Ni hao.

Hello. The first echo from China. It´s our fifth day at Tong Ji(I have really bagun with writing on my fifth day here). I can say I am happy now and it seems to be quite early but I haven´t been so easygoing a few days ago. We left the airport in Pudong for the subway, luckily with all of our luggage in the hands, and started our first journey to Tong Ji. The subway seems to be all right, even newer than the ours, as I supposed. All of the announcements are both in chinese and english, so there is no problem with finding the right way. We got even the place to sit, but I can smell something bad in the air. Why are we going back? Oh yeah, it was the turning station, something like a train roundabout, that kicked us two or three stations back before we realised what happened.  Never mind, we try it once again and after half an hour we continue on the right direction. We didn´t go through so many stations but it spent more than two hours until we arrived. Shanghai is large:) It has two times more locals than the whole Czech Republic. I like our bamboo campus. There are crowds of chinese students  in front of cantines announcing parties and having lunch in the noon and supper at about five a clock in the evening. There is a park with a pond and akward swans. There is a highrise building in the southwest corner with tumors hanging in the interior space. There are benches on the streets, bicycles and mopeds. You must be very careful otherwise you will be ran over. Pedestrians last. No way. Even trees have more rights while being grown in the middle of pavements. It can be quite tricky while running late for the morning lesson. Wu is ok. Wu is our international student´s officer. She made us a reservation for a room in the dorms, that´s what we needed. But she is like all the Chinese I have met so far. She doesn´t tell you anything more than what you ask her about. It´s a bit difficult in the country where you can´t understand anything.

Our first chinese (horrible) picture with Hello Kitty,
the second one is with shining flamingos.

Louis Uvitton

After a week I can say I am able to eat chinese food. Fortunately I haven´t been sick yet. Czech stomach seems to be firm in comparison to the german one... And I seem to be more and more brave. Today I have tried small meat dumplings with surprise inside. It was really tasty. Rice with vegetable, noodles, dumplings, pies, fruit…a broad range of cheap chinese meal. I long for a good wine, milk, cheese, butter, bread, chocolate and espresso. I can do without all of it except chocolate that is very expensive here.