Day 7: Lesson & Orientation!

Day number 7. This means I’ve been here in Wuhan, China for officially 1 week. 5 more weeks to go over here! Today is also the official start of our lesson and curriculum over here. Woke up at 8 plus in the morning today, prepared, packed our stuffs and off we go to the Foreign Language School for our first official lesson. On a side note, weather today was crazily blazing hot! I think the temperature today was around 36 degrees! The weather got most of us tanned or rather, burned! This is definitely hotter and warmer from what we were experiencing back home in Singapore whereby a temperature of around 32 degrees is already unbearable for most of us.

Back to lessons, the classroom which we are using over here in Wuhan is definitely different from what we have back home in Singapore. The classroom over here looks rather old and they are still using blackboard and chalk for teaching purpose. This is definitely something which most of us have yet to see till now. It is definitely something new and enriching for us. The photos below shows the classroom which we will be using for our lessons!

Here is our lecturer, Mr. Joseph Loh trying to explain to us some facts and shortcuts using the blackboard and chalk!

The lesson which we are having today is Business Process Engineering or BPE in short. Mr. Joseph Loh, our lecturer for this module over here, gave us an overview of what the module is about and after which, he moved on with Flexsim, the software which we will be using for this module. After which, all of us tried using Flexsim to build up a process model or structure. It is rather fun and interesting which we have yet to experience it before. Here are some photos of the process model which I had built using Flexsim!

After lessons was lunch time! Most of us headed out of campus for lunch. We headed to the dumplings shop for our lunch. I would say it is rather nice and at the same time, 10 dumplings alone, without any rice or noodles, made us very full. I ordered meat dumplings which costs RMB$6 which is only approximately SGD$2!

After lunch was campus orientation again. All of us gathered outside our hostel while waiting for the rest to come. Then, we proceed on with the campus orientation. We headed out to the Information Engineering School which we were brought to several classrooms and the staffs over there explained to us the uses and functions of the various equipments, how does it work and how is it operated.

After touring around the Information Engineering School, we headed on to the School of Life Science which was very far! We had to walk a long distance under the blazing hot sun to reach the School of Life Science. After reaching the School of Life Science, we were once again brought to several lecture halls or classrooms to see the various facilities which they have.

The nursing lab!

Medical Care lab!

After the campus orientation, its free and easy time. Thus, most of us headed back to our rooms to rest, do some work and most importantly, avoid the blazing hot weather today! We rested in our rooms for quite some time till around 6plus in the evening where most of us decided to head out for physical training! We did some running, sprinting and some exercises around the campus. Here are some photos after our PT session!

After physical training, was dinner time! Some of us headed out to get dinner back while the rest stayed in the rooms to bathe. And here I am blogging after my shower and dinner! Morning lesson tomorrow will be cancelled as the lecturer is sick, but lessons will be as per normal in the afternoon tomorrow. Thus, this means that we will have more time to rest and to do our stuffs.

Alrights! That’s all for today! Here are some interesting photos which I took along the way. Click to enlarge. Enjoy! :D

My Reflections:

Based on what I had gathered today, I realized that changes are inevitable. Let’s say for example, the classroom which we have over here in WUST first. The environment here is definitely poorer as compared with what we have back home in Ngee Ann or other institutions which we had went to so far. Different places have different façade, different structure. Though most of us are not used to it, I believed that every one of us over here had not regretted coming over here to WUST for our Overseas Immersion Programme. We enjoyed ourselves though it is something which is not we expect it to be.

Another example would be the weather over here. I would say that the weather over here is definitely worse than what we have back in Singapore. We experience much hotter and warmer weather over here. Thus, I believe that we must leave our comfort zone in order to gain new insights, new experience and new knowledge. That’s the only way which we will learn and to know more about the world outside and around us.

“Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.”
- Arnold Bennett