I had a study tour with some of my friends (Dr. Razaque Larik, Dr. Mumtaz Hussain, Ayesha, Mehran Alam). We were in Qingdao, visiting two universities.

We were accompanied by Li Fan and Sun Congcong as our tour guide. It was wonderful early morning, the weather was a little cold and we all left the Shandong University, Jinan, going to the train station. During three-hour journey from Jinan to Qingdao, most of us fell asleep.

Once we arrived at Jimo North Train Station, we found a taxi after we negotiated the fare with a number of other taxi drivers. It seemed more like a festival in Pakistan, where animals are sold at one place during some special days.

Left to right: Ayesha, Sun Congcong, Li Fan, Mukesh, Dr. Larik, Dr. Hussain, Alam

Finally, we headed towards Qingdao Campus of Shandong University. It was a construction site. We found some information related to our project on the Higher Education in China.

The campus is very nicely built and has many other buildings still under construction. After a long walk around the campus and a few pictures in sunny weather, we moved towards the Yushan Campus, Ocean University of China.

There are some historical buildings build by Germans in early 20th century and some of them date back to 1903. It was a study tour therefore we ended up taking some pictures of the schools around and some pictures as a group.

It was almost evening when we got back from Yushan Campus and we all planned to go to the beach and spent our time making some mobile selfies. I was a little hungry as I didn’t eat much in the lunch with friends. My choices of food are very different from others because I am a vegetarian. Being in China and not eating meat is almost a challenge for me wherever I go. So, I had no other option except eating some Lays chips with a few pieces of bread.

Anyhow, I had a nice company of Li Fan and Sun Congcong accompanying me to the restaurant where they had their dinner and I enjoyed my bread with chips as always at most of my outings.

The next day we planned to go to the Olympic Sailing Center, Qingdao. We enjoyed our cruise ship ride that lasted few minutes but a wonderful experience seeing the sea tides, heavy wind blowing all over and the beautiful scenery made our day more fun loving.

All of us got tired of walking since morning and our train had to leave in the evening at 6:45 p.m. So, finally, we decided to go back to Jinan and moved to Qingdao Train Station. We were in a hurry to catch the train since we didn’t have much time. I felt I lost the way and I had to actually follow my friends. However, I got my ticket changed with the help of a Chinese guy who was very kind and helpful. He didn’t wait to run along with me just to get me catch the train on time. Finally, I got on the train leaving at 7:45 p.m. and spent three hours listening songs.

All we had in Qingdao included project study, visit, fun, tragedy - so are there many ups and downs in our life that leave us in different situations. But we could enjoy every moment of it, since nothing is permanent in life except change.

Written by Mukesh Kumar from Pakistan, School of Electrical Engineering of SDU

Edited by Xie Tingting

Source: sdrj.sdu.edu.cn