After some three weeks of being in China I have finally applied for my residence permit and in the evening there was a combined farewell and welcome party for international students.

There was only one class scheduled today, a four hour 'Workshop Measurements' class. It seemed like a very long class, because the teacher's English is really bad and he's very difficult to understand. Luckily he's reading from the slides so we can just read it ourselves. Still, it's not good because twice I asked a question and he just didn't understand what I meant; even though I tried my best to speak slow and clear.

After lunch I got picked up by a student who brought me to the city to apply for my residence permit. We met one of the teachers over there to help me with the paperwork. It actually didn't take very long because they had already prepared everything and I only needed to take a picture, hand in my passport and pay. I have applied for a permit with multiple-entries so that I have the option to travel abroad during the holidays in January and February. It takes about two weeks and then it should be ready.

The evening program of today was a bit different than usual. We had an international party, which was not comparable with any party I've had in Finland. The Chinese idea of a party is a bit different and pretty unexpected. It was held in the building of the International Office and they'd prepared a room for it.

When I got into the room, on one side was the stage, opposite of the stage were a few seat for the internationals (we were with 6 students and a teacher) and the other two side of the room were for the Chinese students and teachers. They were with about 100 people. Because my seat was on the other side of the room, I had to walk through the center of the room and, as always, that draws a lot of attention.

During the party there were performances in the center and on stage, like singing, dancing, acting and some Chinese martial arts. In between were some games in which the international people had to participate, together with a few local students. Because we were the VIP guests we had a personal waiter who brought us beer and snacks all the time, if we didn't have to play a game of course.

At the end of the party when we wanted to leave the room, it took us about 20 minutes to go from one side of the room to the other side. This was because everyone wanted to take a photo with us. Not only students, also the teachers wanted to be on the photo with us. This photo here is one of the photos which were taken during the evening.