30/05/2014-OELP DAY 5 ZEHAN

Day 5 in China 

  Today was our second day on Huangshang. We needed to wake up early at around 4.30 am just to capture the beautiful scenery of sunrise on Huangshang, but after going up, I really regretted  my choice of waking up so early. When we got to the site to see the sunrise, there were a lot of tourists who came before us and we need to try our best to squeeze behind them to catch a glimpse of the sunrise. Seeing the place is already so congested, I decided to climb up to the rocks above to take a better view. At there we got a nice view of the sunrise and even manage to snap some pictures but it was very dangerous since the rock was very steep. But to me, although the sunrise is beautiful, I think I prefer sunset more because the shines it gives off are brighter and appeared more cheerful. Although our teachers told us that we still have some time until breakfast and we should go back and sleep,my friends already felt wide awake thus we went to climb the mountains trek near the hotel. After breakfast,we continued to climb the other lower peaks in Huanshang. One of the peaks was very steep and thus it was quite scary to look down from there but the view from above was astounding. At another peak of Huanshang, there was a lot of monkeys and apes, causing a lot of tourists flooding into the spots. We managed to get on the peak and a lot of girls in class who are animal lovers quickly took pictures of the apes. Personally. I found a picture of a ape holding its baby very adorable. However, I saw some tourists ignoring the notice board of 'NO FEEDING OF ANIMAL' and feeding the apes with breadcrumbs and other food. This was a very irresponsible acts

26/05/2014-OELP DAY 3 ZEHAN

Day 3 in China 

  Today after breakfast,we took the bus to the Anhui Museum（安徽省博物院)and learnt more about the history of China and culture. The museum was separated into four different floors,each holding a different cultural exhibition. In each exhibition,there are a lot of artifacts displayed to help us have a better understanding of all the traditions and culture sealed away in the history. Now, I will share with your the learning pionts I gained from the various exhibition.

  After having lunch,we went to China Intangible Cultural Heritage Park(中国非物质文化遗产园), which also act as a theme park. Although it should be a theme park, there was very little tourists or member of public in there. After visitin the cultural attractions such as residential houses and buildings. We even walked along a path, the wall by its side depicting part of the story of 'journey to the west'. The tour guide bring us to a outdoor stadium staged for animal competitions. The first competition held was a rooster fight between rooster from Thailand and China. The fight was quite violent as the roosters were fighting to their death, biting of each other's feathers. The rooster from Thailand has most of its feather stripped off and is extremely skinny as compared to the roosters we saw in pictures. After three rounds of fights, the roosters were put back to their cage.

25/05/2014-OELP DAY 1 ZEHAN

Day 1 in China

  After recharging ourselve in the stay at Shanghai RAYFONT HOTEL, we are ready to embark on the journey to anhui. After we checked out, we headed to the station and took a three hours ride from Shanhai to hefei by high speed rail. It was my first time riding on the high speed rail and I discover that it is similar to the setup of a plane just that they have five seats in a row. The scenery outside was breathtaking as it seemed like a fast foward movie clip. Some classmates take the chance to rest up while the other were engrossed in either their own activities or thoughts. On the way, I thought about how advance technology would provide such a convenient and useful way of transportation for us to stay in touch or reach each other even in different area of the world. Back in the olden days, people may need to take several days or weeks just to travel from one province to another while we only needed spent around three hours to travel to different destinations ! These advances in technology enable us to travel in a much comfortable way and help us saved a vast amount of valuable time that could be put to a better use. It is also a great boost to economic growthof different countries as it allow trade to be carried out more easily between different them such as between China and Singapore. Many people's occupation also rely on traveling to different areas to gather informations such as reporters. After thinking deeply too, I realize the fact that although China is categorized as less developed country while Singapore is a developed country, China's fast speed rail actually have quite a few resemblance to the mrt of Singapore. It taught me that China is catching up at a fast pace and it may have a potential to be even more developed than Singapore thus as singapore citizens,we should do our best in our studies and contribute to the society in the future. When we arrived at the hefei train station, I was surprised that although the sun was bright at here too, but the atmosphere seems to be slightly cooler than singapore's. I think it may because the humidity here is lower than in Singapore.

After lunch we traveled to our first destination,三河古镇(Sanhe Guzhen).

We had dinner at a nearby restaurant. We have a scrumptious meal together and the toilets there were also quite clean. During dinner time, we were split in to four tables and at each table, we were bonding with our classmates and the teacher accompanying us while playing some games. In this games, we got to know our teacher and classmates even better. We went to check in our hotel (Holiday Inn Express Hefei South) where we will be staying for three nights. That night,we ended by playing some ice breaker games and reflection time where we shared and reflected on the learning pionts we learnt today.