Friday, January 28, 2011

Chinese New Year Holiday!!!!



Me in the Snow

Zhejiang University Campus


The Administration Building in Zhejiang University


And the brand new university sports stadium!

"Can you tell what it is yet???" Zhejiang University Campus


More of the campus




An artistic shot


Hangzhou bicycle bin trucks


Shanghai Train Station!!! Looks more like an airport!



The new highspeed train from Hangzhou to Shanghai, but it only goes 350 odd km/h and takes nearly an hour to get there, so they are building a faster one. Seriously! And this one only just opened.



My new flat after moving out of university accommodation. Uni accommodation is ok, but my rent here is just over 100 GBP a month for a brand new 20th floor apartment with simming pool and badmington courts. You can't say fairer than that! Thanks landlord.



And my sofa, which I bought for 30 quid, yes 30 pounds!!!

I haven't written for a long time because I've been so busy studying and also working part time. I do a bit of English teaching here to subsidise the living and tuition fees. It is easy finding well paid work in Hangzhou, because most TEFL teachers go to Shanghai or Beijing.


The first term went well but was quite hectic. Getting back into studying after not doing any for 10 years was quite a challenge. I graduated from the University of Manchester with a gentleman's degree (a Desmond TuTu) in Aerospace Engineering in 2001. It was tough, but learning again is so rewarding and coming to study medicine in China is definitely the best decision I have ever made in my life.


For the winter term we studied Systemic Anatomy, Histology, Biochemistry and of course Chinese. We need to learn Chinese in order to communicate with patients in the internship in the hospitals in the fifth year. If our Chinese is not good enough by then there is always the option of doing the internship in an English speaking country instead, but I am really keen to do it here because it would be great to come out with a medical degree and fluent Chinese at the end of the five and a half years. We also had a guest professor from Holland come over to do a brain dissection, which was very interesting. Next term we will study Physiology, Medical Genetics, Regional Anatomy and some more Chinese. We will also begin dissection. Students at Zhejiang get eight bodies to dissect over the time that we are here.


The exams at the end of the semester were quite tough, but we were taught well for them and I have heard from quite a few students on the course that have previously studied in English medium medical programmes in other countries in the world that ours is far superior.

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