My parents are here! So, instead of writing myself, I'll post an e-mail written by my mum, which I’ve now translated - with her permission, of course. I’m not too good at translating so I apologise for the clumsy text, I just have to say that the fault is in the translation and not in the original. I’ll also link some pictures from the text. But anyway, I’ll let my mum tell you what Baoding looks like in her eyes:

At the airport, Elina met us with a man [Mr. Kou] who works at the university’s International Office, and with them was also a driver for the car. Immediately after our arrival at the airport we were struck by the scale of everything: huge halls, lots and lots of people, wide roads with multiple lanes... No problem of fitting in a couple of Finns here!

The whole time we’ve been here in Baoding we haven’t seen any other Europeans. People turn to look at us in the streets and every now and then someone gathers up the courage to shout ‘Hello!’ or ‘Laowai!’ at us – so there’s no lack of attention for us here. At the university, lots of people want to come say hi to us and everyone is really friendly.

On Sunday morning, Elina had a 10-year old girl, Wei Lan, come over to her place for a private English lesson with her mother. We all participated in the lesson, which meant just having a conversation in English. The parents want their daughter to have the best possible education and that their daughter will be the best. The girl herself is very talented and also wants to be the best in everything she does and wants to study as much as possible. The parents have clear plans for their daughter’s future studies all the way up to university level, and even wishes for her choice of a job after that.

After the lesson the parents took us to one of the finest restaurants in town, which was in a pretty new hotel. [Elina’s comment: the hotel also has a classic Chinglish sign outside: right next to the front door is a shiny, polished brass plate that proudly proclaims: “HOTEL FOR ALIENS”- a suitable place for us to have lunch, I reckon!!] The father had borrowed a bigger car from his friend for the occasion. The hotel was fancy with staff everywhere bowing their heads as we walked by. In the lobby they had a grand piano and the parents asked the staff whether Wei Lan could play for us. And so we heard a piece from Haydn and another one by a Chinese composer, both of which she performed by heart and extremely skillfully. [EC: She’s been playing since she was 4 and practising for an hour every single day, if I understand correctly. And she really is awfully good!!] Afterwards in a private room, we had a lunch of about 13 different dishes, being of course served by a number of waitresses and waiters. And of course we were then brought back by car all the way to the front door of Elina’s home.

On Monday morning we went along to Elina’s class for the 26 Master’s students she has been teaching this term. Before the class, we were wondering whether everyone would be showing up as the lesson had been moved to 8 a.m. on Monday morning from the previous Friday. However, the students surprised us by 29 of them showing up, as everyone wanted to see us and on top of that a couple of extra people came, too! They were asking us a lot of questions and towards the end someone asked us to perform some Finnish dances, songs or something like that. So, right there on the spot we came up with a couple of performances. Matti [my dad] recited a verse of the Finnish national anthem as a poem, and Elina and I sang ‘Maa on niin kaunis’ [a Christmas song] (we couldn’t think of anything else to which we could sing in harmony). Of course they gave us an enthusiastic applause (regardless of the quality of the performances). Afterwards, some students also performed some songs and poems. It was quite fun, really!

On Tuesday evening we went along to another group’s lesson. This group contains of university teachers, who have been chose from different colleges, two lucky ones from each. Again we were faced with a number of questions, and it wasn’t always that easy to try and answer in English questions such as ‘how to best raise your child’, ‘what is a good student/teacher like’, ‘how have we brought up Elina’, ‘what should a teacher do in some given situation’ and so on. But we talked about what first came to mind and of course we would give them some sort of an answer to whatever was asked.

Moreover, we’ve met with some students who have wanted to show us around the different campuses (we’ve visited two different campuses of the university) and we’ve also had the chance to take a look at the female students' dorms on both campuses - really interesting. [EC: My dad gave one of the girls living in one of the dormitories a terrible fright, she practically nearly had a heart attack on seeing a man when she came out from the bathroom!] The campus areas themselves are very beautiful with wide streets, beautiful flowerbeds and parks with little ponds, statues and well-taken care of lawns and so on. But a contrast to the beautiful and well-kept overall look of the place was offered by the bleak, cramped and what to us looked pretty primitive dorms, which seemed distressing. I’m sure it wouldn’t be easy to get a Finnish student to live in such conditions!

Once you step out into the street from the campus area, which is surrounded by walls and guarded gates, you face a totally different view. Thousands of people on their bikes, cars, bicycle- and motorbike taxis, the milkman blowing his whistle letting people know that he has arrived and pouring out the milk with the aid of a funnel into little plastic bags for the customers, and watermelons being sold from a cart pulled by a donkey. Along the sides of the streets people spread out their various merchandise and hundreds of little street kitchens are preparing pies, bread and other treats. In the streets everyone is weaving their way trough all the traffic in an apparently organised manner, with cars and other vehicles constantly sounding their horns.

We’ve already seen and experienced a lot, this morning we were supposed to head out at 7:30 to explore the countryside and some historical sites about 100 km from here. But as it’s raining non-stop, Elina rang the taxi driver and postponed our trip until tomorrow (Elina has learned quite a bit of spoken Chinese and can handle everything in Chinese when we’re shopping for things, and has even learned the local way to bargain). So tomorrow we’ll head out come rain or shine, as we don’t have all that much time and we’ve already got some other things lined up for the rest of the days.

As for the weather, on Saturday it was close to 40 degrees, which felt way too hot for us (and it seems to have been the same for the locals, as well). Until this morning it’s been really warm but now that it’s raining the temperature is probably just barely above 20 C. However, inside the flat we’ve got effective heaters and air-conditioners in the living room and in both of the bedrooms, so we can comfortably adjust the temperature ourselves.

The Chinese food is very good, we’ve been trying out lots of different dishes as well as practicing our chopstick skills, and somehow we’ve managed to eat with them. And so far no big problems, such us stomach aches, either. However the beds are hard after the Chinese fashion: being used to a waterbed it’s not easy to find a comfortable position on stone-hard mattress on a wooden bed. Elina tells us she was bruised black and blue for the first couple of weeks sleeping in her bed but that she then got used to it and is no longer bothered by the hardness of it.