Build Your Own Food Baby: A Guide Vol. 1

大家好同学们！我的名字是妈呀(Maia). Here is my first blog!

It’s fair to say that we have been extremely busy over the past four weeks! While this (月) has gone by fast, it has been a good chance to discover Tianjin (天津)and settle into our new lives for the next ten months.

We had no classes for the first two weeks, so we explored 天津using the very cheap and very fast subway (地下铁路). 天津is very diverse in its architecture, from the massive industrial skyscrapers, to the small traditional Chinese buildings sitting just opposite. One shock we all felt arriving in 天津was the size of the city. 天津is considered ‘small’ with only thirteen million people, very different to the 120,000 population in Edinburgh. Another difference to back home is the amount of shopping centres, each one at least four floors tall with everything you could need; they all put Edinburgh’s Ocean Terminal to shame. That first week we saw most of the city’s big sights, Tianjin Eye, the Italian Quarter, the Colosseum, and Ancient Culture Street, at which we all bought matching silk robes.

Through our exploration of the city, we have been trying a lot of food. It’s fair to say, that everything tastes amazing and the portions are so large you’ll never go hungry. One of my favourite places for breakfast is a small stall at the fruit market, selling gigantic dumplings, which we call green parcels, and a spicy bread called da-bing (大病). Other food includes a beef chou mian noodles (牛肉抽面) which is nothing like the ones at home. 天津has such a varied food, in one stall you can buy fresh Italian ice cream, and the next spicy baby squid. One day I did accidentally order a whole bowel of different chillies for lunch, but even that tasted good! The biggest struggle so far has been getting used to the chopsticks! We are trying to find a gym as soon as possible to try burn off my constant food baby!

Our campus is a great location, we are on the Balitai campus, where most of the other international students are based.  Because of our varied languages, we speak in Mandarin which has been great for practice. In sharing life from home, we taught a few of our new friends how to ceilidh dance, a task very difficult to teach in Chinese we soon realised! Our rooms are lovely, and thankfully come with aircon, which is needed in the thirty-degree heat. Our rooms overlook the 天津TV-Radio Tower, so it’s easy to find your way home if you get lost!

During the second week, everyone was invited to the 天津师范大学 Opening Ceremony at the main campus. Being told it was a formal event, us 21 Scots turned up in smart shirts and summer dresses, hoping we were dressed appropriately. Apparently, we got the wrong impression, and saw the other hundreds of students, dressed casually in university branded t-shirts and shorts. Luckily the funny looks didn’t last long once the spectacle of the show began. In classic Chinese performance, they went all out, with singing, dancing, colourful strobe lights, and acrobatics just to start. It was such a warm welcome, that helped make us feel a part of the university.

After just the first day of classes, I knew we were going to learn a lot over the next ten months. The teachers do not hesitate to jump into the work and homework too which we get every day! The teachers are all very helpful, working at a good pace. It has helped us learn faster than expected and we still have plenty time left afterwards for our own activities.

We are already approaching our first break for the National Holiday in October which will give us a chance to relax, and more importantly, to travel! I will be heading south to Qufu, in Shandong Province with  六个朋友们for the week. I’ll show all my photos in the next blog. All in all, it’s been a busy but great month, and as you might notice in the photo below, we met up with a few old friends! If there is anything you would like to know more about, don’t hesitate to ask!

谢谢，再见！