Life at Bellerbys College

Chinese New Year 2008 @ Brighton & Hove

Posted by Shiny

I've mentioned the Chinese New Year before but it was actually just the beginning of it.  What I came across later tended to be much more eye-catching.  This is a marvelous day in my life.  It was supposed to be a simple Chinese New Year performance, but then we’ve made it into a great success.

Before I start talking about what happened in Brighton, I would like to recall the memories about our trip to the London School of Economics.  On Sunday, 3rd, Feb, we went to LSE for a Chinese New Year performance.  There were three cars taking us to LSE from Brighton.  It took us approximately two hours to get there due to the traffic congestion in London even though it was Sunday. (If we can by any means improve the traffic condition in a city, it would definitely make a big difference to people’s life. Travelling is inevitable in our daily life.  Sometimes we travel for fun while sometimes we travel for work.  No matter what the reasons are, transportation is extremely important.  That’s one of the reasons why I would like to study transportation engineering of Civil Engineering).  The traffic was a bit annoying as I had car-sickness.

After arriving at LSE, we paid a visit inside the Confucius Institute of LSE then we went for our performance in the campus of LSE.  Many volunteers from LSE, Imperial and UCL were working with us. As we were in a new circumstance, we unprofessional actors didn’t do as well as we did in the rehearsal. But we have tried our best.  And after dinner, at about 7p.m. we went to the Old Theatre to prepare for the performance.

Celebration of Festivals – Chinese New Year and Christmas

Posted by Shiny

6th February is the 2008 Chinese New Year.  Last year, the Chinese New Year was at weekend, so we had time to play and had dinner with Mr. Qin, the teacher who works in the Chinese Cultural Centre.  However, this year is quite special.  The Chinese New Year’s Eve is on 6th which doesn’t allow students to play truant.

After class, the Chinese students and Vietnamese students all vanished from college at a “thunder speed”.  After making a couple of phone calls back to China, I decided to go back home to cook my own dinner.  In the past, I usually spent the Chinese New Year with friends and classmates, but I think I gotta try a new style of life.  Some students decided to go to London for karaoke whilst some went for a dinner together.  Like us, other students just didn’t have a plan.  So instead, we spend our time at home.  We could go to CC (the Chinese Centre) to have dinner with some other people, but I just wanted to go back home to have a rest.

Compared with the Chinese New Year, Christmas seems to be much more popular.  This New Year reminded me of the all the Christmases I’ve ever experienced in the UK.  In 2006, we had a fantastic Xmas lunch with our host-family.  It can be seen from the photo that we had vegetables, stuffing, turkey, champagne and dessert for lunch.  We opened crackers and the housemother gave each of us a box of chocolate.