After three weeks in China I've already become a bit more Chinese, I have finally started to learn the Chinese characters and got an introduction into writing them, plus I went to the barbershop to get a Chinese haircut.

The class in the morning wasn't so special, just a normal class. Also lunch was just an ordinary Chinese lunch, which means something with rice and people taking photos. It is not very much different from any other day.

The second class was very different. It was definitely something that I've never had before. In the class 'China overview' we learned about China, something about the history and holidays and something about culture. Some part of the lecture was about Chinese lanterns. They're used everywhere and especially during the holidays. But also during the normal days it's possible to find them hanging outside in the streets. In class we built our own Chinese lantern from paper. A little bit of Chinese Engineering.

The second half of the class we started with watching some videos about calligraphy in China, where the characters are coming from and how they have changes over time. After that we learned about the zodiac calendar and we learned some easy Chinese characters and their meaning. I now also know the numbers in Chinese. Both how to write them and how they're pronounced. Then we all got a large thin paper and a paintbrush and we got to try calligraphy by ourselves. It was pretty difficult in the beginning, especially with such a large paintbrush. But I liked doing it and it looks very nice. I'm not sure if it is actually good or readable, but it looks like Chinese to me.

It was also time to get a haircut today. One of the teachers from REAL (the English club) has a friend who's a barber and she brought me there. My haircut now looks a bit Chinese but it will grow back pretty fast, at least I might fit in a little bit better now. They were very happy to have someone from abroad over there so they gave me a VIP card right away so that I can use it next time. Plus I got a discount this time already. It is very cheap to get a haircut here in China; I paid only 20 Yuan, which is about 2.70 Euros.

I didn't do much more today so I'll write a small explanation of the Chinese characters on the picture. The first row is the number from 1 to 10 and the second line has just random characters. The two sentences with the question marks are: 'how old are you?' and 'what is your name?'. Furthermore there are the words car, beer, wine, sun, moon, clouds, rain, human, mouth, heart and a few others. And the two characters together in the middle are the word China. I enjoyed writing it and I'm sure that I need some practice. It's very difficult, but I'm sure it will be good if I can understand some words and if I would be able to say a few sentences. I have quite some time here to practice so I hope that I'll manage it after some time. I'll at least try my best.