After the opening ceremony on July 4, campers from around the world began their first week of FPISC. This week witnessed vibrant activities in which campers had a lot of fun engaged.
The summer camp had busy schedules every day. In the mornings, campers were introduced various lecture held by professors who were experts in different fields. While afternoons are the time for campers to visit the laboratories. Through such busy schedules, campers learned a lot from the ongoing research work and had a better sense of science and what they were learning.
Apart from the scheduled lectures and lab tours, campers also enjoyed other activities. Among them, the Chinese classes could be the most interesting. The teacher introduced the Chinese language from the very beginning of its pronunciation system, the Pinyin. The foreign campers began their voyage of learning Chinese through trials of pronouncing Pinyin. After that, the teacher covered phrases to greet each other and terms about nationalities, places, food and so on. Foreigners took a great interest in learning these colloquial terms commonly used in daily conversation, and they were eager to show how well they could speak Chinese. At first it was a little bit difficult for them to speak Chinese, but the teacher and their Chinese companion offered them help and corrected their mistakes with great effort. By the end of the Chinese classes, foreign campers were able to briefly introduce themselves and have a small conversation in Chinese. On the final class, the teacher introduced some knowledge of Chinese culture and presented each foreign camper a gift of Chinese knot, sending her best wishes to foreigners. All foreign students had a good impression on the short but productive Chinese classes.
On Tuesday (July 5) night, a marvelous traditional Chinese music class was introduced to campers. Members from the traditional Chinese orchestra displayed many traditional musical instruments – such as ErHu, Yangqin and Zheng to foreign campers. Beautiful pieces of traditional music were performed by tutors from the Chinese orchestra, and campers found themselves totally absorbed in the beauty of the graceful melodies of traditional Chinese music. Later on, campers were taught how to play the traditional musical instruments during the open tutorial session. They were curious about those instruments, trying to play them under the tutors’ guidance. By the end of the session, some can even play songs without tutors’ help.
In spare time, USTC campers together with foreign campers had a good time in sport games. Some played badminton, some played table tennis and others played board games. The games were in harmonious atmosphere, and campers absorbed themselves in the process of the games. Through the game, winning is not important, what really matters is that campers got a better interaction, and either Chinese or foreign campers had a better understanding of each other. Thus a long lasting friendship was set up.
On the first weekend, campers had a two-day trip to Hongcun Village, near the famous Yellow Mountain south of Hefei, where they experienced the true Chinese culture.