Xi’an! I was very excited for this trip, even if I was dead tired. At first it seemed like my excitement was unwarranted, as the trip had an uninspiring start. At the airport, the terminal we were at was in some dingy basement (it looked more like Hong Qiao airport than Pudong airport) and the heat must have been set on max because it was excruciatingly hot. It was also really crowded. The plane ride wasn’t much better. I stayed awake for the breakfast, which I shouldn’t have done because it was terrible. By far the worst airplane meal I’ve ever had the pleasure of tasting.
Fortunately, it was a pretty short flight. We were on the bus for about an hour before we arrived at the buffet lunch. The restaurant was really fancy and the food was pretty good. The fanciest part of the restaurant had to be the restroom. I wish I took a picture of it because it was absurd. Liquid soap from a teapot!
Fancy!
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Uninteresting day of classes. Found out I still have a Chinese test despite the Xi’an trip. When I got home, I managed to pack with relative ease. I definitely learned from my previous two packing experiences (one of which kept me up all night). However, I still managed not to get any sleep because I was going crazy over On Campus Recruitment (OCR). I spent most of the night writing a cover letter and filling out the application for Deloitte. Cover letters really aren’t my strong point…
Interesting note: Day 60 is the middle day of the NYU in Shanghai program. Boy, that was quick!
Got my Chinese midterm back and I did surprisingly well (a 93)! For Contemporary China, we made a trip to the new ECNU campus to attend a panel on Sino-US relations to commemorate the 30th anniversary of China opening up to US talks. The new campus is beautiful, but it’s also in the middle of nowhere (well, across from Jiaotong University). It was a pretty long ride from the old ECNU campus and we even passed a toll on the way there. The panel discussion was really interesting though. I was particularly happy that the ECNU students didn’t do everything from rote, like traditional Chinese education teaches them.
Unfortunately, we got back pretty late and I still had to go to work. To meet my four hours, I stayed until nine, again learning more Ruby on Rails and again being perplexed by it. I didn’t quite expect it to be so difficult to grasp, but it certainly proved me wrong.
Tuesdays as usual. Not much to talk about it, since nothing unusual or interesting happened. Marketing was fairly interesting this time. Maybe that’s worth mentioning? On the other hand, On Campus Recruitment (OCR) had me in slight panic mode. The Big 4 accounting firms started recruitment and being abroad is a huge disadvantage. Of course, I knew it’d be difficult going through OCR abroad coming into this, so just have to make the best out of the situation.
My Chinese midterm went pretty well. Knowing exactly what needs to be said sure beats the heck out of the usual written tests. Even better, since everyone breezed through their presentations, we got out of class half-an-hour early! Makes up for that time when we stayed over 45 minutes!
At work, I continued learning Ruby on Rails (RoR) since my bosses still weren’t in. I still had trouble grasping the concepts behind RoR and Ruby. After work, I stopped by Fresh Mart and bought some groceries. For dinner, I attempted to make fried noodles with Chinese sausage, eggs, and peas, but it didn’t go that well. They tasted kind of bland, but at least I didn’t burn the place down. And I did manage to crack an egg without getting egg shells into the egg! Exciting!
