the end

Finally!

After the market, we saw the temple we wanted to visit in the distance. We walked to the main road to hail a taxi. The driver drove a whole 100m to the entrance of the temple...we hadn't realised we were so close!!! We had to pay 5 yuan for the taxi - the minimum charge but still a rip-off. Above is a pic of the entranceway to the temple.
Guillaume, Katia and Loic (making a face) in front of the temple. It's a reproduction of a famous Llama Temple in Tibet.
The view from the temple's terrace (atop the white part in the previous pic). What was funny was that some buildings were just walls - they had no roofs (why not rooves?) so we could see that there was nothing inside. The two buildings with the strange-looking cones were examples of such empty shells. The windows were also plastered up, so there were no holes in the building. I guess it gets really cold...
The inside of the temple. There were rooms with exhibitions of ancient clothing and habitats and utensils and armour and the like on every floor. We didn't see everything.
We walked up many of these wooden stairs to get to the highest roof on top of the temple. I had to wait a few minutes before taking the picture - a lot of people were coming down!
The Frenchies waiting for me as I take a picture from a pagoda. They're beside the entrance to the stairwell (previous pic). Part of the Great Wall isn't far from Chengde, but I don't think that's it in the distance (the white snake-like thing).
Just one of many beautiful pagodas found on the roof of the temple. They're impressive, but it seems like everywhere you go in China you find these type of things, so after a while it gets repetitive. It's strange that no matter at what time the building was built, the architectural style seems to stay the same.
Cabs normally take four people. We were five. Hence the need to squeeze.
A picture from Chengde's train station. This is right when it started getting cloudy. China's booming. There's construction everywhere. The parking lot in front of the station is full of buses ready to take you anywhere and everywhere.
Many people still use bags instead of suitcases. You see many of them in the subway stations in Beijing.
This is where we ate our lunch on Sunday. It's a small restaurant across the street from the train station. The boy is the son of the people who work there and he watched us eat while eating peanuts.
The wall of the restaurant: some Chinese art alongside an advertisement for a chocolate snack that I've tasted! Every table has chopsticks, soy sauce, and spicey sauce.
The back of the restaurant. Behind the curtain is the kitchen. The drinks are kept to the right; vegetables to the left (out of the picture).
Gaetan wearing a captain's cap. It was hanging above him on a hook.
Loic and Katia sleeping. Loic was disgusted to see he had holes in his hair. He doesn't really...

We drank hot chocolate and ate a ton of junk food...

I realise there aren't many pictures of me, so here's a candid shot (I'm not at my best!) taken by Katia on our way home in the train. It's night out. We arrived in Beijing at 6:40 PM.

Korean movies

Korean movies are great.

Saw another one this evening in Katia's room (remember, I saw one a few weeks ago called "Innocent Steps" about a Chinese woman who goes to Korea illegally and learns to tango) called...well, there was no English translation. Only English subtitles.

It was a tearjerker about a little boy whose older brother has a brain tumor and the ups and downs of school and hospital life. I liked it. The little boy is so cute! In the same playing field as the boy actor who played Valentine.

Anyway, to bed I should go.

Random thought of the day: the French are apparently ranked sixth in the world for average number of times to have sex in a year.

the middle

Today was a long day. My afternoon class (which I didn't have last week because they were taking an exam remember?) was noisy and full of energy and hard to control. I let them off 15 minutes early...pretty bad, but oh well. I'm sure they don't complain. It's unfortunate though, because their level is the lowest and they just don't bother even trying.

Okay, back to scenes from Chengde. Sunday morning:
Here's our hotel bathroom. Straight ahead is the girls' bathroom, to the left is the boys'. Gaetan & Loic are in front of the mirrors.
The two stalls in the women's bathroom. You can easily see inside the stalls if you're standing... I've been to malls where the public bathrooms have slats in their stalls so you can see every woman squatting...it's as if the stalls didn't have doors. Katia said she once lined up to go to the bathroom and every woman in the line up could see the woman who was peeing because nobody bothered to close the door. The Chinese don't care about these things, and frankly, if I weren't so prudish, I agree that nobody should care. It's as natural as eating and sleeping after all. But personally, I just can't go to the bathroom in front of other people!!! I can hardly speak to someone while peeing!
This is what every bathroom stall has. It's a bit shocking at first, but you quickly get used to it...well, sort of. I do occasionally go home inbetween classes because I can't bear to go to the public bathrooms at the school... One thing that is easy to forget: you can't throw the toilet paper into the hole, you have to throw it in the basket, which stinks the place up tremendously!!

We took a bus to go to one of the temples in the outskirts of Chengde, but the bus driver took us to the wrong temple (well, not the one we wanted). So we decided to walk to the temple we wanted to visit. I took a ton of pictures of street scenes. This one looks like it's of a 24hour street cafe.
The sidewalks in China are badly paved, if paved at all. It would be impossible for a wheelchair to go through. I don't know how people with disabilities survive. The must be totally dependent on their caretakers. Lots of bikes in Chengde... And still those bicycle-cart thingies.
A colourful Chengde store. Sells just about anything and everything.
Coals burning at right. People walking... It was cold!
Somebody's yard. Clothes hanging to dry, a pile of rubbish in the foreground, and a man piercing a hole in his stairs...don't know why! He had a drilling machine, though, and it made a lot of noise!
An old man selling coal on the side of the road. He's behind his scale and weights on the left.
Katia's yellow bag, which she bought in Beijing for next to nothing. Everytime you see those red ball-things (lantern look-alikes) you know there's a restaurant.

We went through a huge market. I guess it was the Sunday morning market. It was marvelous. This was the first sight that greeted us: the roaming barber shop.
Spices and goods to eat, next to shoes and clothes. It was quite the market.
Katia bought two pairs of socks from the woman on the left. Her feet were freezing (she wasn't wearing the right shoes!). There are so many people in China that when one of them is sick, they wear something to cover their mouth and nose so as not to spread the disease to others. I see it all over campus and I guess that's what this woman is doing in the middle of the picture.
There were lots of people. I think Chengde has 200,000 inhabitants (about), but you can be sure that there were many people from the surrounding areas at this market.
The woman is holding her baby. This was the fruits and vegetables section - on the ground is just as good as on a table, I suppose... For farmers who bring in their goods with a bicycle-cart there isn't much room for tables I guess.
Pigs ready for slaughter. There were trucks and trucks full of them...
A view of the market from high up. This was the other side of the market - completely opposite the barber stops which we saw at first. It really was quite a cool market.
A woman selling puppies.
It took me forever to take this picture. I felt so bad because I kept the women waiting for so long... Cute puppies. I'm sure they haven't been vaccinated for ANYTHING though...

Going for dinner at 7:30 PM tonight, as usual, with the French crew and a few Chinese people, no doubt. Tomorrow the plan is to go to Carrefour to stock up. Carrefour is a French supermarket that's not too, too far away from our university. It's a good place to buy foreign products.

Thursday, two of my students, Yang Yang and Kobe (they made me dinner the Thursday before last), have invited to be my guide and to take me around an old district in Beijing.

I received a letter from my father and I'm so happy! He tells me to be careful with so many exciting things happening at once. I need to write postcards myself!

Alright (my students make fun of my "alright!" which I apparently say all the time in class), time to work (prepare for tomorrow's class). Hope you're all in good health. Take care.

the beginning...

It's lunch hour for me. I have time to post a few pictures of my week-end up, I guess. I took 197 pictures & movies over two days. Don't worry, I've whittled down the selection to around fifty, but that still seems like a lot. We'll see how many I get through...

I had four hours of classes this morning. We talked about fear - what we're afraid of - and worries - what we worry about. No brilliant ideas came from my students.

