So Miika and I left to China, Shanghai in the 2nd of March 2012. We wanted to go because the exchange programme sounded so interesting and different. The China programme brings together students from all over Finland. We chose China because neither of us has been there before and we were both very interested in Chinese culture and their everyday life. We thought that we need to go as far away as possible because we only get money from school once. :) We saw this exchange period as a change to learn something new and to see what China is really like. We chose Shanghai mainly because it was the only city in the exchange programme, but also because big cities are interesting and there is lot to see.

Our expectations were too high, I think. We expected that the school - Shanghai Institute of Health Sciences - would be perfect for us because it was recently built and that we would live in a good area. We also expected that the weather would be pretty good and that everyhting would be cheap. I think we expected many things because we haven't been in Asia before and we don't know anyone from there. The Chinese culture is so different from ours so there was no way we could have prepared well for all of this. Also many things we expected were better than we thought, for example I have a roommate who speaks some Chinese. It has helped us a lot since the Chinese are very bad in English. In this blog we will put information about our life here and how our school is going.

Our group in Shanghai Institute of Health Science (consists of nursing and physiotherapy students)