Okay, I know it has been a long time, since I uploaded a post, but I still want to try and keep this blog going and try to tell most of my experiences. So let’s just start around where I left off. On Tuesday the 29th of September our first classes started. Now it wasn’t just do whatever fun things you want to do anymore. The first lessons weren’t that exciting. Most lessons started with a small introduction to the course and what we would be doing in the rest of the year. Although it was the first day of school I and a few other people decided that we should go to Ikea, so that’s what we did, with ten people in two four person-taxis driving to Ikea for one hour. It was a lot of fun, and finally some real good food, instead of the canteen food.
Also in that week I had 2 basketball try-outs, to get on the basketball team. I have no real experience with playing basketball or what so ever, but because I’m so tall, everyone was saying I should play basketball. So I tried, and surprise surprise… I got on the second team of our school!
Another really great experience in that weekend was that I went to KTV. KTV is a karaoke bar with locations all over China. It was a great experience to go to this place and really get into this special Chinese Culture and sing my lungs out, together with some amazing people, who went with me:
Then on the fifth of September. The school had its 3rd grand opening. On this day we had a show in the theater where some people like the choir, acapella group and dance crew performed. Not only where there performances, also some people gave speeches. Then the most fun thing of them all on this day was the fact that everyone was dressed up in their national costume. People took all kinds of pictures in those costumes, and so did I. I took a lot of pictures with lots of people, which was really fun. On the end we took one big group picture with everyone in the school:
After this picture we had a great dinner in the canteen. Normally the canteen food is neither bad, nor great (just as most canteens), but today it was really good. The school really put in some effort to make this dinner great. So after all this was a really great day.
In that same week I had my first basketball practice. It was really intense, which I actually liked after all. Our trainer wants us to get in shape for the season so the first weeks he said that he would try to kill us. When you’re busy doing it, you really die, but when you’re done, you really see the point of it. In the same week, I had my first GIF (global issues forum), which is an assembly in the theater where people address a global issue, explain it and afterwards there is time for discussions. The first one was about, the Ivory trade. Now, I also had a few other one, such as about drug trafficking in South America and about schools in China (the last one was quite bad I think, because it was a Chinese guest speaker and the translations weren’t that good, and it wasn’t really a ‘global’ issue.
That weekend I did do one of the most fun activities in school: Hide and Seek in school. It was really fun to play hide and seek in such a big place with so many people. I really enjoyed it. Also I had lessons of ‘course’, but I don’t want to bore you with how my academics are going, when something special will happen I will tell it, but it didn’t. I can say though, that IB is more tough that the Dutch system, but it is a better challenge for me.
I think I will stop it here for this post, but in the next post I will tell you more about what has happened in the weeks after this. For example the Latin American Culture week. Also after that post I will make a separate post about my Golden Week Holiday, where I traveled to the western part of China with ten other people. So there is something to look forward to. 🙂
-Your Dutchie, Rens