The view from the train on the way to Chengde. We see many of these little villages (even smaller) all along the way. Some look quite poor, others look well-kept.
Lunch on Saturday - our first day in Chengde.
This is what the outside of the restaurant looks like. In those earthen pots lie bits of meat or tofu. We didn't eat that... We ate cold noodles and baoze and meat on the bone.
A modern-looking Chengde street. To think that all the new buildings have been built in the last fifteen to twenty years... Crazy. And that motorbike-pulling-cart thing you see in the foreground is extremely common in Beijing as well. People carry all sorts of things on those carts - from cardboard and styrofoam to their families.
China is full of contradictions. You see these poor farmers sit on the side of the road in a modern city selling their goods - often spices, things that sell for next to nothing. This woman is even using a pole on her shoulders to carry her wares - so old school! And just as you walk by, thinking "These poor people have absolutely nothing...," out comes the pink cell phone hanging around her neck, and this old lady you thought was from the third world is sending a text message, something I don't think even my mother could do.
A side street. Street vendors sell absolutely everything - from cooked eggs (and only cooked eggs) to bicycles (it's illegal so they keep most of their bikes at home and only have a few around them, which they say they're fixing when the cops arrive) to shoe soles and heels. Here, the lady in the forefront looks like she's selling hot pancake-like stuff. There was a guy in the street who was carrying a pink sofa on his back - it was pretty funny-looking.
We visited Chengde's Summer Palace. It cost us $10 Cdn to get in - a small fortune in China. Many tourist places in China are really expensive, I don't know why. Only the elite must be able to afford classic vacations where you pay entry to visit tourist attractions. I loved the Summer Palace because many of the buildings were made of wood and it looked so cool - as you can see here. I'm used to the Chinese painting their buildings in the traditional red, white and green colours and it often looks so tacky...
More pictures of the Summer Palace. It was nice and cool. Because we were there in November and the high season is of course summer, there weren't a lot of people. It was really quite relaxing.
Gotta love the Chinese for their walls - which means many many doors...
A guy was skating on a lake in the park at the Summer Palace. That's how cold it was! It was especially cold in the late afternoon, when there was no more sun. Brrr!!!
Gaetan did a bit of his own skating. But he didn't go far...
We walked around the park for the whole afternoon. It's quite big and we were walking at a leisurely pace.
We stopped to rest on top of a hill and I looked down...
It really was quite an enchanting place. An old couple were walking and singing traditional Chinese opera. When they saw us they asked us where we were from. The guy started playing "La Marseillaise" - the French national anthem - on his harmonica, and then he sang it in Chinese!!! There's a Chinese translation of the French national anthem!!! We were so impressed. I got it all on my camera's video format too! I was so happy.
Cigarette break. Katia was in the bathroom.

Saturday night dinner. We bread and young joe chow fan and the local specialty - deep fried venison - and some other stuff... It was really quite delicious. We had our own private room. I love private rooms...

And now I'm going to eat dinner. More pictures later.

Chengde

Wow. It's crazy leaving for the week-end. Totally changes your frame of mind.

And it also makes you incredibly tired. Oh well.

We had a marvelous time. We came aboard five minutes before the train left Saturday morning at 7:16 AM. Chinese trains are almost always exactly on time. We didn't sleep on the train. We found our hotel on the train - there are "hotel sharks" if you will on the train, who look for customers. We found one who would give all five of us a room for 100 yuan (20 yuan each), just over $3 Cdn. In China, you can find somebody willing to take you anywhere by car or mini-van, so you really don't have to worry too much about transport, and then there's always, always ALWAYS a place to stay - although the conditions aren't always up to standard.

In this hotel there were no showers and the stalls in the bathrooms were not exactly private.

Nevertheless, it was only for a night.

We walked around the immense Summer Palace Saturday afternoon. We spent three hours eating dinner in a nice restaurant where we ate the local specialty: venison (deer meat). When we left at 10 PM, the city was pretty dead. We went to a nearby KTV where we sang until around midnight. We were sleeping in our beds by 1 AM.

Sunday we woke up around 9 AM and we went to a great temple just outside the city walls which was reconstructed to look like the Llama temple in Tibet. It was pretty impressive.

We went to the train station to get our tickets for the 2:40 PM train back to Beijing. We had lunch in a little "bui-bui" (French term for small hole-in-the-wall) across the street.

We were back in Beijing at 6:40 PM (four hours away, exactly). We decided to walk around a bit to find a bus station. The evening was really nice and we got to admire the city lights of Beijing. I was pretty tired.

We arrived in front of North Gate around 8:30 PM and we found ourselves a good restaurant to eat dinner in.

I came home to look over my lesson plan for the week. *big sigh* And then off I went to bed.

I'm still tired. Hope the day goes well...

Take care and have fun.

The midterm

So I interviewed about fifteen of my first year students this afternoon (I'm thinking it must've been around 15) in an hour and a half. I spent about 5 minutes with each. I learned a lot. There's a girl that told me her university life isn't at all what she expected - she's a loner. Another told me about her blind grandfather who loved her so much he lied to her. Another talked about the discipline tai kwan do has brought to his life. It was all good. Apparently they all wanted to talk with me because they thought I would be the nicest. Maybe I was the nicest but I definitely didn't give them the greatest grades. I failed two of them (one of them didn't speak at all; she doesn't often come to class either) and the highest grade I gave was 85%, and that was to one of my best students (he's good in class, but during this exam I thought he didn't do so well; I guess he was nervous).

It was an interesting experience.

I went to English corner. There were six students and two of them didn't speak... I refused to speak longer than 30 seconds and the four students who did talk did a good job of speaking, I thought. The topic was the generation gap and differences between children and parents. We also talked about divorce and the effects on the child. One of the students' parents had divorced when he was young and he thought he was better off for it.

This evening we went for drinks at a local American-style restaurant. There was Bob, Pascal and Melodie (the two Chinese students learning French who are in the picture with the lingerie-clad woman poster restaurant), Tom (British dude teaching English), Matt (if you put Tom & Matt together you've got "tomato" in French), Jean-Baptiste and the whole French crew minus Guillaume (he was probably out with a Chinese girl), and a Chinese friend of Matt's called Carl (he speaks English very well but he's in the German department). So 11 of us in total. It's boring for you because you don't know these people, but to me, they're like my second family, seriously, and they're what keep me going at this point. I love going out like this in the evenings and getting together with people who enjoy my company as much as I enjoy theirs. It's lovely and reassuring.

Anyway, tomorrow I leave for Chengde. My alarm is set for 5 AM. Yikes. It's now nearing midnight...:P Oh well. I'll sleep in the train. I won't write for the next couple of days, that's for sure, so have a great week-end and see you all on Monday (if not Sunday).

Bugs

This morning I opened my bedroom door to go to the bathroom when what greets me...

but this lovely creature!!! Its tentacles are HUGE!!!
I put the pen beside it so you could see just how big it is. I remember Rachel sending me a letter from Hong Kong with a drawing of a cockroach as big as her fist! I don't know if I'll be able to cope...

Today I'm giving my first years' their oral midterm. Two weeks ago it was my second years who had their midterm but I wasn't invited because I was teaching another class that afternoon.

To tell you the truth, I'm a bit stressed about this exam. I hope it'll be OK...

Last night we had a delicious dinner at a Muslim restaurant. It's a good thing we did some swimming beforehand because we ate a lot. Oh well.

Tomorrow we leave a Beijing train station at 7:15 AM for Chengde, in NorthEast China. We arrive at our destination around 11 AM. "We" = Guillaume, Loic, Gaetan, Katia and I. We're only staying one night. I need to prepare my classes for at least next Monday. Yikes.

Hope schoolwork isn't bogging you down. I know November's often a tough month. For those who are working, enjoy the end of autumn. And for those of you not doing anything, revel in the luxury of being able to relax!

News update

I'm glad I'm not there... Problem is, this type of thing (toxic dump polluting a river that's the main water supply for the city) - or the equivalent - could happen so easily near Beijing too...yikes. This article talks about Beijing's water coming from reservoirs outside the city, which may be replenished by rain (even artificially created rain!) or groundwater. Groundwater could easily be polluted, no?

In other news, two deaths are now reported as having been caused by bird flu, yet when you think about it, there are more than a billion people living in this country. What's two deaths, really?

There's also an article on the sexual liberation of China - a whopping 36% of 391 young Nanjingers think it's OK to have premarital sex. Woo-hoo!

"Instead of considering premarital sex immoral, as society has considered conventionally, youngsters are now pursuing personal enjoyment," said Li during a recent lecture in Guangzhou.

Thumbs up to personal enjoyment. :-) However it's kind of sad if you get your sex-ed mainly from pornography...

However, it looks like there are still restrictions in some places - at least on campus itself. It's true that a few of my students seem to be living with their partners.

The last line in this article shocked me - there's a 50% divorce rate in Beijing??? I heard it from my students but I didn't believe it...

OK, enough news. It's time to go to bed. Tomorrow I get to sleep in!

The swimming pool was brilliant. Loved it.

