Our weekend

Our weekend was a mix of relaxation after the first week and a bit of sightseeing.

On Saturday, Thomas and I took a little trip to the older part of Jiading, our neighborhood. It's about a 30-minute metro ride. We arrived there around noon and went straight to a mall for lunch.
From there, we walked to the city center. After 20 minutes along bustling streets, we found the Qiuxia Garden. It's a small green oasis in the middle of the city. There are small buildings scattered around, several ponds, and a great variety of plants. There were very few other people there, so we took a little break away from all the noise. It was really beautiful.
From there, we walked through the pedestrian zone, past the Fahua Pagoda, to the Jiading Confucius Temple. It's a fairly large complex with several buildings. Inside, there's an exhibition about the Chinese imperial examination system from the old dynasties between 600 and 1900. We strolled around the grounds for a bit and then headed back to the hustle and bustle of the main street.
It was definitely worth seeing, and we'll definitely go there again, as there's a large park right next to it that we didn't have time and energy for.

On Saturday, Thomas went to the city center with other people from the dormitory to visit the Yu Garden. It's much more touristy and crowded than the one we visited yesterday. After that, they went to the Bund and Nanjing Road. Sophie did something similar on Saturday with another group.

In addition, we booked tickets for our weekend trip to Wenzhou today. So next week, from Friday to Sunday, we'll be visiting the university and exploring the city a bit.

And finally, a brief mention of the weather. We had some remnants of a typhoon over the past few days. We had a lot of rain, especially at the beginning of the week, and a few thunderstorms. Fortunately, it stopped raining over the weekend, but the pictures show that it caused some chaos on campus because the drains weren't completely functioning. There were boards on sandbags as walkways.

Other than that, I haven't done much outside because I'm still working on my project for Digital Design, which is very time-consuming.
Tomorrow morning is my physical examination, and I hope that at the end of the week, I can apply for my residence permit.

Written by: Friedemann