Chengdu!

This week’s post will be a relatively short one due to exams.
Today both the Language Intensive (LI) students and the Contemporary Issues (CI) students have exams.
For me, being a CI student, today marks the end of our first ‘block’ of courses.
I just completed my Government and Politics of China course, and after the weekend I will start my Chinese Economy course.

To relax after studying for our exams, a group of us are going to Chengdu, in Sichuan province for a long weekend.
These long weekends are great opportunities to travel and explore the country.
We’re flying out tonight, and we return Sunday evening.
In Chengdu, the people speak ‘Sichuan hua’, a dialect very different from the Beijing dialect.
It will be interesting to see how different the cultures are, and I’m especially interested in having the food.
Sichuan is famous for its spicy food, which I am a huge fan of.

Apart from that we might go see the Panda’s, which is one of the main attractions in Chengdu, as well as go hiking at a nearby mountain.

Also, it will be really nice to go and have warm weather. In Chengdu the weather report says it will be around 22 degrees Celsius.
This seems very agreeable compared to the Beijing temperatures of around 6-9 degrees Celsius.
Next week I’ll follow up on Chengdu, and hopefully add some awesome pictures.
Last, the weekend after I come back from Chengdu, I’m going with friends to Xi’an to see the terracotta warriors!
Busy life we lead here at IES! But its great that we have the time to make the most of our study abroad experience.