Exchange Diary (CityU Students)

Today was my first day to cook, after tasting numerous delicious foods around. The kitchen is just at the ground floor in the dormitory building, and it is equipped with complete facilities. I actually used this kitchen as my “social base”. I met new friends here every day. We talked and cooked together, and made appointments to do sports or other activities. I think it is really a splendid place to meet people from different culture background. One of my friends had an idea that we should gather several times, and every time we should set a “topic”, for example, Tuesday is “European Night” and she cook typical French food “crepe” for us. She taught us how to eat it, and we should eat it with fresh fruit and solid maple sugar. While eating, a Spanish girl taught us how to say “I like you” in three ways in Spanish.

By this chance, I could try traditional food from all over the world and had great conversations with my friends. I appreciated this experience a lot, and I thought it’s a treasure in my life.

13/2/2014, Wednesday

I went to a beautiful island with my friends near Quebec. There are vast grape farm and people sell family-made wines, including Canadian feature – ice wine. We visited several houses, chatted with local farmers, tasted several flavors of wines. One of the farmers is a young girl, after knowing I’m from China, she asked me to make a video, in order to introduce the characteristics to Chinese customers. I felt very pleasant to be the linkage between these two cultures, so I endeavored to write an article. To let the girl know what I write, I also translated it into English version. I spent the whole afternoon there, revising my work, and finally recording the video. The girl also asked me to give advice of the appearance of wines’ bottles, and we also talked about her brand logo. For the sake of paying back, she gave me several bottles of ice wine as gifts. I really had a nice time today because I felt satisfactory after helping others.

14/02/2014, Thursday

It was still very cold in February, and it snowed again. There used to be an ingenuity yard in student dormitory, with rockery design, benches and table, but now they were all buried by heavy snow, so you could not see any of them, all you could see was white, as high as the roof of the first floor. I remembered when I first went to Toronto Airport, I was informed that the following flight from Toronto to Quebec had been cancelled because of heavy snow, so I was stranded in the airport in Toronto, which was totally out of my expectation. I needed to queue for long time to call the airline company, waiting for arrangement. After waiting for 1 hour, the line was not moving. I asked people who was ahead and had already made the phone call, and they told me the official arrangement was not reliable at all. At that time, I could not take airplane, and all the hotels nearby in Toronto were full. It was really difficult for me to think up an idea to solve the problem, since I was alone in this unfamiliar country. I worked all-night to study the transportation system, and sought help to staffs in airport. Finally I booked a train ticket the next day, and while in the train I met a very nice local man, we chatted for long time. It was really an impressive experience.

15/02/2014, Friday

After class, we had a group discussion about math problems. One of our group members is a friendly German girl, and she asked about Chinese culture initiatively. We spent a pleasant afternoon together, and finally she invited us to her department to have dinner, because she could cook traditional German food for us. She said she called her mom about the method to cook those foods in order to host us.

At night, I brought some drinks to her place, and met a lot of new friends. She lived in a small department with 2 roommates, and every day other floor mates would come to her place and have dinner together. Her floor mates came from different places in the world, including Africa, America and Europe.

We had a nice time cooking, chatting and enjoying disserts together. While we were having dinner, my group mate, the German girl told us she actually felt nervous because she’s afraid we didn’t like the food. I todl her, I just “do not have time to speak” because the food was so delicious. They all laughed, and I learnt that humorous was the most useful “weapon” when you communicate dwith others.

I really loved the atmosphere, and it’s just like a big family.