到啦！

yaaas finally made it to the hostel and set up uni internet account on both phone and laptop 👊achievement unlocked👊 

So lots has happened in the past few days :O first moved into 中关新园 and caught up with a friend + her family in Beijing :D They helped me buy tons of stuff at local stores and organise registration at the uni etc.  (literally could not have done it alone omg like the bureaucracy involved with the process on its own is already a huge struggle but that alongside trying to sort everything out in a foreign language is just next to impossible). so massive thanks to them for being so patient and helping out 🙏 🙏~  

top tip: if u have to buy a clothes rack, make sure you have someone with you at the time so you don’t end up lugging it across campus, nearly leaving it behind in a corner store, and hauling it over a walkway bridge up to the 9th floor of ur hostel all alone :)  Pros tho, your arms will get super ripped (unsteady shaking wrists for the next hour may or may not be a minor side effect tho...)

I’m in a double room on the 9th floor of the hostel, so the view is pretty decent. On the other hand tho no idea where my roommate is???? the 服务员 said she went back home to Korea for new year but that she should b back for the start of their classes on Monday .... but like she isn’t here yet?? what’s even weirder tho is that stuff on her side of the room has been moved since i got here 0_0 my friends back in NZ and i have this inside joke that she’s probably a ghost or invisible, which given the situation seemed like a pretty plausible explanation at the time ahaha 😂 but then another friend said that the room mate might’ve arrived back already, grabbed some stuff from our room, and then gone away again to stay at a friend’s place for a few days or something instead, which does make slightly more sense than the invisible theory i s’pose lol. From the books and notes on her side of the room it looks like she’s korean but proficient in English and chinese. So yay that’s a plus! at least communication shouldn’t be too difficult when we finally do meet ahahah. 

Yesterday morning all the pre-uni students had a test to see which chinese classes we should be placed into 😱 NOTE: bring a 2B pencil to the placement test or face getting growled at by the supervisor. Mechanical pencils not okay either for some reason... 😒

NGL Personally i thought the test was pretty hard. the actual comprehension of the listening part wasn’t too bad, it was just really confusing because they had heaps of answers that were almost the same save for a few details, or multiple answers that COULD have been correct and it was just a matter of really getting the specific details to figure out which one fit best, which was something completely different to anything i’d ever done in NCEA before so yea saying it was a bit of a challenge would be an understatement lol. To put it in perspective i straight up guessed all the answer for the last few questions in the reading section and wrote an essay with every second character in pinyin for the writing part lmao 😓😬 somehow though despite all that still managed to make it into class 3! But don’t actually know how the classes are ranked in terms of numbering so could still be in the cabbage class after all lmao. Class lists came out in the afternoon on that same day, so it must have been a very quick marking process. Luckily a couple of friends i made are in the same class!!! :D One of those friends is the same age as me, arrived on the same day and likes the same song by this one chinese artist! plus a few other things the same as well~ it was just really nice to find someone with so many things in common this early on, especially after three days of practical isolation in the hostel lol. 

Got a chinese sim and data plan, set up a chinese bank account, had the medical exam, and bought text books for class. Still needa set up online + mobile banking though, purchase insurance and get a permanent residence permit. I was actually living off of 4g data on its own since friday because there was no way to connect to the internet without going to the computer department (which was shut over the weekend, of course... ). Also had to sort out a ton of stuff with my passport at the new sun centre and computer centre. Because during the actual application procedure months ago i used my old passport, so some stuff like my internet password and admission notice were using the old passport number while other things in the uni system were already using my new passport number. It got a bit messy to say the least... that’s just one thing to be aware of. You can get unlimited internet for 10 yuan a month which is very, very reasonable! originally it used to be 100yuan a month but apparently so many students complained about how expensive it was that they lowered the price. You need to pay for internet by going to this machine in the 计算中心， inserting your campus card and putting in the last six digits of your passport number (hence where many complications arise.. luckily there was another international student there at the time who helped me out and had the same old/new passport problem when she first came last semester. and as it turns out my new friend has that exact same problem too😂)  

ALSO make sure to put money on your campus card if you want to eat at the school canteens. They don’t take cash. But most stores on campus only take cash, not your campus card, so really you just need to have both handy. You can put money on your card at the 中关新园接待中心 or machines on campus (but i haven’t quite figured out how or where to do that yet lol). if there’s no money on your campus card tho it’s not that big of a deal caus you can always just buy dinner from a convenience store on campus or go to the restaurants at 中关新园 and pay using your hostel card (but that seems to be more expensive than campus canteens so probs wouldn’t recommend it...although i haven’t actually eaten there before sooo). A normal amount to put on campus cards is around 100yuan. Any more than that and you’ll probably get laughed at by the receptionist. Plus it just makes sense not to put too much on at any one time in case it gets stolen or lost. Photos to come!! 

sorry for the long post lmao too much to catch up on. 

