When I first decided to come to China, my mind was full of thoughts about this mystic land where is the birth place of Kungfu, Jackie Chan, Jet li as well as chopsticks, acupuncture, and green tea. And these thoughts kept ringing in my ears. At that time, I was too young to understand whether my decision is right or wrong. However, I still landed on this land for the first time on Sept 17th, 2005 with a mixture feelings of anxiety, fear, homesickness, confusion but excitement and enthusiasm as well in mind.

Everything was new and totally strange to me; the weather, the food, the language and the culture. I still clearly remember how surprised I was when I saw Chinese people planting a big tree for few hours. But with time flying by, I got used to all of these and even started to enjoy. I had made good friends too. I also feel pleased when I recall our Chinese teacher Lily taught us Chinese patiently, which have helped us a lot to survive our later life in China. She taught us the words like Ni Hao(Hello),Dui Bu Qi(I’m Sorry), Xie Xie(Thank you),Wo Ting Bu Dong(I cannot understand), which had helped us deal with problems in our daily lives; and sentences like keyi /neng pianyi yi dian ma? Wo shi xuesheng,wo meiyou hen dou qian (Can it be cheaper? We are students so we don’t have lots of money) to help us make a better bargain.

Chinese people are very nice, honest, dedicated, disciplined, kind and warm hearted. All our professors tried to help us as much as they could when we were there.

August 30th, 2010 was our convocation day. I couldn’t believe how quick time had passed away. When looking back, I have a lot of bittersweet memories. The first snow, the trip to my Chinese friend’s home in a village, the snow skating, the KTV party and the Jidan Chaofan (Egg fried rice), which helped me survive, and the moon cake, the Chinese new year as well as the colourful crackers on the new year eve, etc. The list might be endless. In a word, I had a great time in China. Besides, I had learnt many lessons. I have grown up and becoming a more mature, more well-disciplined and better person. Thank for God and my parents for giving me this wonderful opportunity to come to China. I was sad that I had to leave this country. I left China on Sept 26th , 2010.

Thanks again to God and my parents for letting me come back to purse my Master Degree in my second home Shandong University. It has been a month since I am here. Now I’m looking forward to learning more, experiencing more, making more friends, keeping more memories and becoming a good doctor to let both my homes, India and China, be proud of me.

In the end, I’d like to thank the publishing team for believing that this article would be worthy to be published. I want to thank all the readers for companying me to go through my wonderful journey in China. Last but not the least, I should thank God, my parents, my husband and all my family members for making my life worth living.

Written by Dr.Leela Rani from India, 1st year Masters Student, School of Medicine of Shandong University

Source: School of Medicine