Next stop: Qingdao. Also here we had problems finding a place to sleep, but we got free dinner because we drank a beer with some local people. In the morning we left the city of Qufu to go (with a change of trains in Jinan) to Qingdao. Qingdao is a rather big city, about 6 million inhabitants, in the same province as Jinan, the Shandong province. It is located near the yellow sea in the east of China. It took us about two-and-a-half hours to get there from Ji...

My first actual trip within China starts today, a three-day trip with Roman and Victoria. The first stop will be in Qufu, the temple of Confucius to be more precise. At 6:00 a.m. my alarm was ringing and it was time to eat breakfast and to pack my stuff for this trip. About an hour later I was on my way together with Roman and Victoria, my classmates. First up, a one-hour bus ride to the train station in Jinan from where the train is leaving to Qufu. At the t...

The campus is a bit like a ghost town right now, almost everyone went back home for the holiday week. So that's a good time to see what's behind the gates of the campus. We have a very good system on campus for cycling, or more accurate, for using a bike. There are hundreds of yellow bikes with a small number plate and the have a lock which can be opened by entering the right combination of numbers. So to get this code you need to send the number of the bike, ...

The first of October is China's national day. This means that there are shows, festivities, fireworks and so on in the city center, right? In the city center of Jinan, almost next to the main square and Baotu Spring Park, is a large lake surrounded by a park. During the day we spend some time around the lake. Because today is a national holiday it was super busy there. That also means that many people wanted to take photos of us. Besides people taking photos ...

I am not sure whether it is the course name or just coincidence, but both times the teacher can't speak English. And finally I got the chance to visit the city center of Jinan, to take some nice photos there and to get to know the Chinese bus system. Just like in Finland we have a course here that is dealing with measurements, the one here in China is the advance version of the course compared to the one in Finland. Remarkably enough though, the teachers in bo...