The Conference Centre and Building 17

The following is a YouTube video from Raymond comparing Conference Centre and Dorm 17

This is probably long overdue, seeing that I have received so many
questions about it. Therefore, I've compiled this little list.
Hopefully it's useful. If you have stayed here or have something to
add, please feel free to do so in the comment section.

Link to Conference Centre.

• Single rooms only (yes, you get your own bathroom)
  
• Rooms are small but quite comfortable and clean
  
• In the typical room, there is a bed, desk, TV, Fridge, wardrobe, kettle, phone
• Internet connection – yes! (NB. Not wireless, but there is a café on 
  
• the second floor that provides wireless internet connection)
  
• Laundry on the 4th and 6th floor. (Washing machine and dryer)
  
• Food preparation room on the 7th floor (two heating plates provided, no microwave)
• Rooms are cleaned daily (ie bathroom cleaned, rubbish removed); Vacuumed once a week and sheets changed once a week.
• The fuwuyans (the housekeeping ladies), at least mine are, are very nice.
• CC has a Chinese Restaurant, Korean/Japanese Restaurant, Café, little shop selling snacks and various supplies, and a hairdresser. The restaurants are very handy on a rainy or cold day especially if you don't want to go out.
• Can book a room about a month in advance before you come.
  
• Not a lot of storage space.
  

Comparing to Building 17 – Just from what I've seen.

• Building 17 – rooms are a lot bigger. Single/twin rooms available.
• Kitchen (and I think Laundry) on every floor. Kitchen has cooking plates and microwaves.
• Apparently the walls might be a bit thinner there.
  
• Beds not so comfortable.
  
• A lot of storage space, plus desk lamps and bookshelves.
  
• Building 17 is a little further away – might take 10-15minutes to get to classroom.

Of course, there are other places/dorms as well, but since I'm not so
familiar with them, I won't write anything about it here.

Language Corner

A Japanese friend invited me to a language corner in the university.
Here you can have language exchange with Chinese Students. It turned
out I was the only English speaker there tonight (there were lots of
Japanese-Chinese speaking students) so I became quite popular with a
small group of Chinese students studying English. Chinese students
actually study English since high school, so I would say most if not
all can speak English. I also think that their English is usually
quite good, they just need to practise speaking more. We were
conversing in a mixture of mandarin and English, well, initially
mandarin until my mandarin runs out and then we spoke mostly
English...Then, I heard one of them commented (in mandarin), "her
pronunciation is good!"...huh? Did they mean my mandarin
pronunciation? It turned out that they meant that my English
pronunciation is quite good....hmmm....I sure hope so!! ha ha! Just
as an aside - they said that because last year they had an Australian
teacher and they couldn't understand a word he said! I find it really
funny when people say that my English is very good!!!

One of the girls wants us to become language partners, which is fine
with me. This means that we help each other - I help her with her
English and she helps me with my mandarin. She is really enthusiastic
though, and wants to meet for two hours every day!! I told her I
think we will start with meeting twice a week. I think I will share
her with another friend. Another girl wants to give my number to
another friend studying at Tsinghua University - she wants a language
partner on the weekends. I think I will be quite busy from now on!

It's actually a really good thing to have Chinese friends because
this will help my mandarin a lot. I'm also interested in their lives
- eg. what they do, how they live, etc. I've already had a glimpse -
one of the girls was curious about my dorm - how many people do I
share my room with, etc. I actually have my own room. Chinese
students have to share their rooms with 4-6 people, and often have to
share a common bathroom with everyone in the building. So I'll have
to count myself very lucky with my room (although quite expensive for
Chinese standards), but then I visited another foreign student's
dorm, which I find quite OK - clean but old...I'd would have to say
my little room is quite luxurious, even if the bathroom floods during
showers & no heating until November 15th!

Ni Hao from Beijing

Beijing is a BIG city. I arrived on the 10th with my parents (aka my translators – how fortunate for me!). We stayed at a nice hotel in the city and I officially moved to the Conference Centre Hotel in BLCU yesterday.

In the mean time, I managed to get myself registered, paid for tuition, and got my student card. Fortunately it wasn’t too tricky. Everything was quite organised in a chaotic way! The queues were long though.

So far, the atmosphere has been great – so much energy about! There are so many people from different countries here – a lot of students from Korea and Japan, as well as Indonesia and Thailand. There are also lots of Americans, and it seems, Australians and other countries. Incidentally I have even met someone who came from Hurstville! (in case you don’t know, it’s very close to my home in Sydney) – imagine being half way around the world and meeting someone from the next suburb!

My room at the Conference Centre (CC) is small, but nice and clean. I’m happy with it. There’s even a window that I can open to let fresh air in. The bathroom, though, gets flooded during a shower, as there’s no shower recess, only a shower curtain…I was wondering what the carpet stain in front of the shower was, then I realised that after a longer shower (eg. After hair washing), some of the water overflowed out of the bathroom!...may be this is a strategy to reduce water usage…ie we can’t shower for too long? The only other thing is the hard bed (feels like sleeping on a wooden block), but I was reassured by one of the girls I met that the beds here at CC are the best in uni. The other nicer place is Dorm 17, which is apparently quite nice, but the beds there are even harder, she told me! OK, to be fair, even the beds at the nice 4 star Capital Hotel in the city were quite hard as well (but not as hard!!!).

Otherwise, CC is a great place – very convenient - only 2 minutes from the classrooms, and there are a couple of nice and cheap restaurants downstairs (Chinese and Japanese) and even a little convenient store. There’s also a laundry with dryer costing 3 yuan per wash and 6 yuan each time we use the dryer.

I had my placement test this morning too. It was a bit of a disaster! : ) The test itself was fairly simple and may be even painless, actually – a teacher comes to you and have a chat to gauge your level of mandarin. Well, this is when I realised how different it is to study phrases – how to go shopping, whatever, and to actually speak to an actual person! In reality, people don’t actually follow the scripts in textbooks! So I guess this is the value for me in being in China right now – I have to practise as much as possible in real situations, not just in the classroom. I find out which class I will go into tomorrow morning, and have till the 17th to change class if needed.