New News

I love this picture! Too bad Katia's blurry...:P It's Andy and Kim, two Korean friends (Kim is Guillaume's roommate) with whom we had dinner last night (as well as Cecilia and another Korean girl I forget the name of who speaks good English because she spent a year in the US or something).
I spoke with my mother on the phone this morning. It was good to hear the usual "watch what you eat" message - but in China, it's so hard to watch what you eat.

The name for Coca Cola sounds practically the same in Chinese, but in Chinese it means "delicious beverage that makes you feel happy." Amazing, isn't it? You'd think the inventor of Coke knew Chinese.

We would like to go swimming this afternoon.

Western toilets don't work in this country. I have to lift the toilet tank's lid to manually flush my toilet. It was the same in my room in the student dorm. It was the same at a friend's place who doesn't live on campus. There's always something wrong with them. Toilets are finicky things...

Zippers don't work either. The zipper will most likely break within one or two weeks of purchase, whether it's the zipper on a handbag or a coat. Even the zippers of two pieces of clothing that I brought over from Vancouver broke when I was in China. That's how powerful the Chinese influence is.

I bought a dialogue book today for 10 yuan (just under $2). I get to choose my textbook for next semester's classes so I went looking for some today. Not much luck, unfortunately...

Now I've got to work and prepare for next week's classes since this week-end I'm leaving for Chengde (staying only a night) with the French crew.

Haircut

I went to get my haircut with Katia this afternoon. She hates getting her hair cut in France, let alone a country in which she can't explain what she wants, so we went together to give each other courage. We got a Chinese friend to send us a text message in Chinese which said what we wanted which we could then show our hairstylist. We even drew a picture of what we wanted (it kind of looked like what we wanted) which we didn't end up using (thankfully).

We went to the hair salon I had been to with one of my students back in September.

Here's my hairstylist - I think he's the same guy I had back in September. He remembered me. For a whole 15 yuan (under $3) I got a shampoo and haircut (that lasted a good 40 minutes). Couldn't find better in Vancouver. Before I come back to Vancouver I'm totally going to get a Chinese haircut - a perm and colour and everything. Beware!

Breakfast

Might as well talk about breakfast when it's nearing 10 PM since I talked about dinner at 7:30 AM.

I've started drinking coffee-flavoured "night cha" or milk tea. It's bubble tea. I could get it at the cafeteria for a whopping 4 kwai (this is expensive!) or go line-up at the campus supermarket and get it for 2 kwai, but it doesn't taste as deliciously good (although I mostly drink it to keep warm). I can't believe I'm hesistant about buying a drink that costs 65 cents (4 kwai)! In Vancouver, I'd pay $3.50 minimum. But then again, in Vancouver I wouldn't have the same salary...

This evening we went to see "La Marche des Empereurs" - the March of the Penguins? It's about how Emperor Penguins (do they have the same name in English?) reproduce and survive in such terrible conditions. It's pretty amazing. The movie was well-made and entertaining. The room we were in was large and noisy (don't worry, they did turn off the lights), but surprisingly no cell phones went off. The girls behind us did talk and laugh rather loudly. The screen looks small, but you get used to it pretty quickly. I think on the whole the audience really liked the movie. I certainly did.

The movie started at 6 PM. Bob, his Chinese friend Cindy (she teaches in the Continuing Education deparment - like me! - but I had never seen her before) and Jean-Baptiste, saved seats for Katia and me, who walked in without tickets or anything. It was at the cinema on campus and since we spoke French and the movie was in French they just let us in at the door without asking any questions.

We went for dinner at the same place we went to last Monday - BBQ at the table (where we use a gigantic amount of oil to cook our food in the middle of the table). I'm so afraid of eating meat that's not cooked enough. Terrible.

Hope you're all eating safely and enjoying your meals as much as I am.

I forgot to tell you about this afternoon. I prepared for class at 2 PM and arrived a little bit late (maybe 2:05 PM). Nobody was in class! This was the class I had celebrated a birthday with last Thursday and I thought, "Shit! They think I'm cool and down with it so they don't need to come to class anymore." I waited half an hour in the classroom but still nobody came. I left and totally by chance saw (outside the campus supermarket) one of my second-year students whose boyfriend would've been in my afternoon class. I asked her what was up and she looked at me wide-eyed and said, "But they're taking an exam right now!" (well, her English isn't that good, but you get my point).

I was like, "What?!"

And she said, "You didn't know? Nobody told you?"

So I said, "No."

And she said, "That's terrible!"

And then I asked her, "What room can I find Mrs. Her (my boss) in?"

"513." So off I went and I found Mrs. Her and stood by the door of the examination room until she saw me and she came right out and when she realised I hadn't been told she took responsibility and apologized. She didn't help me any (I had many other questions about when our winter break is and all). I wasted an afternoon (I could've done something at noon, now it was 3 PM). But I totally didn't care, really.

I went for a bike-ride with Katia and we found this cool place to shop that could possibly have some decent clothes - they at least look a little better than the clothes we've been seeing in other places. Or maybe we're just getting used to that crazy Chinese style.

I'm going to come back a new woman, just you wait and see. ;-)

Lunch

Remember the bananas I received as a thank-you gift for participating in the French Department's English Corner (maybe I should explain: English Corner is a classroom where students - in this case from the French Department - come together to practice their English; they choose a topic - let's say campus life - and sometimes get into smaller groups to discuss the topic; it's totally voluntary and organised by the students themselves)? Well, they stayed in my fridge for a good five days before they really started to stink they were so ripe. I didn't throw them away quickly enough - whatever I put in my fridge continues to this day (a week later) to taste like bananas. Today I'm eating banana-tinged young joe chow fan (fried rice).

You must be so sick of looking at pictures of the same ol' people! Maybe you know them by heart now (L to R): Loic (French teacher), Gaetan and Katia (studying Economics). I noticed them outside the boys' dormitory by chance at lunch today coming home from class. The smal campus store is to the left of Loic's head and you can also see a bulletin board behind the three of them. I think the board has pictures and notices about the history of the campus.
The three of them with the campus' recreational facilities' in the background. You can almost make out the letters BISU on the grandstand (Beijing International Studies University).
A student from my 8-10 AM class who wanted to take a picture - her friend took the picture using her cell phone.

When someone gives you a compliment you're supposed to say "Guo jian" - not so nice. One of my colleagues with whom I had lunch with last Friday told me that when she was a girl she used to succeed a lot in school but that her mother would always tell her friends that her daughter wasn't intelligent - it was the Chinese way - and now this colleague can only see the bad side of things, she's quite pessimistic even when things look good. She even said she has to live with the fact that her husband (whom she married last year) isn't as good-looking as she had thought! He's fat! She doesn't like his looks! I thought it was quite funny of her to tell me so...

Dinner

We tried a new restaurant Monday night (last night) and it wasn't great. We were put in a small room at the back (there were hardly any customers anyway) where there was a couch and TV for KTV (kareeokee singing). There was also a lovely poster of a caucasian couple enjoying themselves - too bad you can't see the really handsome naked guy leaning over the *ahem* beautiful lady.
The Chinese people on the right are Loic's students learning French. We usually speak French too quickly for them.

Weather

Although the site says it'll stay around 10 degrees Celcius for the next week, it feels freezing! The winter months are sunny and it's so nice...everyday it encourages me. I don't know what I'd do if it was raining...it certainly wouldn't be as pleasant.

Post a secret

This site has some nice artwork (post card-sized) and incorporates truth and secrets. Some of them are amazing.

Sunday

I went to bed at 5 AM last night. I can just see my mother wagging her finger at me.

However, all went well. I woke up early (too much light in my room I guess) and kept waking up and thinking about what I would do with my students in class until my alarm went off at 10 AM and I finally got up.

I cleaned my bathroom. Very important. I swept the floor. So much dust.

I met up with my wushu instructor, Zou Chuan Jun (Jun for short, remember?), at 11:30 and we went for a wonderful bike ride out east. Neither one of us had been so far east. We had lunch together and then I had to meet Wang Xin Yu's uncle (do you remember WXY is the friend who lives in Beijing that I saw during my first week here, but who studies engineering in Halifax so I never saw him again) at 3 PM.

I was super duper tired at this point. I was fighting with myself not to fall asleep in the car.

Did I mention traffic is terrible in Beijing? What takes 10 minutes by subway took us half an hour by car (at least). Drivers are crazy here. And there are no seatbelts in the back of the car. Oh well. We all survived.

