My first weekend in China was mainly tiresome, but also an exploration of the campus, country, people and food. It was definitely different than any other weekend that I have had lately. Even though I have traveling to some other countries, this is by far the most extraordinary experience.

I have never experienced a jetlag before, but it is some weird feeling. I am not sure if it is actually the jetlag or just a sum of everything that is happening around me. A new country, new people, other culture and a whole different atmosphere. During the night I haven't slept much and during the day I fell asleep in my chair. It should fade away rather fast now, because school is starting soon and I don't want to fall asleep in class.

On Saturday I actually went out trying to make some photos, but because the weather wasn't so good, I didn't succeed. Instead I went off campus to explore the surrounding area. There are many restaurants, shops, hairdressers, street food stands and of course many KTVs. A KTV is a karaoke bar. You can find them on every corner of every street.

Something else I experienced during my walk is that I draw a lot of attention by just walking around. It looks like people here have never seen 'someone from abroad' before, meaning someone who doesn't look Asian. I have already been photographed twice, once in the restaurant on Friday and on Saturday just on my way home.

Then on Sunday I met up with my classmates from Finland, Victoria and Roman and we were given a campus tour by four local students. They showed us around and told us where to find all the different buildings where we will have classes. After that we did some shopping and went out for dinner, with dinner being another adventure on itself.

We went to a restaurant off campus with the seven of us. It was kind of a buffet idea but a bit different. First you should take a bowl, like the one that we have in Europe where the dogs eat from, exactly the same. Then there is some kind of salad bar, but then not with salad. There were many different types of food; fish, meat, vegetables, different pasta or noodle types and things that I don't even know in what category to place them.

Anyways, what you do is to take whatever you think is good. There were no sign which said what it was and also the Chinese students didn't even know everything. So just try a little bit of everything. I just took a bit everything that seemed to be okay. Some types of meat didn't look very good, or at least not for me. Then this bowl is being weighed and you pay for what you take. The woman gave me a number (a normal readable number) and I could sit down and wait. I had no idea what was going to happen, because they didn't really explain anything. So that was a surprise.

After a while my number was called and I could pick up my food. They basically made a soup of everything that I took. I got a big bowl of noodle soup with all vegetables and types of meat that I had taken. And of course it is being eaten with chopsticks. Except for the soup, that is some kind of mixture of different spices and herbs and that is only for cooking and not for eating. It was actually pretty good, spicy but good. I don't really know what I have eaten there but maybe that's best not to know.

Also here when we were eating, there were I think five people making a photo. They did not even trying to hide the fact that they were making photos of strangers. That was a bit weird. But it's alright; I guess they don't see that every day.

So now I'll try to actually fall asleep during the night and hopefully I don't oversleep on my first day of classes. Let's see how it will be tomorrow. I am actually curious about the other international students. I guess tomorrow I'll be meeting them.