I'm sitting in dad's class, watching him teach. The students must think I'm very hardworking, making lots of notes, since I'm constantly typing. I have to admit that I have absolutely no idea of what he's talking about. Well, something about service innovation and networks and so on..

I've been walking around the campus and occasionally people waved at me. I guess I'm such a rare sight, since this is a very Chinese campus and I doubt that there are any western students here. The campus is huge, but really nice. There's a nice atmosphere with students playing tennis, football and basketball and groups of student just hanging around. Actually the campus is quite American, in a way I like it. The students really live on the campus and there's everything they need here; the apartments, the restaurants, the shops, the sports grounds and the friends. It seems like a nice way to spend your student years. So different to Finland, where you have everything separate. It's common that you live by yourself, often far from your friends, you don't spend much time university besides your classes, you have hobbies somewhere else and you work... I don't know which I prefer, but especially when I was younger I'm sure I would've enjoyed the campus life.

(Two students only arrived now, naught naughty..)

Last weekend dads' professor friends took us on a weekend trip. We went to the Holy Buddhist Mountain, Emei and also went to Leshan to see the Giant Buddha. You could hike up the mountain, but we were short on time, so we drove as high as we could and then took the cable car up. (There hike includes approximately 30 000 steps, so I have to say, I didn't mind the car.) The mountain is 3 077m high. Mountains have always had a special meaning to Chinese and Emei is one of the highest holy mountains in China. The writer in Mondo compared the view at the top of the mountain to the Hollywood version of the gates of heaven. There's also cliff there, which is called the suicide cliff. It's almost a vertical drop of 2 000m and some people are so overwhelmed by what they see that they jump down, they think they see the Buddha down there, when actually what they see is a halo, a natural wonder that happens several times a year. While we were up there it was so cloudy and foggy that we were unable to see it.

There were lots of Makaki monkeys on the mountain, who were very greedy and were stealing food every chance they got. If you even reached for your pockets, they'd attack you. After they got what they wanted, they'd sit happily on the fence and peeled the oranges or opened the packet of crisps that they've just stolen from the angry tourists. After freezing ourselves on the mountain, we headed for the hot springs. It was this big place with over 10 different pools, heat ranging from 40-47 Celsius (one was so hot I couldn't even go in) and all had different scents that helped you in different ways. Such as rose, mint, lemon, aloe and also even wine! ☺

If I was speared from the climbing on the first day, that certainly wasn't the case on the second. First we went to see the Giant Buddha, that is carved in a rock. It's the world biggest Buddha, 71 meters tall and 1200 years old. (Yearly it has 2 million visitors!) After that we went hiking on the mountain and climbed and climbed and climbed. The steps are so steep that it makes it quite slow to get ahead. Finally we reached a monastery, high above the ground (I do admire the builders, carrying everything up there.) The monks rang the bell for their lunchtime and we headed to the kitchen to get some lunch as well. Of course we had to eat in different rooms, since we are still a part of this world, whereas the monks are not. I have to say I prefer the vegetarian Buddhist food to some of the Chinese Fearfactor-style delicacy's. Like frogs or cows strings ("jänne") or snakes or other delicious things. Outside the restaurants they have all these things there for you to see and it really is horrible to see little rabbits stuck in small cages with big roosters or snakes swirling in their buckets.

We also got to see a local wedding party that was held in one of the restaurants on the mountain. The groom offered us sweets for happiness and the happy couple let dad take their picture. After the visit to the wedding party, we took a bus back to our car (I had feared that we would have to go all the way back the same route!) Before leaving for home, we went to Leshan downtown to drink some tea. Dad and me wistfully looked at the Corona beers on the shelf, but didn't want to stand out so we ordered tea. Chinese always drink tea, in the mornings, in the afternoons, in the evenings, all the time. I think they drink even more tea than the Irish!

Ok, now dad is talking about Wikipedia, something I know. Maybe I'll listen for a bit and write more once we get to Beijing. There's lot of photos on Facebook -go and have a look!