8March2012 Thursday --Tiring day

The plane departure at 10.02pm and reach Chengdu at 2.40am (8March2012). Our entire luggage was stained by some black substance as it was drizzling and the dirt was stacked on it. As the SCAVT was far away from the town, we had to take 2 hours of bus to our school for a rest. The bus which I’m sat was overflowed with luggage and there were 8 people in the bus with the luggage. This was the first time that I was squeezing with luggage for 2 hours. When we arrived in the school, the school was so cold and dark that we are shivering while using torches to find our uggage. As we were living at the third floor, we had to carry our luggage up before we were able to rest in the room and started a new day in china. At 12pm, we were to assemble and walked round the school to get familiarize with the buildings and canteens. After walking around the campus, We had our lunch at level2 eatery for a beef noodle which causes us 7 RMB (S$1.40). Although the sauce was spicy, but it taste nicer compared to Singapore noodle. There was a phone shop just below our hostel which we can buy china SIM card and communicate with our family members and friends. I would like to thank Doyle (overall leader) for helping us to cut the SIM card for the iPhone users. After buying our cards, we were to have a conference meeting with the china school’s principal and teacher. The conference room was like so huge that it’s like some big company meeting room that was shown on the television. During the conference, the principal talked about some history about Chengdu and it is about few thousands of years in history. I had learned some knowledge about the school and the background of it. After the meeting, our teacher brought us to the study block and went in the classroom to have an experience to study in this weather. We went looking around with the local students to the laundry shop and some mini-mart. We and the local students were talking about our Singapore weather, school and education systems. The local students said they studied for two years and attachment for half a year and they were able to graduate with a degree certificate but the pay is not that good. 5pm went back hostel for a rest before heading to the canteen (level2) for a special dinner from the school at 6.20pm. At first there were 5 dishes on the table but in the end, the table was full of food that we had to stack on each other. After everyone was full, every table had tons of food left on the table and it was so wasteful to throw all the dishes away. The best dish was the pumpkin pastry, as it suits our taste and it was not that sweet compared to other pastry. After dinner, went shopping for bread and milk that we are eating for the next day breakfast and rest in room.