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OUF!! I finally have time for myself now. My graduation ceremony was around a month ago and I have been super busy ever since. My sisters came to Shanghai for my graduation and afterwards, I was busy taking them around to buy goods for their new store. They left Shanghai last week to go to Hong Kong and now, they are back to Mauritius already.

My 2 little sisters. I took this photo when we were out shopping at Wujiaochang.

Evre since they left, I’ve been busy packing my things. I have to leave the International students dorm in a couple of days. I ‘have to leave’ because I’ve finished my studies. I’m on scholarship and the 4-year scholarship officially ends on the 31st of July. So it will be bye-bye dorm, no more monthly stipend from the government, no more studying, no more free books,no more free medical facilities, etc. I’ve almost finished packing my things by now and I still can’t get over the fact that I have so many stuffs. I’m going to move my things to my bf’s place tomorrow.

AND….. I’ll be going to Singapore for a month . ( and Malaysia too of course) I hope to be able to get a China tourist visa once in Singapore and then come back to Shanghai in September to ship my things to Mauritius etc. I still have no idea what I’ll be doing exactly. Job-hunting in China doesn’t seem likely. Not that I don’t want to but with all this Olympics thing going on, it’s hard to get a work visa now. Applying for other visas isn’t as easy as before. I know many people who have left China already. I love Shanghai but unless I somehow manage to get a job or an internship here(well anything that gets me a visa), I won’t be able to stay here. Anyway, I’ll see when I get back to Shanghai. Right now, I’m pretty excited about my trip to Singapore. I have been planning to go to Singapore since so long already and now I am finally going! hehe . I have bought my tickets already. Leaving in a couple of days. :flowers:

As for my graduation photos… Well, my camera chose that particular time to go kaput again. Therefore, no photos taken from my camera. I will have to email my classmates to ask them to send me some photos that their friends or relatives took. My sisters took a few pics with their own camera but they left Shanghai without transferring the photos to my computer. I will have to ask them to email me the photos when they get back to Mauritius. I managed to get a few pics taken by the other Mauritians in my university and a couple of pics taken by Desmond. I’ll upload more photos soon.

With my 2 little sisters.(who are younger than me in terms of age but they are both taller than me,especially when I’m not wearing high heels.) Snif snif
In the first pic is Karine who is 2 years younger than me and in the second pic is Celine who is 4 years younger than me. Somehow when I introduce my little sisters to my teachers and friends,most of them ask me if they are my ‘real’ sisters. :faint:
ah…and the flowers are from all the other Mauritians in my university. :flowers:

With Kailash and Vricksha.

With Karina and JN.

With Desmond.

With Deenoo.

Photo with some of my classmates.

We all got our thesis results.
I got a 优 (you) which means excellent. Everyone in my class passed the thesis. For the 24 people in my class, the results are as follows:
Excellent : 5 people
Good : 7 people
Medium :10 people
Pass : 2

The teacher was saying that compared to the students who graduated last year or the year before, we all did quite well. I think she said that because unlike the previous 2 batches of students, this time we all passed the thesis.
Thesis final result= Thesis writing 60% + Thesis defense 30%+ 10% for something else (I’ll check this on Monday. )

I didn’t expect to get such a good result. I was quite worried because I got asked 6 questions during the thesis defense. Usually, they ask only 2 or 3 questions. Well,according to my main teacher, maybe the other teachers were interested in my thesis.
I didn’t worry about my exams results but I was very worried about the thesis. Well at least now it’s all over and I know that I’m really going to graduate. The graduation ceremony will be on the 17th.

I’ve finally transferred photos from my phone to my computer. The quality of the photos taken with my phone isn’t good but I’ve stopped carrying my camera with me all the time now,especially ever since I keep having the memory card error problem. I don’t always have time to open up my camera and reset the internal battery.

