It is already the fifth day after coming back to China, when I start to type this, sitting in the new constructed teaching building in my university, BISU. It's sunny outside, with a clear and blue sky, which reminds me of Saint Petersburg, where the sky is always stunning, and recognized as the most beautiful sky ever by volunteers from Romania, Croatia, Italy, Germany, Greece, Morocco, Bahrain, Brazil and India.
Maybe the admiration is too much, I mean, it exaggerates too much, for sure. But there is a Chinese saying, 酒不醉人人自醉，which describes a similar case. I translated it into "You are drunk not by alcohol, but by your heart" for the volunteers in my project, they loved it, especially in Russia, where bear is only juice and a Vodka shot is only the start of a bar night. I told them many Chinese sayings like this, "When you lose a horse, it can bring not only misfortune, but also fortune" was one of them, since then they have been admiring the wisdom of Chinese ancestors.
Talking about Vodka, in every supermarket in SPB, with 300 or 500 rubles at maximum, you can buy one Vodka of quite good quality. What we normally did was buying another two bottles of juice and a dozen of plastic cups, then we would have the perfect "ingredients" to make our own cocktail on the streets. At summer nights, walking with a bunch of friends on Nevskiy or Ligovskiy, drinking and talking, watching the sky, which begins to dark only after 10 pm, change itself from ice blue to dark blue, and then ink blue. That was, with no doubt, the most charming streets, the most marvelous sky, I've ever seen.
I said it was summer, but actually it's already really cold there in August and September. Usual temperature was several or more than ten degrees, and it became more freezing after rain. A suitable dress would be sweater and coat, or even padded jacket. Eleni from Greece had a joke after going back home, saying like this:" Hot is everything after Saint Petersburg."
It's time to tell you about my fellas. Except for Eleni from Greece, whom I have mentioned before, there was Elisso, who is VP of AIESEC in a LC in Greece, and Christina, who decided to go back to study after some years of working. She is nicknamed Mom by Hicham from Morocco.
Other Moroccans also had fun during this trip, we had cute Manal, funny Norman, and charming Omar who once spent half an hour teaching Andrada and Edith from Romania to pronounce his name correctly, and of course, he didn't succeed, just like Salman from Bahrain could't succeed in teaching me how to pronounce "ka" and "kha". And for them, Chinese is some graphics that can never be deciphered. After seeing me write my Chinese name for the first time, they even decided to have a competition of writing with me, because "drawing" (not writing) Chinese seemed to take a whole life to finish a line.
Lohan from India was always asking me all kinds of strange questions about China, like "Do you really have many pandas in China?", "Do you really eat dogs?", "Do you keep the two kinds of teeth at the same time?"(he majors in dentist and forgive me, I really don't remember what the professional English names of those teeth are) While he was asking, Niclas from Germany would look at me with sympathy. In the last days, he told me about his admiration for my smooth answers to those not-so-friendly questions, we also laughed at those stereotypes about other countries during that time.
Tatjana from Croatia was cool, confident and a really tough girl, sometime she would sigh for her nose, but after all, smart is the new sexy, so I love her.
We even had two girls from Brazil, Domênica and Gabriela, what a pity that I didn't dare to speak Portuguese with them. (monkey covering its eyes)
While reading the last four paragraphs, you must feel quite boring, but I want to write more about them, much more. Cause they are my biggest treasure during this trip. None of us is perfect, and we only got along with each other for 6 weeks or less, but we can always share mutual support, ideas and thoughts. We changed each other, and also got changed. In some way, I believe, it's the flaws of others that polish us, making us more tolerant. It's the shinning points of others that lead us, letting us know what kind of people we really wanna be.
So actually, I feel thankful for this irresponsible SPUEF. Facing the unexpected challenges, I saw how they thought of and dealt with problems, discovering their ways of seeing the world. In the meantime, I tried to solve problems for the sake of team harmony, striving to be considerate for others.
As Elisso said, the most difficult part was not to jump out of the comfort-zone, but to say goodbye to us. We said, see you, let's see the sunset and the amazing sky again in Saint Petersburg, when everything is covered in snow.