We went to the uncle's wife's family apartment where I got to meet two of their dogs - super cute! It was so nice to be around dogs again. They were seven and six months old. And then it was dinner time - I had just finished lunch!!!

We went for Peking duck and I'm sorry, I cannot refuse such delicious food. We had liver pate (which I like!) and lotus flower stuffed with sticky rice (okay-tasting) and chrysamthemum tea (my favourite!) and broccoli with garlic. The Peking duck was fantastic. I never want to see food again! So "uncle" proposed to take me to the Great Wall this Saturday. Yay! We'll have a fish pic-nic (maybe not so "yay"?!).

He's a government businessman (works for the CAAC - something Aviation Administration of China) who does a lot of traveling. For example he's leaving for Munich this Wednesday and coming back Friday and then taking me to Badaling (Great Wall) on Saturday. His wife (they've been married a year and a half) is an air stewardess and is leaving for Osaka tomorrow.

Jun got me to taste this dessert snack that I've seen outside North Gate for three months now and have never had the courage to try (maybe not super sanitary?). It's made with this small round fruit that's a mix between a strawberry and an apple. It's very sweet and has hard seeds in the middle that could break your teeth. The snack consists of skewering a bunch of these fruit on a stick and enveloping them all with caramel. It's much too sweet but certainly worth a try.

Gaetan dancing beside the night club we went to last night. We were waiting for Katia's taxi to arrive (the taxi driver got lost). The 5 Frenchies and two Chinese girls (Emily and Rita - classmates of Gaetan's and Katia's) went. We left the club around 4 AM and had baoze at the traditional post-clubbing baoze hang-out just outside North Gate.

It was a crazy idea to go clubbing since I had prepared none of my classes for the week and I had a full day today. But everything got done in the end.

Et maman, je me suis bien amusee! Ca valait la peine!

The view of construction from the uncle's wife's apartment that I visited today (where I saw the dogs). The shacks on the bottom left are where the workers live. Usually they live in tents, like the one you can see on the right. All of Beijing is under construction. There's an Eiffel-tower look-alike in the background to the right. Don't know what that is...

Jun outside the foreign experts' building entrance. He doesn't like to be taken in photo because he wears braces. He fell off of his mother's bike (he was riding just behind the handle bars - he was a kid) when she braked too hard and his teeth went through the skin of his lower lip and he lost some teeth which created gaps which he now wishes to close.

Saturday

Instead of going to a museum this afternoon to see a contemporary art exhibition (we took the bus, which was cool because we get to see what life in Beijing is like but which takes longer than the subway so we arrived 5 minutes too late...) Katia and I went along a shopping street near the museum. We're thinking of getting our haircut (we have to be motivated since Katia hates getting her cut even in France, let alone a country in which she can't explain what she wants) so we tried on a few styles to see what we might look like... Blogger didn't upload the pix in the order I wanted (I wanted to show you what we both looked like in the same hairstyle) but oh well, you'll get the point.






So what do you think? Shall I go Chinese (short & permed with bangs) or modern or Barbie-style?

Tonight we're going clubbing.

Katia's pictures

Hello! We're fast approaching the end of three months in Beijing...amazing!!! Here are some photos to re-cap the week.
Remember Monday night we went to eat at a new place where we pay 15 yuan (nearly $3 Cdn) and we get an all-you-can eat raw buffet from which we choose what meats and vegetables we want and we cook it ourselves at our table. It's cool if you're not too hungry to begin with. The hot oil sprays so the restaurant gives its clients aprons to protect your clothes. It's pretty funny. To the left in the pic is one of Loic's students, behind her is Guillaume, across from him is me, then Bob, Loic (in glasses) and Gaetan. If you notice the yellow container beside the beer bottle in the forefront, that was our oil container and it was full...the amount of oil used to cook the food was disgustingly high. The waitresses would come over and pour the stuff in our skillets...
A better pic (taken with Katia's camera) of me, Bob and Loic.
Thursday afternoon we went shopping at Xizhimen (north-west of Beijing) with two of Katia's classmates, Maisy (in pink) and Viv. Viv is the clothes designer that we modelled for a couple weeks ago and Maisy is the one who organised the event. I bought the hat that you see me in in the picture. It keeps me warm!
The crowds in the subway as we headed home Thursday around 7 PM.
The pushing and shoving to get into the subway...we eventually made it in ourselves!
Katia's take on Bob's student dorm.
Hanging out in the dorm...
Now that Jean-Baptiste has joined us, there's six of us in our "French crew": (from L to R) Guillaume, Katia, me, Loic, J-B, and Gaetan. Imagine the six of us living in that one small room - that's what the Chinese students live with everyday!
J-B, Bob and Katia with a very cool waitress at one of the restaurants we go to the most often that I nick-named "The Pink Door" because it has a pink door and we don't know the Chinese name...
The rest of us with the same very cool waitress and you can see some of the dishes we ordered. The waitress is very sweet and smiling.

Tomorrow I'm meeting my friend Wang Xin Yu's uncle. He wants to practice his English. I have no idea what we're going to do... He's coming to pick me up in his car at the university. We'll see how it goes.

Friday night

So last night it was an evening spent with a group of students outside campus and tonight we went to a real Chinese student dorm. Bob invited us to his room.

This is how it works: your first year at university you're given a room and five roommates and for the next four years you'll live in the same room with the same roommates unless you decide to leave.

Right now two of Bob's roommates are living off campus with their girlfriends (apparently), so he only has three rommmates, two of which were there this evening.

There are three bunkbeds, three desks, and a large cupboard in the middle of the room. They do have a TV and a very old computer. Their beds all have shelves at one end to put all their books on, and their clothes hang on the wall beside their bed. It's really just a place to sleep. They often play cards on the table between the two bottom beds. It reminded me of the sleeper train we took to QingDao during the National Day holiday.

They had the Chinese character for fortune on their door. One of the guys living there is quite zen-oriented: he had plants (real live plants!) and a goldfish (a real live one!) in a bowl and he had put nice calligraphy and traditional paintings on the wall. It was definitely cozy, although of course cramped. Didn't take too many pictures (took a couple of short movies) so it's hard to get an idea of what it was really like.

Bob (he played a bit of guitar for us) with two of his rommates (the third is mysterious and apparently hardly ever spends time in the room - he comes back to sleep very late). In the picture you notice the TV in the background and the cupbaord to the left. We're sitting on the bottom bunks and behind Bob to the left is the third bunkbed. On the right are two of the desks on which there's hardly any space to work there are so many books (and the goldfish!). In front of Bob is the third desk (table) where we sat to drink.
Loic, Jean-Baptiste (a French guy studying Chinese) and Gaetan. It's too bad my camera sucks at taking photos indoors or at night - they're always blurry no matter on which setting I put it. But it was mainly to show the clothes hanging on the wall under the bed...


The holed hallway leading to Bob's dorm room. Not the best. But liveable. The Chinese are very aware of their conditions of living, but they live with it.

No big plans for tomorrow. Maybe I'll prepare for next week's classes...

It was interesting to see where the students live. I mean, we had an idea, but to actually go and see for ourselves was cool. I think the guys pay 450 yuan/month for their dorm room.

Thursday night

OK, scrap whatever I just said about Chinese students. :-) I was over-generalizing, of course. They're wonderful, wonderful people! But the ones I saw Thursday night are probably the exception - I mean, they're most likely the richest of the students. They rent their own apartment which has three furnished bedrooms (a double bed, desk & cupboard), a common living room (with TV), a kitchen (with stove-top and fridge and counter space), and a decent-looking bathroom (not tiny). Each person (there are supposed to be three of them living there) pays 650 yuan (around $110 Cdn) per month. But one guy lives with his girlfriend (it happens in China too!), and one guy's too cold in his student dorm so he sleeps in his friend's room in this apartment. Nice eh?

Meet Kobe (yes, like the NBA player - where do you think he got his name?) in glasses and Yang Yang in blue. Their English isn't great but their hearts are made of gold. They're preparing the meal in Kobe's kitchen. Yang Yang sleeps in Kobe's room (bed? - didn't look like there was much room elsewhere).
Kobe's proud of Chinese food. He's from the south, GuangDong Province. Yang Yang's from Inner Mongolia, I think. I actually wanted to take a picture of the kitchen, just to show what it was like.
L to R: Liu Hao, Peter (Pan Guong Ron or something like that - the joke is that he's Peter Pan), and...I'm not sure, he never comes to class! But he is my student. Guys are very touchy-feely. They seem more physical with each other than with their girlfriends at times! But it's nice to see and doesn't shock me at all. Sometimes I laugh a little to myself when I see them caressing each other's thighs and holding each other's hands...but it's all cool. The funny thing is that they're really macho too!