打行李 - packing

Aaaahhhh three days left 😯 i needa start packing ... like really .. 😬  how are u supposed to fit everything u need for the next one and a half years into two average sized suitcases?!?? To make matters worse, pretty much our whole family has a horrific habit of hoarding and overpacking for even a two day trip so this isn’t gonna be any easy feat lol.  

On another note still mega confused about how to set up a simcard and data plan after arriving :O  like is it best to set up a bank account first then buy a sim card and link the two for automatic data payments?? or is it fine to get a sim first at the airport and pay up front for a top-up/pre-pay or something and then sort out auto-payment later on once a proper chinese bank account has been set up? Can u even set up auto payment after using pre-pay in China?? this is only one of the fifty something things to think about before thursday rolls around #wrekt😂  legit so screwed #sendhalp 😫 

Ngl also pree nervous about not being able to understand ANYTHING after getting there... like it said in the programme requirements that they accept students with HSK 5 and under, and i just sat HSK 4 at the end of last year so orginally thought that language level wouldn’t b too much of a problem, but then i went online and read on this one forum that the pre-reqs a couple of years ago were that students had to have sat AT LEAST HSK LEVEL 5 so now im like highkey worried about having to talk to anyone in Chinese about organising literally anything  :/  

And our Chinese homestay last year said that when she first came to NZ she understood shit all for the first month or so lol but after that it was fine. so i don’t needa worry about the language barrier too much (hopefully lmao...), just for the first few weeks at least. Although on the brighter side of not being able to communicate for shit at least i’ll get real good at miming lmao 😂 

Might not get around to writing the next segment till after arriving in Beijing, but gonna try to get something in before then if possible ~ 

BYE bruhs✌️✋  

机票

Eyyyyyy plane tickets are all booked at last!! :D 

After emailing back and forth for ages between three different parties and at least five different people, finally managed to get in contact with the right person and sort out tickets! 

guess the main point to remember while tryna organise these kind of things is that basically despite how easy it is to get frustrated when what seems like a simple task is drawn out into a really lengthy process, it’s still important to realise that people on the other side of emails often don’t know any more than you do about the situation. 

Even though it can be pretty disheartening when there aren’t replies or definite answers the first (second.. or sometimes even third) time round, all u can really do is be patient and make sure not to abandon the process just because bureaucracy tends to makes it a lil more difficult.

Anyway, In the end though stuff usually turns out the way it’s supposed to. And by the end it’s just such a relief to have everything sorted that you aren’t even bothered by how long it took to get there in the first place anymore lol . 

Atm I’m set to leave for Beijing on the 16th of Feb and arrive early morning on the 17th ~ 

25 days to go, better get preppin! 💃

Stay tuned fr more pre-departure rants 😎 

Update

Yoooooo hope everyone had a smashin’ new year :D 

Finally got the X1 chinese visa!! YAaaas💃💯 

Up next is sorting out what’s happening around flights and plane tickets for next month 😁 

Back with more info (hopefully) soon!! 

Pre-admission Materials

Hiya guys, hope ur week has been goin swell ~

So yesterday all the pre-admission materials arrived in the mail (the visa application, pre-uni programme handbook and admission notice). But it was pree sad as well caus our homestay for the year went back to China last night 😢  needless to say a fair few tears were shed... House feels so empty now 😧. But hopefully we can catch up again in early Feb once she comes back to NZ  (she’s going to a different part of the city though, so not living with us anymore).

Exams and school activities are all finished for the year now so everyone’s finally free from NCEA’s five year hellhole lmao #yay.  Even though all the goodbyes and farewell gatherings were kinda getting people down and felt super rushed, at least it means more time for everyone to focus on next year’s plans and deal with uni stuff now that everything else is over.

Next up in the application process needa get a new passport ASAP (caus it expires next year) and go to the embassy to apply for a study visa :D Till the next update fam!

Application sent!

Ayyyy

good news fam managed to get all the application materials sent off yesterday so hopefully it should arrive in Beijing by next Wednesday :D

More info coming soon! ~ 

Intro ~

Yoooooooo time to set down some of em’ first post foundations. So this is probs gonna be a side blog used to keep track of my time spent studying abroad in China as an international student from NZ.

At the moment I’m in the middle of applying for Peking University’s one and a half year Pre-Uni Programme (PUP/预科班项目) starting next year (Feb 2017).  And If all goes well should be able to find out the results by the end of December this year :3

So far managed to submit the online application and get the 6-month Confucius Institute scholarship approved, so just needa finish writing the personal statement（个人陈述）and post all documents to 北大 by the end of next week!!

It’s getting harder to balance application stuff with school exams though, so probs won’t get a chance to sit down and finish it properly for a few days yet. 

Will keep y’all updated!

see ya fam 😎