Student name: Mr Scott Burgess
Nationality: British
Time in Global Exchange Center: 9 weeks from 7th. Oct. 2013

Before I left, a lot of people told me that trying to learn Chinese would be near-on impossible, what with the tones and characters etc. however Mandarin really isn't that difficult!   Of course, its vocab and grammar are very different to those of more familiar European languages, but it's extremely logical - at times even more so, in my opinion, than English!   Helped especially by living in a city with 20 million or so native speakers, if you can practise what you've learnt so far, as you go along, it's really not very difficult at all to soon find yourself having full conversations about what you think of China and how it compares to life back in your home country etc. with taxi drivers, shop keepers or just a random guy/girl you met in a bar!

One of the main attractions towards China is, of course, the food, and despite people back at home telling me that real Chinese food isn't anything like we have in England, I still wasn't quite expecting to find absolutely nothing that I recognised or had ever eaten before.   However, I did still discover some fantastic dishes, most of which, admittedly, were street food snacks - my absolute favourite, and almost daily breakfast, was the incredible jī dàn guàn bǐng - it has to be tried to be believed just how good it is!

Obviously, everyone knows about the Great Wall and the Forbidden City in Beijing, but I wasn't expecting quite so many spectacular sights, namely the Summer Palace and Beihai/Houhai.   There's also the fantastic nightlife, which seems to just keep going until the sun rises and beyond (aided by several conveniently located 24hr KFCs), so basically there's lots to do to keep even the most mercurial of characters among us entertained for weeks, months and maybe even years! (although I'm yet to try and go that far yet, but I'll definitely be coming back soon...)