I had my business Chinese final exam today. I’ve really enjoyed the classes this semester. One thing I’ll never forget about this class is ’synchronized swimming’.
During one of our oral business Chinese classes, we somehow started talking about the upcoming Olympic games. The teacher is pretty cool. She doesnt’ stick to the syllabus all the time. Sometimes we talk about the news,festivals and other topics before we start class. On that particular day,she asked a representative of each country to talk about the disciplines in which his/her country will be participating. One of my Japanese classmates,Fubu wanted to say synchronized swimming but he didn’t know the Chinese term for it. Therefore, he made a drawing on the board,showing two people upside down in the water and with their legs in the air. We understood the drawing at once and burst out laughing but it took the teacher a while to understand it. :laughing:

(photos taken with my Samsung E908)

The Chinese term for synchronized swimming is 花样游泳(hua yang you yong). The Chinese characters were written on the complete right of the board so they aren’t really visible in this photo.

A closer look at the drawing.
Look at the legs. Or rather, look at the ‘toes’.

I love that drawing. It really made my day.

It has been more than a month since my last entry. So what’s new? hmmm.

I finished my thesis weeks ago, ate a lot of junk food & pastries, had 2 exams the other day and I just had my thesis defense yesterday.
I was very nervous but somehow managed to stay calm and ‘appear’ confident while I introduced my thesis and answered the questions that I got.
I think I did fine. I’ll know what grade I got for the thesis defense in a couple of days. *crossed fingers* I can now finally stop being so stressed. :laughing:

Everyone was so happy after the thesis defense ended. We still have our final exams in a few days but the hardest part (writing the thesis and the thesis defense) is over. Some of us even had a mini-celebration yesterday right after lunch. Some guys bought bottles of beer and we drank a bit. I took photos using Keisuke’s phone. I’ll upload them once he sends them to me.
Other classmates came and upon seeing us with the beer bottles, they also bought some beer and joined us. :cheers: I left for a while and joined them again afterwards but I didn’t have any more beer. When Asif came, he treated me to coffee.
It has been a while since so many of us sat down and talked so much. I’m going to miss them a lot.

It is getting warmer and warmer. We can finally say goodbye to winter and enjoy spring (which came a bit late.. )

This will be my second and last entry about Shanghai winter 2008.
Note: More than 20 pics in this entry

It snowed for a few more days after my last update about snowing in Shanghai. In fact, we had about a week of snow here. Shanghai didn’t look the same. The first few days were great! I was in a wonderful mood each time I went out and saw everthing covered with snow but after 4 consecutive days like that, it started to get annoying and I kept wishing that it would stop snowing.

In fact, there was so much snow that I was able to make a snowman. :laughing: My first ever snowman! Well I didn’t make it by myself. Desmond and I walked in front of the soccer field that day at around noon and saw this:

Snow-covered soccer field

Some people were already making snowmen. It looked fun! We decided to make one too but first, we hurried to the dorms and knocked on our friends’ doors to ask them to join us. Some of them were still sleeping so it was only at around 3 p.m that we started on our snowman. By then, the snow on the ground was already melting.

Working on our snowman
We used an empty plastic cup for the nose, orange peel for the mouth, leaves for the hair and the eyes,a branch,etc.

Desmond working on the snowman’s hand to add the V sign simply because euh.. we are in Shanghai. To those who are not familiar with it, I’ll just say that anyone who has been to China and who has Korean or Japanese friends do that V sign at least once when taking pics.

Laughing at our snowman.
The head looked so strange.

Two Chinese guys came while we were busy making the snowman and started taking pics of our chef-d’oeuvre (*cough*) and us. It felt so weird having strangers openly taking pics of us like that. The 2 guys stayed until we left the soccer field after we got tired from the snow fight and all. Desmond left his number and email address with the guys, asking them nicely if they could send us some of the pics that they took of us and one of them really sent us the pics.

Group pic with the snowman. See the v sign?
One of the Chinese guys took this pic for us.

~The soccer pose~
Free kick! Usha shoots!
Guys: We need to protect our private parts. Karina: I want to join too! :laughing:
Check out the snowman goal-keeper and the tracks made by the snow ball that we rolled around to make the body of the snowman
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Happy Chinese New Year to everyone! :party:
It’s the year of the rat now and hopefully, it’s going to be a great year for me. (I was born in the year of the rat. )
After almost a week of snow, it has finally stopped snowing a couple of days ago. I’ll upload more snow pics soon.