The guys are sitting in the couch in the living room.

Yang Yang preparing the famous "Coke chicken".
We were really hungry!!
Kobe preparing the pork I think it was. We had pork and pickled cabbage. He seemed to know what he was doing. We went to the market beforehand (Kobe, Yang Yang and the anonymous student who never comes to class) and they seemed to know how to pick their vegetables and meat and I was pleasantly surprised by their ability to handle everything.
This is a typical Chinese stove-top, found in almost every apartment, including mine (although mine looks a little newer).
Liu Hao serving the soup.
Our dinner table. The table cloth was Korean newspapers. As you can see, we had plenty of dishes. The students must've spent more than an hour preparing the food. We had the Coke chicken, a pork dish and a beef, cabbage and tomato dish, and cucumber salad and thousand-island dressing salad and rice with sausage...it was all good!
A group of us at the beginning of a game where we pick a piece of folded paper on the table and whoever has the one with the heart (we look at our papers secretly) is the "murderer" and secretly winks at people who then know who the murderer is and can throw their paper down. The last person to hold their piece of paper has to guess who the murderer is and if they guess wrong, they are drawn on (mustache, tattoo, scar, beauty mark whatever it is...). If they guess right, then the murderer gets drawn on. At first we would put pieces of newspaper on our faces by licking the pieces and sticking them on our faces (luckily I didn't have to do that!) and then we decided to draw on our faces instead. I had a mustache and beauty mark by the end of the game. We must've played for at least an hour!
The whole group of us - there were ten of us. The girl on my left is called Eagle, she's in second year and is going out with Liu Hao. The girl in pink beside her is Peter's girlfriend (they're living together I'm pretty sure), and the couple on the right (my extreme left) live in the apartment together. They were sweet. The guy's my student but he never comes to class.
It was actually a birthday (I didn't know until the cake came out around 11 o'clock!). Liu Hao got to lick the knife...
The cake was super creamy and the birthday girl's boyfriend got a piece right in his face. His girlfriend (the birthday girl who's right beside him) was quite amused...

Until she got her own piece thrown in her face! Apparently it's customary to do this on your birthday and it's all in good fun. It was a fun evening. Started out a bit weird - I was watching skateboarding movies on a laptop (Yang Yang is a huge skateboarding fan) and watching a student basketball game that they had played the week-end before on the video camera. But then we ate and it was all good...

Got to go to class!

More on what's happening in France. It's an article that I find gets better as it goes along, written by Don Murray, a guy I see on the ten o'clock news when I'm in Vancouver, so he's familiar.

Another article I enjoyed reading today on cbc.ca was this one, which I found was right on about higher education in China. The centre of my campus - you have to walk by it to get anywhere: classes, cafeteria, everywhere - has this beautiful-looking recreational playground that has most likely been built in the last five years (if not more recently!). I've often talked about it because it's so central to the campus. It's modern and it's definitely the best student hang-out.

The article also talks about the students' social life. Students have told me that having a girlfriend or boyfriend in their high school was simply not allowed. Some students have never talked to anyone from their age group of the opposite sex before coming to university. They don't have plans for the week-end - they mostly sit in their dorms inbetween basketball games (that is, if they play basketball; if they don't, that's their tough luck).

However, they do enjoy putting on talent shows - elaborate evenings that involve a lot of preparation and rehearsals. But I suppose when you think of the number of students who participate compared to the total number of students at the university it's only a small minority who have the incentive to do something.

I suppose I shouldn't talk. It's not like I did anything in university.

And tonight I'm going to a real Chinese students' party. A group of guys in my Tuesday afternoon class invited me to their dormitory. They're going to make me "Coke chicken" which I gathered to mean chicken wings cooked in Coca Cola. Whenever I talk to other Chinese students about it they all know what it is and they all say it's good - it's a Chinese student thing, I suppose like Kraft Dinner in North America. I'm excited I'll be living a "real Chinese experience" - hope it's fun.

And I hope you're all living exciting moments in your lives, and even if you're not, that's OK too.

Random

Me, Bob (Chinese friend who wants to study CompSci at UBC) and Loic (French teacher) at dinner tonight. Back in September I was sitting outside the foreign students' dorm, reading a book, and Bob came over to talk and that's how we met. Loic joined us and I had to go, so Loic went for a coffee with Bob and they exchanged numbers and from then on Bob often comes out with us.
The French crew: me, Loic (in his crazy pajama pants), Gaetan, Katia and Guillaume. We're in the entrance hall of the foreign students' building, waiting to go eat.

Today went really well. This week has been great, actually. I prepared my afternoon class at noon, but it we had lots of fun. One of my students lent me a CD that's not bad - don't like everything but some songs are nice. It's a British rock group called "I'm a Robot" - has anyone heard of them?

After class one of my students - a shy girl - stayed behind and asked me which class I liked best. I told her I liked all my classes - which is true! She said she thought I liked her class best and I said that it's true I like the people in that class - but then I like almost all of my students! I was really happy though because I have difficulty with that Tuesday afternoon class (they're first year students and their level is quite low) but to know that they think I like them best means that all is well and it just put me in such a great mood.

In Chinese, ranking classes is really important. It's not the first time a student asks me which class has the best English or which class I enjoy teaching most. Apparently teachers talk about their other classes all the time, saying students should try to be like this better class or whatnot. It's supposed to push them to succeed to know that I like other students more...whatever.

My second year students had their midterms yesterday (Monday). I'm not sure how it went, my students didn't comment on them today when I asked them about it. "So-so" was their answer when I asked how it went. I went to check it out at 1:30 PM but my boss told me I didn't need to be there since I had to teach another class at 2 PM. The weird thing is my students told me they wouldn't get their results for their midterms. I don't understand how China works sometimes...

Anyway, this week sounds like it's going to be a good one. I'm glad. Hope you're all having nice weeks too!

Chinese names

I prefer Su Lin to this. You can check out what your name would be in Chinese too!

The other half

I've often thought about this: when people put money in wishing wells and fountains, does the money go to the city? Where does it go? This is sometimes what happens.

'Week-end pix

The large lake at Beida (Beijing university). We biked around it.
A pagoda (by the lake) at Beida. It's funny, my cousin has spent eight years in Beijing. She's now taking six hours of Chinese a week - studying writing, tones, and vocabulary - and yet she still has difficulty reading the plaques with the descriptions of the tourist places. She says learning Chinese is never-ending.
This was the view behind the pagoda. A stream went to it (the pagoda) at some point.
A bridge at the old Summer Palace.
Me in front of the ruins of part of the Summer Palace - destroyed by my ancestors (Anglo-French forces)! Every plaque reminded us that this place had been ransacked by foreigners, yet the official sign at the entrance of the park had some whited-out parts with a "revised" description of what occurred in 1890 (when the Anglo-French forces attacked). My cousin told me that in the past the description was really horrid so recently the Chinese changed it to make it less displeasing for foreigners.

I'm wearing the new coat I bought for $50 Cdn at Xidan (I bought it with two of my students the day we went to repair my camera).

A model of what the Old Summer Palace must've looked like. It's very European in style and the gardens were also modelled along European lines. The Chinese like to put money in these glass boxes - I guess it brings luck.
Some impressive ruins, but apparently they're not totally "real" in the sense that the stone doesn't necessarily date from the Old Summer Palace but was designed and placed to look like what the ruins used to look like.
A picture to prove "I was there."
There's a cool maze with a fancy pagoda (bottom picture) in the middle. The maze is easy but it took at least two or three minutes to walk from the outside to the centre (the pagoda), and as you can see, it's really not far from the entrance to the centre. If one could walk directly it would take maybe ten seconds.

There are a lot of these little shops at all the touristy places. They sell bits and pieces of everything. Film for cameras, jewelry, bags, kites...mostly souvenirs.

It's getting awfully cold here in Beijing.

I went to French corner with Loic this evening. Time passed quickly. We talked about a lot of different things. The students are nice.

