14th March 2011 (7th day of the trip)

Bam and there goes the 1st week of the trip! My my... The days are just passing too quickly that 5 weeks could be too short to bond and enjoy with everyone. The weather today was exceptionally cold that wearing 4 layers still feels cold! 4 layers! Well, from what I've heard from Mr. Chua is that it is due to the sandstorm that causes high wind speeds which in turn,  drops the overall temperature to less than 10 Degree Celsius.

For the IS lessons today, we attended 汉语 课 (han4 yu3 ke4) which is actually Mandarin lessons and an economics talk regarding China's Progress and TianJin's ECO City. The Mandarin lesson never fails to keep me captivated as today's topic was about how chinese characters came about. I doubt many teenagers or even adults would know how the characters originated. They are actually simplified pictograms drawn during their time! What a cool way to create characters!

Today was a long day and tiring day but it was fruitful. We managed to cover quite a number of stuff for APPG and learned new Chinese history. In Singapore, it being a multi-racial society, culture passed down from our ancestors were less practiced. This could also be because of Singapore being a modern and fast paced society, locals have little time to follow cultural routines. One phrase that I learnt today and find very true is "Being hardworking brings you a bright fututre, but staying humble is the one which actually brings your further".