Happy National Day
Happy National Day you guys! Yay for October 1st and the founding of the People's Republic of China!
Hopefully I'll get to Tiananmen Square at some point today. Wouldn't want to miss the million-people crowds.
There is a time difference between Beijing and Vancouver. When it's midnight here, it's nine o'clock in the morning in Vancouver, and when it's midnight in Vancouver, it's three o'clock in the afternoon in Beijing. When it's noon in Beijing, it's nine o'clock in the evening of the day before in Vancouver. When it's noon in Vancouver, it's three o'clock in the morning the next day in Beijing. Try to figure that one out in your heads...
I did get to do my laundry yesterday. It's drying around my room right now. Haven't cleaned my room in a while. But it's been officially reported that we're getting the keys to our new teachers' apartments October 5th. I won't be here, so when I come back from vacation I'll be able to move out and move in. Nice.
Rumour has it that they don't want to put too much old furniture into our new apartments because they don't want to have to take all that furniture out again when they give us *new* furniture in two months. Apparently we're to get a bed, a table, and a chair. I really don't want to spend my Saturdays buying furniture which I won't know what to do with when I go back to Vancouver. I don't particularly enjoy shopping, especially in a place where I don't know the language and where it takes forever to get anywhere or get anything done. As well, I'm already struggling to keep to my budget, I don't want to spend any more money. This is not what I bargained for. We'll see what happens.
A Chinese classmate of Katia and Gaetan's has organised everything for our trip (we're leaving Sunday at noon). Her mother and a family friend's daughter, who speaks English, will meet us at the train station in Qindao (at freaking 2 o'clock in the morning!) and will take us to the family friend's house where we'll sleep the first night at least. We told her (the Chinese classmate) that this was much too kind, that we felt we were imposing too much, and it was way too much to ask of this said classmate's mother to come pick us up at the airport! However, they inisisted, and told us this was OK, so now we're looking for presents for all these kind, wonderful people. It has been said that we can get some roasted Pekin duck in gift boxes and that this would make a nice present. We'll see what we can find today.
So it looks like we'll be seven to a room on the night of Sunday, October 2nd!
Last night (Friday night), I had dinner with the French crew - Katia, Gaetan, Loic - and one of Loic's Chinese students, who has been studying French for a bit more than a year. Her French was alright, pretty good in fact, but it gets irritating speaking slowly and considerately all the time. She spoke better English and sometimes we switched. Dinner was good. Afterwards we went to play some pool in the most weirded-out pool hall I've ever been to.
It was on the second floor of a deserted building. It's probably a recreational building of some sort, but at night it was dark and deserted. We had to walk around a fence to get to the entrance - if you didn't know it was there you wouldn't have noticed it. There are six pool tables, no music, a lady sitting on a chair, watching TV in the back. Three tables were taken when we arrived. All guys. Guillaume came to join us, so there were six of us - two teams. We all took turns playing. It was fun. Loic's pretty good, as is Guillaume, and they were on the same team, so they won the two games we played. The Chinese girl didn't know how to play, but she learned quickly and I think made at least two holes. They sold cans of beer in the back for two kwai (30 cents) and bottles of Coke for 3 (50 cents). It was pretty funny that the lady took our drinks out of a fridge, but the fridge was only for show because it obviously wasn't working, so our drinks were luke-warm. We went back to our dorm around midnight and chatted outside for maybe an hour before the need to pee was too great and we all went to our rooms to find our Western-style bathrooms. There had been no female washrooms available at the pool hall.
Blogger was down last night so I wasn't able to write when I wanted to. Also, I can't view my blogger today at the new site my editor gave me, so that sucks. Taught my students "sucks" this week. Don't know if they'll remember it when we all come back from our holidays.
Hope y'all have a fabulous week-end.
Hopefully I'll get to Tiananmen Square at some point today. Wouldn't want to miss the million-people crowds.
There is a time difference between Beijing and Vancouver. When it's midnight here, it's nine o'clock in the morning in Vancouver, and when it's midnight in Vancouver, it's three o'clock in the afternoon in Beijing. When it's noon in Beijing, it's nine o'clock in the evening of the day before in Vancouver. When it's noon in Vancouver, it's three o'clock in the morning the next day in Beijing. Try to figure that one out in your heads...
I did get to do my laundry yesterday. It's drying around my room right now. Haven't cleaned my room in a while. But it's been officially reported that we're getting the keys to our new teachers' apartments October 5th. I won't be here, so when I come back from vacation I'll be able to move out and move in. Nice.
Rumour has it that they don't want to put too much old furniture into our new apartments because they don't want to have to take all that furniture out again when they give us *new* furniture in two months. Apparently we're to get a bed, a table, and a chair. I really don't want to spend my Saturdays buying furniture which I won't know what to do with when I go back to Vancouver. I don't particularly enjoy shopping, especially in a place where I don't know the language and where it takes forever to get anywhere or get anything done. As well, I'm already struggling to keep to my budget, I don't want to spend any more money. This is not what I bargained for. We'll see what happens.
A Chinese classmate of Katia and Gaetan's has organised everything for our trip (we're leaving Sunday at noon). Her mother and a family friend's daughter, who speaks English, will meet us at the train station in Qindao (at freaking 2 o'clock in the morning!) and will take us to the family friend's house where we'll sleep the first night at least. We told her (the Chinese classmate) that this was much too kind, that we felt we were imposing too much, and it was way too much to ask of this said classmate's mother to come pick us up at the airport! However, they inisisted, and told us this was OK, so now we're looking for presents for all these kind, wonderful people. It has been said that we can get some roasted Pekin duck in gift boxes and that this would make a nice present. We'll see what we can find today.
So it looks like we'll be seven to a room on the night of Sunday, October 2nd!
Last night (Friday night), I had dinner with the French crew - Katia, Gaetan, Loic - and one of Loic's Chinese students, who has been studying French for a bit more than a year. Her French was alright, pretty good in fact, but it gets irritating speaking slowly and considerately all the time. She spoke better English and sometimes we switched. Dinner was good. Afterwards we went to play some pool in the most weirded-out pool hall I've ever been to.
It was on the second floor of a deserted building. It's probably a recreational building of some sort, but at night it was dark and deserted. We had to walk around a fence to get to the entrance - if you didn't know it was there you wouldn't have noticed it. There are six pool tables, no music, a lady sitting on a chair, watching TV in the back. Three tables were taken when we arrived. All guys. Guillaume came to join us, so there were six of us - two teams. We all took turns playing. It was fun. Loic's pretty good, as is Guillaume, and they were on the same team, so they won the two games we played. The Chinese girl didn't know how to play, but she learned quickly and I think made at least two holes. They sold cans of beer in the back for two kwai (30 cents) and bottles of Coke for 3 (50 cents). It was pretty funny that the lady took our drinks out of a fridge, but the fridge was only for show because it obviously wasn't working, so our drinks were luke-warm. We went back to our dorm around midnight and chatted outside for maybe an hour before the need to pee was too great and we all went to our rooms to find our Western-style bathrooms. There had been no female washrooms available at the pool hall.
Blogger was down last night so I wasn't able to write when I wanted to. Also, I can't view my blogger today at the new site my editor gave me, so that sucks. Taught my students "sucks" this week. Don't know if they'll remember it when we all come back from our holidays.
Hope y'all have a fabulous week-end.
posted by Caro at 10:33 AM
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