Ni hao to everyone of you,

One month ago I landed in the Chinese culture of Beijing... at the airport, my thought about speaking my few words of chinese vanished in a few second when I just tried to ask were was my seat.. After 10 times repeating the sentences I tried to learn by hard... the hostess asked me to speak English... the difficult part is just the pronunciation which is totally different of our own western languages...

To leave the airport at one side of Beijing and reach the University on the other side of the city, I first thought to take the easy way, the taxi. After asking, the driver showed me something like an "official" card with the prices which seemed to me to be especially for young dummy tourist. So with my few words of Chinese I could make my journey to the University by the metro (which is very comfortable and impressively efficient). After reaching the nearest metro station, I felt like in the movies where you look around you without knowing at all where you landed. Again, my Chinese was not helping me at all, when I was trying to pronounce the name of my University... but still the people just showed all the time the opposite direction of were I was coming... finally I found a chinese student who seemed also to look for the university and his chinese could help us to reach the university (which was actually in the opposite direction the people showed me..). Now I realize that in fact the metro exit is just next to the university but the entrances are much further...

My first days were spent from early morning to late evening walking from one place to another in this huge university campus of Tsinghua which seemed to be a small Belgian city in itself. Seeing all the Chinese riding bikes, I waited no more than 1 day to buy an ancestry bike to avoid walking one hour from one place to the other... I had settle down for no more than 3 days that the first classes already started like in college, 25 students a class, homework, attendance, ... And then I could meet the different teachers I would be in contact with for one semester.. The first was the opportunity to choose the courses and fight (yes, it was really like that) with the Chinese administration to be able to follow a specific course needed in my program... and after going 5 times to the same office and receiving a negative answer, the 6th time you receive a positive answer.. "Just never give up" that the maxim you need to remember for china. At the same time, I looked for some Chinese classes in order to make a big effort in the beginning of the year to get enough words to on by your own speaking with some random Chinese people in the bus, metro and bicycles... one of my favorite occupations when I take some public transport... After one week, the first homework already came and the difficulty depends of the percentage of Chinese people in the class, more Chinese is more difficult, less is easier... I hope this last stays true for the rest of the year...

After three weeks classes, it was time for a little break or the National holiday of China... let's say no time for tourism except if you love to be in the middle of millions of Chinese tourist... yes Chinese people are also in into seeing their own country and I understand this pretty well by the few marvelous places and sites I already saw randomly in Beijing..

Especially the first days, even it was not tourist time for me, I was amazed just by opening my eyes and watching all around, at these Chinese characters, the Chinese skyscrapers, the crazy traffic, the traffic jam of people in the metro or of bicycles in Tsinghua, I could just enjoy every of these moments and discovering this new culture I almost only know how to say hello and that they eat rice.. That was maybe too summarized, so I hope to correct my knowledge of the Chinese culture this year and be able to speak out a few Chinese words...

Maybe some of you are interested in what the food looks like... my first feelings were that the food seemed very strange and totally different of anything I ever ate before but somehow, the taste is always the opposite.. I would say that how worse food appears how tastier it is... and most of the time that seems to be true... For the ones would know Alma 3, in all the campus there are 15 canteens with sometimes 3 or 4 floors (1 floor = alma 3..) so there no food shortage and the variety in the food is so big that I couldn't taste everything yet but I get progressively used to recognize similar meals.. I have like the feeling that our sweet breakfast is quite exceptional in Europe, as in Peru, India, China, they all eat almost the same as for lunch of dinner in the morning, most of the time salty, even though you can find some special foods for the morning but no sweeties.. Rice soup, soya milk, surprise pies with some meat of vegetables inside, pancake with biscuits eggs and some onions,