Back to Business

After ten fantastic days of acclimatization, enjoying the city and going out a lot, it was time to find an apartment and getting ready for Peking University. On Sunday during my long search for five minutes, a message popped up on the Facebook page of our exchange (yes we have Facebook here, thanks to the VPN of Tilburg University :). The message was from a small cute Norwegian girl, who looked for a flat mate. Exactly in the area I wanted to live in, between the university and the lively student area Wudaokou. One phone call, a taxi ride of €2,30 and forty minutes later, I had an apartment!!! Yes lucky bastard, were the words of many people who had been looking for an apartment like this for many days.
Two days after that was the introduction and the registration on the campus of Peking University, which they call “Beda” here. The campus is huge and beautiful, with its big lake, small bridges and old Chinese style buildings.

The main building of our business school: Guanghua School of Management is, on top of that, the fanciest one of all. Registration and the campus tour where not impressive, however

It's all in the Mix

It's all in the Mix

My second post might be a little late, but that makes it not less interesting. I will continue where I ended my first post.

The first two nights of my stay in Beijing I booked a hotel, which (when I got there) did not have a window. This seems quite common here. After checking in and some "lost in translation" I wandered around outside in one of the many "hutongs" (small alleys) surrounding the hotel. A maze of small shops/homes and genuine Beijing life, in one word: Fantastic!!! Every corner suprised me and it still

Same same, but different ...

It is always nice to start off with a serious part first before you jump into the informal jibber jabber, so I start with that small formal part:

You can go anywhere in the world, from Toronto to Sydney and from Taipei to Beijing, I chose the latter and you will find out why during the process of this blog. The thing is choosing a Western country like Canada or Australia is really easy, you know in general the language, the food and the way people will react in different situations. However it will not provide you the insights of a real different culture, with all of her beauty and rich history as for instance China does. It is not a coincidence that they ruled the world for a long time in history and that they are now on their way of doing such again.

In the last quarter of a century (so my whole life) their economy have been growing so tremendously (yes their population too), that they draw the attention of