I've got to work tomorrow and I haven't even prepared much...oh well...

I played a bit of soccer with some of my students from the Continuing Education department this afternoon. There's a new student and he likes to play soccer so we passed the ball and shot some goals and mostly sprinted trying to catch the ball. There were four different groups playing on one field, sharing three goals (nets), but it was all good. And since I was white, and a girl to boot (haven't seen a Chinese girl playing soccer yet), we were allowed a goal (net) all to ourselves.

Can't wait to sleep. Good night.

Something to wake up to...

It's early morning for you (6:44 AM), and I'm about to head to bed (10:44 PM).

Today was a splendid day. Pictures to come later when I have more time. I left around 9:45 AM this morning to meet my cousin in the North-West of Beijing, where she lives. I arrived around 11:30 AM. We went to her work where we picked up a spare bike that they share on site. We biked to Beida, one of the most important Chinese universities. It's beautiful! It has a big lake and a tall pagoda and it's very romantic. Lots of couples on benches, displaying their love for each other. :-)

We had fish for lunch. It wasn't particularly good, but I don't have fish often.

We biked to the nearby Old Summer Palace, which is really a very large park with ruins of the Emperor's palace that was destroyed in the 19th century by Anglo-French allied forces. Terrible. My cousin, Veronique, didn't know how to say "ruins" in Chinese, so when she asked for directions she said, "The thing that the foreigners destroyed." Very funny.

Not very impressive, but the park is worth the visit. Very tranquil and beautiful - usually.

The subway on the way back was packed - so many people! Beijing is really, really crowded.

Had dinner with people I like, which is always nice. I was very excited this evening for some reason. Super hyper. We all went to McDonald's for a milkshake afterwards. Yes, I know, it's terrible, but to tell you the truth I hardly ever ever go to McDonald's...it was peer pressure okay?

Good night!

Banana

I went to English Corner last Friday (two evenings ago) - it's a place where students come together in a classroom to speak English. One of Loic's students organised it to help students in the French department not completely lose their English. I was the only white person there and so to thank me for my support they gave me a bunch of bananas.

Yesterday I ate my first banana since I arrived in China.

Friday afternoon I had wushu with Jun and I wrote down all the steps he had shown me so far so that I wouldn't forget. There's a slight problem: I don't have time to practice!!!

He also gave me a box of green tea which we tried together. Apparently I'll have now tasted two of the three most famous Chinese teas, not counting *the* most famous Chinese tea which is super rare and costs hundreds of dollars per 100 grams.

On Saturday, Katia, Loic and I had a late lunch and we wasted half our afternoon trying to find the movie theatre on campus - only to find out that it was playing mostly horrible horror movies (The Skeleton Key among others).

Last night we rediscovered Gaetan, who has not been with us for the past two weeks (did you notice this?) because his girlfriend came to visit and for some reason he didn't mesh the two groups - we never did anything together while she was here. He had rented an apartment off campus in order to be with her (she wouldn't have been allowed to stay in his room in the student dorm) and he still had one more night in his apartment even though his girlfriend had left so we (the French crew) were all invited to his place. It's a typical Chinese apartment - pretty derelict but comfortable enough. It's in a gated residential community about a block away from our campus. I'll show you a pic of the bathroom one of these days - it was quite something.

Anyway, we - Guillaume, Loic, Katia and I - left Gaetan's place around 1 AM and we're trying to get out of this gated residential community. It's mid-November in Beijing and it's pretty COLD. Unfortunately the main gate that leads towards the street on which our university is found is locked and there are no guards around.

Katia and I try to squeeze through an opening but we can't. Loic tries to jump over the fence, but it's hard and Katia doesn't want to even try... We can't believe we're stuck inside this place!!! What is up with China and not letting people in and out of their houses freely???

A guy in a car comes to drop off his girlfriend and we signal him down after his girlfriend leaves. He opens the door so Guillaume can talk to him and when he understands that we come from Erwai he invites all 4 of us into his car and he takes us to the entrance of our university - he doesn't want to drop us off any earlier!

Never in a million years would we do this either in France or Canada. I mean, somebody sees four young people trying to climb a fence and signal you down...you lock your doors and drive quickly away, the faster you get out of there the better! Plus, who would offer a ride out of the blue like that, which would then so easily be accepted? There is usually so much mistrust on both sides...

One evening (it was dark and raining) when we were in the city at the foot of Taishan mountain (we were on holiday and we had just climbed the 6000 steps to the peak) we had waved down a mini-van, thinking it was a taxi that would take the five of us in. It ended up being a young couple who were willing to go completely out of their way (they did a u-turn) to take us into the city centre so we could go kareeokee. Chinese people can really be quite warm and generous.

Today I'm finally going to see my cousin and we're going to visit Beida. Should be a nice day. Hope you all enjoy yourselves.

Remembrance Day

I use this site (about.com) for my ESL classes and for just about everything:

http://canadaonline.about.com/cs/canadawar/a/remembranceday.htm

Hope you spend a minute or two remembering...

My sister in Paris is making a whole series of beautiful "Parisian gardens" drawings and she sends some samples to me, which brighten up my day, so I thought I'd share one with you, if my sister doesn't mind...

The situation in Paris has taken us by surprise - by "us" I mean the French crew. What's happening is a little crazy. Apparently in Lyons a group of people asked the people who were on a bus to leave, just so that they could burn the bus! And then there's the problem of how to punish these people - is sending them to prison for protesting against the government really the answer? But then they destroyed hospitals and elementary schools and other people's vehicles, which are all terrible crimes... And then what is the government supposed to do? Say that these people were right and try to fix the societal problems (unemployment, poor housing, education, etc.), but then that means that the next time the people are unhappy they'll know that burning everything works! Such a mess.

Only have two hours of classes today. I was able to sleep in until 8:30 AM which was nice. I just ate my multi-vitamin and I seriously think it makes me sick - I feel nautious!

I look so much forward to my instant 3-in-1 coffee (coffee/milk/sugar) every morning I sometimes scare myself. What will I do when I go back to Vancouver and I won't have it? And I won't have baoze every morning (in a plastic bag)? And I won't have a TV to watch the news in French....

There are also lots of things that aren't so great about this place. Apart from the glass sinks that are a hassle to clean, the washing machine only washes my clothes with COLD water, which means my clothes are never really clean. When Loic told Bob (a Chinese friend) about this, Bob was incredulous: "You mean in Europe all the washing machines use HOT water??? Wow!"

There's no hot water in the kitchen sink, the pipe that goes from the hot water faucet leads to nowhere under the sink, it's pretty funny. It's not so great for washing dishes...

This place is dry, dry, dry! It's so dry my hands are cracking and bleeding! So for the first time in my life I'm wearing hand cream.

Go to get ready for class. Hope to hear from you soon!

Soooo stupid

Haha, just to show you how stupid I can be...remember I bought a bike? Yeah, I bought a bike about two months ago now. It was a looooong time ago. I parked it outside the foreign students' building (where I was living at the time) and then construction started in the area and a fence went up around the place where I had put my bike so I couldn't get to it for the longest time! Anyway, today I wanted to take my bike to a supermarket that's a bit further away where I hoped to find some dental floss (still don't have floss!). So I took out my bike lock keys (I have two locks) and went to find my bike. It was super dusty and dirty! I tried to open one of the locks and it wouldn't work and then I tried the other lock and the key broke!

Made in China...

A Korean friend passed by and we talked and I went to his friend's room and we chatted and they came over to my place and then we went to a small Chinese school just outside campus to see if I could attend some classes but they don't have any beginner classes at a convenient time for me...it's really too bad.

To vent my frustration I went for a run around the track - ten times! I was proud of myself.

And then we went out for dinner with Katia and Loic and Tintin, a Chinese friend who's studying French and English and can speak both (his English is better). He's this amazing guy who can do pretty much anything - a great dancer, choreographer, calligrapher, make-up artist, cook...everything. But tonight it was a bit stressful because he couldn't speak very well and it was getting a bit tiring trying to listen to him and understand and he wouldn't stop talking and talking and talking...

Anyway, it's only on our way home from dinner that I told Katia and Loic my bike problems and I showed them my bike and they were like, "You have a PINK bike????" And then I realised that no, I didn't buy a pink bike, I bought a grey bike...I broke my key on the wrong freaking bike!

