Author: Becky

You may or may not be aware that China blocks several websites making them inaccessible.  Some are Google or anything Google such as Google maps and part of Google Translate. FaceBook, Snapchat and others. For this reason we downloaded a VPN to help us bypass China’s Great Firewall. You must do this on your devices BEFORE you get to China.

We used ExpressVPN during our five week stay and it worked like a dream, I would highly recommend it. It is a bit more expensive than others, $12.99 per month) but had good ratings and I can add mine to it. Having access to WiFi is the difficult part but that is a China issue not a VPN issue.  When we had good Wifi I typically used the US location, Los Angeles 2 and never had an issue.

I employed Google Translate frequently and you only need Wifi for a few parts of it but the online portions will require the VPN as it’s a Google product.

Friday May 24th was our last day in China. It poured buckets of rain off and on all day.  The streets were flooded up over the sidewalk in some places and the scooters were still trying to get through it.

We had a huge beautiful lunch with dean, Grace, and some other folks that helped immensely getting us to China and making sure our stay was pleasant.

We had a small presentation after that and cried a little over the friends and memories we had made. The Chinese are such a friendly, caring and helpful people.

I haven’t said much about our Geography class. Dr. Long is a great teacher. He is very patient and passionate about his subject. He had a true love of the earth and all the beauty and mysteries it provides. He taught us more than just terminology but helped us to recognize what we had learned in the scenery we were seeing in China.  He was especially contentious of our Chinese classmates and worked very hard to include them in our lectures and invited them often to tell us about their country

It has been so hot during our entire stay. In the mid to upper 90’s nearly every day. The humidity is typically 50% or greater. If it rains the next few days will be very high humidity. It has started to make us crabby. Sometimes you just feel like you are nauseous. There is rarely a breeze if so not much of one.

The up side to this is you can carry an umbrella so you have portable shade! Can’t do that on the plains on most days!  Most ladies carry them even while riding bikes and scooters some men do as well but not as prevalent. However, not your typical city black or your southern lace umbrella but fun and flowery.

Except the men of course, they opt for a lighter, solid shade of blue, green or gray.  Dark colors are poor as they attract the heat, of course, and the idea is to stay cool. Upside is they work well when it starts to rain, ☔️ make the investment.

So steps…their buildings are tall and mostly likely will not have an elevator. Our dorm is on the third floor. Both of our classes are on the third floor of two different buildings. You will be walking from building to dorm to food to store, everywhere, in the heat. Dress cool, drink lots of water and bring your umbrella.

We did some Chinese paper cutting today!  This was fun and quite challenging. The things this teacher creates are amazing.