Considering Tsinghua

[plucesiar]

Hello everyone, I'm thinking of going to Tsinghua for an undergraduate exchange term either in their Fall semester of 2010 (Sep-early Jan) or Spring Semester of 2011 (Mar-Jun). Tsinghua is the only university in mainland China (not including HK) that my school has an exchange program with.

I've been in Canada for pretty much my entire life so I have no trouble with English, and my family speaks Cantonese at home and I've had exposure to Mandarin and reading & writing (Traditional) Chinese, so I think I can survive in China.

My goals for the exchange are:

1) to improve my Mandarin conversation skills (reading/writing isn't too important for me because I have resources back home for this)

2) to meet some local students there and hang out with them, etc.

3) to travel (and have a lot of fun).

Is Tsinghua a good place for this? I know that (local) students at Tsinghua are generally very studious but I wouldn't want to go if everyone's studying in their rooms 24/7. Also, will there be enough spare time outside of class to travel to, say, Shanghai and other parts of China?

My 2nd option is to exchange at HKU or some other universities in HK, since I know that I can get by and according to several of my frds who've done exchange terms there, it will fulfill my goals 2&3 for sure.

Thanks