Tomorrow I need to work. Didn't do anything today... But tomorrow is busy. Lunch date with Melanie and Candice (haven't seen them since we spent the National Day holiday together - there was a falling out between the French crew and the Americans), wushu practice at 3 PM, dinner with a Chinese girl who's going to take me to English Corner (a place where students practice their English), and then it's party night...although I'm not sure how much partying I'll be up for. So yeah, maybe I'll get up the courage to work on Saturday...hmmm...

Breakfast

This is a picture of breakfast - tea that my students gave to me (Jack and Alice) and baoze - the food I get every morning for breakfast at the second cafeteria (there are three cafeterias). I get 4 for 1 yuan - super good deal if you ask me. This morning one of my students suggested I try this coconut-and-raisin pastry called "qi su ye rong," which I've got to admit is pretty "hao chir" - delicious! "Take-out" is pronounced "da bao" - not to be confused with "da bir," which means "kiss." At the campus cafeterias, take-out means "put it in a small plastic bag for me." At first I wondered what students were doing with these disgusting-looking plastic bags filled with rice and meat and sometimes even soup (soup in a bag - yuck!)! And then I found out for myself when I started going to the cafeterias and really, you get used to it quite quickly.
I didn't know which picture looked better, so you decide. As you can see it's sunny here.
A not-so-flattering pic of me at the Korean restaurant where we ate dinner after the fashion show. Three Korean students were at a table near ours and one of them had this super cute, tiny cat, so I had to go over and pet it...so, so, SO cute!!!

I didn't tell you, but Saturday night Katia and Loic were over at my place when we heard this enormous "BOOM!" coming from upstairs. So we went upstairs and I knocked on the door but there was no answer. The guy two floors above me opened his door to say that he thought it came from above *him,* and that's when Loic felt that the noise must've come from outside.

The next morning the guy from upstairs, a 66-year-old American, showed me what had happened while he was sleeping (supposedly): the glass sink in his bathroom had broken into a million pieces! What a disaster! There was glass all over the place. He still hasn't had it replaced, although the glass has been cleaned up. It's a mystery as to how the glass suddenly broke like that (some people think he sat on his sink - but why would he do that around midnight?). I don't know what to think, except that I hope my glass sink doesn't break while I'm around! Glass sinks are hard to keep clean.

Going to have lunch with Katia and Loic and anybody else who cares to join us.

Today's my free day (only had class from 8-10 this morning) so I'll spend most of it working (preparing classes for next week) and maybe go for a bike ride. Yay!

As could be predicted, my students rocked at ping pong yesterday. We went to play for an hour for 10 RMB (around $1.60 Cdn). There were just Jack and Alice and me. Jack was best but Alice had a few quick moves up her sleeve that Jack couldn't beat.

We went to a gym where lots of people were playing badminton. I've never seen that before.

As always I don't know what's going on. In the end my HND Year 2 students didn't have their midterms last Monday but they're going to have them *next* Monday. Yay. This allowed me to take a nap at noon on Monday. Boy did I need it!

I get around 7 hours sleep here, but I'm exhausted.

Pictures to come later, but...they're not very good!

Luckily I only work two hours today. :-) Good luck Rachel. She works 10!

Fashion Show

Just came back from dinner after the fashion show. We arrived at the auditorium around 5 PM and put on make-up and rehearsed once on stage. There were last-minute changes and then even more last-minute changes.

It was in fact a talent show with dancing and singing and musical talents put on display. It's the third show of this type that I've seen at this university. It's kinda cool the way there's often these type of celebratory nights that occur on campus. The Chinese think up of any excuse to dance - there's even cheerleading dances at the basketball games on the outdoor courts. And kareokee is of course a favourite and there are some pretty good singers. The Chinese are known for their musical talents so whether it's the piano or the violin or the guitar they're usually quite good. Their talent shows are quite something, if not somewhat repetitive.

Anyway, we were third to perform and we eventually came in sixth, which isn't bad. It was fun to participate and we were well-liked.

Stupid basketball game

Sunday night we got asked to be in a student fashion show. A Chinese student whom Katia knows from her classes entered a fashion contest and made all these clothes in one week-end. We went to try some out Sunday evening and we practiced doing the fashion show Monday evening and tonight (Wednesday) is the night of the fashion show! The tall American teacher called Andrew will be my "partner," which means we'll go out on stage together and "do our thing" - walk and pose and stuff. I think I'll be wearing a white skirt with my blue top, and heels or white boots lent by a Chinese friend. Katia and Guillaume are partners - can't you tell they're dressed the same?

It'll be something to participate in a Chinese event.

Monday I yelled at my students. Well, I didn't yell, but I got mad at them for not listening or caring or working. This was the class just before lunch.

I'm working on pronunciation - on stressing some words more than others. I give my students limericks and some of them are pretty funny.

My apartment gets dirty so quickly it's depressing. :P

I had lunch at the university cafeteria with Elvis and Vita, the two first-year students I had lunch with last Friday at McDonald's. We talked politics and about their hatred for the Japanese. They're still bitter about the rape of Nanking and the fact that Japanese textbooks tend to ignore this historical event.

I also gave them a mini introductory French lesson (upon their insistance).

This afternoon I'm going to play ping pong with some of my continuing education students from my Monday afternoon class. They enjoyed the limericks exercise. Ping pong is super popular (if not the national sport) and I'm sure my students are super good.

Yesterday I watched a basketball game between a Chinese students team and a foreign students team. Apparently they have this type of game every year and usually the foreigners win. Well this time I was embarrassed to be a foreigner because not only did they play pretty badly but they were extremely sore losers. The fans on the sidelines would swear into a loudspeaker (in English) at the referee and at the Chinese players. They were called on it a few times and the Chinese team even got a couple free shots at the hoop because the foreign fans wouldn't shut up. These "fans" would boo whenever the Chinese had a foul shot or even had the ball. Although the foreigners eventually only lost by ONE point I was saddened by the unfriendly atmosphere that had come out of the game. There were at least a hundred spectators, mostly Chinese, and the foreign on-lookers were making fools of themselves by acting so rudely. In the end, the Chinese were much stronger and they started booing whenever the foreigners had the ball or made a shot. It was really stupid. The captain of the foreign team was eventually disqualified because he was simply playing angrily and not following the rules of the game. He incited the people on the sidelines to "make some noise!" to show their displeasure.

I was with a few of my students from my Tuesday afternoon class and they were courteous enough to clap for the foreign team because I was around, but I tell you by the end I was quite embarrassed and I cheered for the Chinese team as well.

You'd think that foreigners coming to China would be more open and friendly and not act so immaturely. Their loss I guess.

Week-end

View from on top of a hill I climbed Sunday morning. It's found outside of North Gate from the campus. It's farmland being slowly constructed on... That's a gigantic residential neighbourhood they're building in the background and you can bet it's really ugly and will be vacant for a long time to come because the prices are too high. It's been said that most of the new-built buildings are in fact empty (prices are way too high) and the building owners turn on the lights in the upstairs apartments at night to make it look less depressing, because dark buildings don't inspire confidence or buyers. I've noticed these "ghost-apartment buildings" at night myself.
My wushu intructor, Jun. This photo kills me because he doesn't look like that at all in real life. He's short and looks very young. He's from the south of China, a small provincial town. His parents paid so that he could have a younger sister (and they could have a second child). It looks like we're a couple but we're not! We just walked around that morning.

Today my second years' have their midterms. Yikes.

Cold

Picked up my camera today. Works well for now.

Used my new coat for the first time. Works well for now.

I've got a cold. I'm tired.

Went into the city centre to a Russian restaurant for dinner and met a whole bunch of new people that I'll soon forget I suppose... Food wasn't amazing, the live music was good but much too loud, and the food was on the more expensive side (being foreign and all). I'd go back, but not often.

Spending tomorrow at Beijing University (Beida) with my cousin.

Time flies

Wow, is it just me or is time going by at the speed of light??? I can't believe this week's already over... Today is Friday morning already.

Internet was down for a while so I couldn't post, and then yesterday I was pretty busy all day. So much to do... So sorry for the lack of up-dates.

Wednesday night I went to yoga class with Katia from 7-8 PM. It was super funny. There were only girls (this being a university with a clear majority of girls) and many of them were Korean students learning Chinese (they all have good levels of Chinese). Katia and I were the only white folks and we were the only ones who didn't understand much... Katia has been doing yoga for two years now, so she knew a lot of moves and she didn't have to understand. I've only taken one or two classes and I forget, so a lot of the breathing and meditating part went over my head. But after class Katia explained it to me and we're definitely going back. It went by too quickly but after doing some of the moves you really feel extraordinary.

