China: Huawei Seeds of The Future

I'm in China.It's weird.

I've spent the last two days now in Beijing, the capital of China. I was very lucky to be offered a place on Huawei's 'Seeds of the Future'Programme in which they have brought 10 Irish Students and over 30 British Students over to China to experience Chinese culture, learn the language, visit their head-quarters and make some other industrial visits.

I landed on Saturday 4pm local time after over 16 hours of travelling. Since then I've'mastered'the art of eating with chopsticks, experienced very peculiar foods, and seens some of the craziest driving I think I'll ever see. Stop lights mean very little here, and road lines and lanes mean even less. Mopeds and bikes zoom around seemingly following different (or no) laws, while cars beep and lane change around them. Crossing these roads is an exhilirating experience in itself. Yesterday (Monday), we started learning Mandarin Chinese. It's something else! The noises required for the language are like nothing we have in the Engligh language but so far it's been very fun and I can now confidentifly say hello, thank you, sorry and goodbye.I was also given a Chinese translation of my name -'Mai Kai'.

Yesterday evening, after class we suited-up and visited the British Embassador's residency, where she talked to us, along with Paul Kavanagh, the Irish Embassador, who's residency we'll be visiting on Thursday. The house was quite beautiful and both Embassador's were quite interesting.

After the visit we changed back into more comfortable clothes and headed out for dinner, which we followed up with drinks and the fabledKTV - Kareoke.It's a crazy phenomenon where you can rent private booths and belt out all the ballads and smash hits of the 90s and early 2000's! If you're ever in China it's somehthing you should do at least once!!