I had dinner with Desmond and the other Mauritians in Tongji yesterday. Desmond made lamb curry, Jean Noel & Karina made fried rice and potato salad, Ashish made a shrimp dish, Kailash made a chicken dish, Dominique made fruit salad, I brought the naans and the beers, Vricksha brought the soft drinks. The others helped in the kitchen.

Some photos:

Jean Noel, making fried rice.

Karina at the sink.

My plate of food. I took a bit of everything.

Photo of half of the group. None of the sino-Mauritians wore red. I wore red gloves (not in this pic) . Does that count?

After dinner, we continued to watch the Chinese New Year show on CCTV 1, played cards, domino, Pro Evolution Soccer (the guys of course) and then went to the rooftop to watch the fireworks.There were other students up there already. :cheers: :party:
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It’s getting colder and colder. Instead of going out to eat lunch, my friends and I have been eating in the canteen, or rather, right outside the canteen because there were no more seats available inside. I don’t like the canteen food much and took a few pics to blog about but now that I look at the pics, I realize that the food doesn’t look that bad. :laughing:

What we had :

My friend was already eating his food when I yelled Stop. Oops.

What my other friend had for lunch.

That’s what I had for lunch. I like the round ball on the left. Apparently, it is called rou yuan or shizi tou. As for the brownish thing on the right, I have no idea what it is called. I didn’t dare to try it before but my Japanese friend told me that it tastes good.
My verdict: a bit too sweet (cooked by Shanghainese people after all….) but good.

I was going to put my camera in my bag but my Japanese classmate started to make silly faces at me. I was too slow (was laughing!) and only snapped his pic when he made that V sign.

It’s almost 2am right now and I’m still not in bed. In fact, I won’t be sleeping tonight. I have a project to submit tomorrow in a few hours and since I’ve been procrastinating for two weeks, I won’t be sleeping at all today. I have 6 hours to finish my ‘project’. Should be alright.

I haven’t had much time to write lately. My last entry was even my shortest entry ever.
Since my life has been kind of uneventful these past two weeks (and not to mention that I’ve again misplaced my camera) , I didn’t have any photos to upload. Fortunately, Rosemary brought her camera yesterday.
We had a so-called Sports day. The participants were students from our faculty (International students) and Chinese students from the Faculty of Foreign languages. The event took place on the basketball courts opposite the track field. It was unlike any other Sports Day I’ve ever been to. In fact, it shouldn’t even be called ‘Sports Day’ and it wasn’t well-organized as well. There were Chinese students scattered all over the place. Each group of Chinese students was playing a different game and we were to go up to them to learn how to play those games.
A few pics:

See Jean Noel (left) kicking that whitish thing?The purpose of the game was to kick that thing around. Too bad the one in this pic is white.There were green ones,yellow ones,red ones,etc. If you look carefully enough, you can see a white thing flying in the air in the pic.

Rope skipping.
I remember that there was this guy(not the one in the pic) who was doing quite well but then another guy( a Chinese student) told the girls turning the rope to go faster. He sounded so amused that I got a bit annoyed. The guy skipping didn’t manage to keep up. Evil!!!

I was just a spectator all this while but then two Chinese girls came up to us and told me to try that game. I declined but I guess that I wasn’t firm enough. She insisted so I gave it a try …or rather, a few tries. I couldn’t quite get it on the first few tries and the ring kept falling. The aim of this game is to push the ring with a metal stick and run after the ring while keeping the ring rolling.
(Shout out to my sis Cel: Cannot see the two pink stripes at the front but those are the shoes you gave me. So comfy!)

I managed to get the ring rolling as it should after a few tries but it went so fast that I ran only a few metres before I stopped the ring using my hand. I didn’t manage to get the ring rolling again after that. :laughing:

There were a few more games but unfortunately we didn’t take any more pics. I was a bit intrigued by the game of hopscotch (la marelle in French) that the Chinese students were playing. The pattern they drew on the floor was different from what I’m used to. They drew so many boxes! I forgot how many exactly but it was more than 15 but less than 20. Wah,so many! They made a mistake when drawing the boxes; they drew the boxes too small. The persons who drew the boxes were Chinese girls and they drew the boxes according to their own shoe size I guess. When the International students played the game (esp the tall guys), it was obvious that their feet were longer than each box. It was a bit funny. ^^