom, and yet they still can happily learn new things in class. Not only the classroom, but also the toilets, it gives out a super unpleasant smell and the cleanliness of it was not that good, but in rv, our toilet are clean. This lead me to a thought, we are much fortunate than the student in china. We have cleaners to clean the toilet for us, and a big and clean classroom to provide us with such a good environment to study. On the other side, these china students have to share a classroom with 60 other people, and they don't have anyone to help them to clean their toilets, thus leaving it dirty. So from this, I can learn that we are much more lucky than them, and we shouldn't take these things for granted, instead we should learn to cherish and appreciate them.

After the lessons are over, I went to my buddy's house. It was a really great experience as his house is different from us. He lived with his parents and grandmother in a apartment. The living room was just as big as the rooms, so it's like a house with several rooms. After staying in the house chatting awkwardly with family, my buddy decided to bring me back to the school to visit his cca room. His cca is robotic, so I just went there watching robots walking around randomly and he taught me how to create a robot program, which I totally don't understand. It was really a great experience going through the typical lifestyle of china student. 

5 things I like about rv:

1) the facilities of course. We have many different courts for specific sports and rooms like the history room, computer rooms and the auditorium.

2) cleanliness, especially the toilets as compared to those in hefei 45

3) canteen. So much delicious food

4) only one and unique RV spirit

5) classrooms. We have a spacious and clean classroom, and even a small project room behind, which I felt really useful for after-school discussion.

-yida :)

Day 1

Day 1

Today, we took the high speed rail to hefei. after alighting the train, an incident happened and it had affected my views of china. An old lady came to us and begged for money or food. All of us tried to ignore her but she was so desperate and kept begging us. Luckily, she backed off after several failed attempt. From this incident, I can learn that people often look for those who are helpless against them, example from this incident is that the old lady saw us as children, and thinks that it will be much easier to get money or food from us.

The tour guide then fetch us from the train station. On the way to the restaurant for lunch, the tour guide explained a lot about china, but sadly I couldn't quite get what she was talking about because she was speaking way too fast. When we are on the bus, the first thing I noticed was that the road was super noisy. People weds jaywalking and one thing I found annoying was that all the cars were honking. I didn't know why they did that but it was really bugging me. 

When we reach the restaurant, we started eating the real chinese food. There were a lot of dishes but to me, non of it tasted good. It was really disappointing as that was my first meal in china and yet it wasn't up to expectation.

After that, we went to 三河古镇. 三河古镇 includes 扬振宁旧居, 刘同兴隆庄, 鹤庐，仙古楼，古娱坊and 国碎楼. It was a really fun experience visiting these places as they have many posters and things used in the past. All the posters are about important people who has contributed to the country greatly. One of them is 孙一人. He has helped the country by defending the country from japan during the ww2.  

When we finished visiting these places we went for our dinner, it was much better compared to lunch. Lastly we went back to our hotel, did our reflection and lights off.

My first day in china wasn't that good, the food and environment was kind of bad, or maybe it's just me not used to china. but at least i get to learn a lot about china history.

-yida :)