Alex

My admission letter has still not arrived, and I leave Sweden in nine days. I've been terrorizing the Swedish Institute (the ones who gave me my scholarship) the last couple of days, desperately trying to get hold on my letter. They have however not recieved any of the admission letters for China from the Chinese embassy, and they can't really do anything to hurry up the process. I've even tried to harass the embassy, but they refuse to answer the phone, very clever. 

I asked our contact at the Sweidish Institute if she thought it would be better for me to apply for a tourist visa (I really don't want to do that, I want my student visa from the beginning) but she advised me to wait a couple of more days for the admission letter. I don't really have a couple of more days. The embassy do have a express visa service, but it costs more, and what if something goes wrong and it takes longer time than expected? I'm leaving next Sunday god damn! If the letters still haven't arrived to the Swedish Institute on Monday, I'll take the stupid tourist visa.

But.

Today I got an e-mail from the earlier mentioned Swedish Institute. They said that they still don't have the forms needed, but that they now know where we'll go.

Huazhong Normal University in Wuhan, Hubei province.

I believed that I would be dissapointed if I wasn't admitted to a university in Beijing, but reading that e-mail made me realize that it doesn't matter at all. I'm just so thrilled to finally know where I'm going, and I think Wuhan will be great.

I understood the possible advantages of going elsewhere other than one of the big famous cities in China, like Beijing or Shanghai, even before I applied for this scholarship, so Wuhan actually feels quite good. Wuhan is not a small city, it's one of the six largest cities in China. But how often do you hear someone say: "I'm gonna go to Wuhan over the summer!". How often do you hear this city being mentioned at all? I like that. I think there will be less westerners there, compared to Beijing. And that is good, because then I'll have no choice other than speaking Chinese.  I wonder if I'll have a southern accent after one year in Wuhan?
We'll see.

Wuhan has something that Beijing doesn't. Something that I have been thinking about, thinking that the lack of this in Beijing is actually quite unfortunate. Water.

The Han river (Hanjiang) joins China's longest river (and the world's third longest river), Yangtze, in Hubei province. Both of these rivers are winding through Wuhan, dividing the city into three parts, connected again by long bridges. The fact that I've had a crush on the Yangzte river for quite a while now does't really make it worse.

Coming from a city on water makes me feel comfortable with moving to this unknown city on the other side of the planet, knowing that it's another city on water. Water is important.  There is nothing more beautiful than water, and cities come to life in another way when there is water.

I haven't really been nervous about moving. I believed that I would be able to stay in Beijing, and I know Beijing, at least a bit. But now I'll go somewhere else, somewhere I've never been before. I've also heard people say that the dialect in Wuhan is quite incomprehensible in the beginning. So I'm a tad nervous now.  But just a tad. And hey, living by Yangtze... I can do that for a year.



Alex

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