We did yoga to music, so we waited for the first ten minutes for the music player to get hooked up. And while we waited Katia and I had no idea what was going on, we were sitting cross-legged and the teacher would speak and sometimes a person from the floor would speak and we were wondering if they were discussing their past boyfriends or something... When we started to do our exercises Katia and I couldn't stop laughing. In French we had what's called "le fou rire." I felt so bad because I found it difficult to stop myself and yet I really wanted to do a good job and show that I was serious! At one point I needed to laugh so bad I thought of leaving the room. And whenever I started laughing, Katia, who was behind me, started laughing too! It was bad... but we eventually got over it. So now there's yoga Wednesday and Sunday evenings. Plus, we're even learning some Chinese: we learned "breathe in" and "breathe out"!

I spent Wednseday afternoon perfecting the midterms for my first and second-year students. It's going to be tough. I made Katia and Loic do the test (I interviewed them) in order to see how the test would pan out. It was a good idea because I made many changes after testing the test on them!

Yesterday (Thursday), after class, I went for lunch with Jack and Alice (Chang Ping). We went to a new restaurant that had a large group celebrating something so it was quite noisy. We took the subway to the centre of the city.

We went to a Nikon store where we first had to wait to get recognized amid the group of people needing help with their camera (there is no line-up, you just shove your camera infront of the worker's eyes and he deals with you then). Then we were told that it would cost 700 RMB (6 RMB = $1 Cdn) to repair it, PLUS the cost of any components they might have to change (and in these cases, there are always spare parts to change...). I was ready to pay, thinking I really liked my camera and I wanted it back, when I was told they'd have to keep it a whole month! There was no way I could not have a camera for a month in China!!! So I decided I'd buy a new camera - blow my emergency money on a new camera.

I was so unbelievably angry because I had just bought this camera - I bought it right before my trip to China, only two and a half months ago! It had given me good pictures and I still wanted to use it and not have to buy another $500 camera!

So we left the store and I was a little depressed but I didn't want to show it in front of my students, who were being so kind. We went to Xidan where we went clothes-shopping. I now understand my Korean and Japanese students who would come to Vancouver and say there was absolutely no choice in shopping in Vancouver...if their shopping experiences are anything like in China I understand! There are stores upon stores upon more stores and then shopping malls with even more stores...it's just amazing. I'm overwhelmed... Plus, I felt weird buying in front of my students. I ended up buying a navy-blue duck feather down coat for winter, for a whole 299 RMB (around $50 Cdn).

We stopped at an outdoor patio and sat down and drank some OJ and stared into space for a while.

Then we went to a watch-and-cell-phone store where apparently they also repair cameras. There was a guy behind a glass window who took a look at my camera and started to take it completely apart right before my eyes. I cringed. Did this guy know what he was doing? He seemed to know most of the time. But he was burning off wires - was that OK? How would he put the wires back together?

Then he told us he'd wash it for 200 RMB but he wasn't sure he'd be able to fix it.

After more fiddling and testing he said he'd be able to repair it for under 400 RMB (well, that's what he said, we'll see today when I pick it up). Plus, he would be able to do it in a day! I'd be able to come pick it up Friday! This was amazing news!!!

So that's the story of my camera.

I was so happy I kissed my students. They're wonderful.

We rushed back home because my students had class at 6:30 PM. They made it!

I had dinner with Katia, Loic, Bob (Chinese guy), and Matt (the American teacher who just turned 24). We went to a new restaurant for all of us - a Korean place that served boiling soup and we added meat and vegetables and stuff to it. Hot pot I guess, or "hua guo" in Chinese.

Anyway, I've got to prepare for class. I'm going to have lunch with two first-year students today. They're a couple and they've known each other since they were ten! It's so sweet. I think that's true love...I mean, I wish I could've known someone since I was ten and been with them pretty much my whole life. They'd know me so unbelievably well... And I think I'd be able to trust them with my life.

Alright, good night for you guys and hope you all find your true love!

More pictures

View (from our porch) of the group that went horse-back-riding Saturday afternoon. We left Beijing around 8 AM and arrived at our destination around noon. We waited around an hour for lunch and then we went horse-back-riding for about an hour in the hills. Most of the people on the left of the picture are my students, and most of the people on the right are locals who are going to take us horse-back-riding or who are there to help us.

An MSN conversation with a friend of mine made me realise that maybe I should tell you that you can click on the photo to enlarge it. That way you can see the photo better.

Please click on the photo!
The first picture I took on our horse-back-riding trip.
Franklin - the class monitor. He has a 5-year-old son and he's very...responsible and just. He likes to see himself as the wise old man dispensing good advice to everyone.
A local galloping on his horse. The scenery was lovely.
Maxine - the Chinese English teacher who also went on the trip. She's a blast. In China you show friendship by holding hands. I only found out her name was Maxine today, when she called me. It was quite funny - we spent the whole week-end together and I never knew her English name! The students call her "Teacher Chu."
Scenery from our ride. Those are some people from our class way ahead of us in the distance...
More scenery...

A picture taken in one of the village's streets as we made our way back. I saw a dead horse on the side of the street that had just been butchered. It's head was sawed off and it's stomach and guts were sprawled on the street. I didn't look much because once I realised what it actually was I tried to not think about it. It was quite horrifying. A man seemed to be cutting the horse - not sure what he was really doing.
After riding horses we went by the river to go-kart around a small track. It was expensive and short, but nothing beats Chinese adventure: you're in a metal-framed vehicle (no roof or windows or anything) that could tip over at any moment, you have no helmet, and you're on the rockiest, bumpiest track on which you could easily seriously injure yourself if you were to fall - fun, fun, fun!!!
To cross the river we went over a wooden-plank bridge that I would actually hardly call a bridge at all.
There were rafts that we could ride on - we used poles to push ourselves forward.
A village street scene.
There were a couple pigs running down the street - by the time I took my camera out and turned it on, they were long gone, but I was able to take this shot, which is pretty funny.
Two of my beautiful students.
The sheep at the farm where we picked our dinner...
Three of my students looking at me in the sheep pen.
A farmer cutting up a sheep - yum! Dinner!
A woman preparing the meat. The heads are at her feet. A dog came to lick up the fallen blood just like the dogs did in France when I saw a chicken being slaughtered.
A village boy (eating I'm-not-sure-what) that was at the sheep-slaughtering scene. So were the old man and 1 1/2-year-old in the picture from Monday. What a spectacle! Despite the cold, young children still have holes in their pants.

My afternoon class didn't go so well today. Oh well.

After class I cleaned up my apartment because I was to meet Jack and Chang Ping at 5 PM. They were going to come over to make me dinner again. This time Chang Ping cooked, Jack helped prepare the meat and vegetables, and I talked in English. :-) She made us mushroom soup, an omelette with cooked tomatoes (a Chinese dish I often see in restaurants), a cucumber salad, and green peppers with beef (mostly fat). It was super delicious. They also gave me Chinese tea which I'm sure I'll be thankful for in the winter.

Jack is going to help me fix my camera which broke after some water got into it. The camera was in my handbag when the bottle of water in my bag leaked - couldn't do much about it because I was out when it happened. Only realised the extent of the damage once I got back home. Haven't been able to turn it on for a week now...

And Chang Ping (English name is Alice) will take me to Xidan to buy winter clothes this Thursday. I'm seeing my cousin for most of the week-end (Friday evening and Saturday during the day). I told her I wanted to see Beijing University.

Tomorrow I must work on the midterms and prepare for next week and do an editing job on an English essay I promised a colleague I would do.

Lots to do. :-) Every week is so different I find. I do such different things...

Up-date

Yesterday (Monday) went well. I taught my two morning classes. There are less and less students attending my classes. I don't take it personally and I just do my best. I got a bit angry at my 10-12 class near the end...told them to stop talking so much in Chinese.

I had lunch with three of my first-year students. They were walking behind me, listening in on a conversation I was having with another student, and I asked to join them for lunch in the cafeteria. Their English comprehension and production is pretty low but I was on a high and lunch was fun. One of them got me a milk tea which I quite enjoyed and I think I will buy it from time to time. It only costs about 15 cents - 1 kwai.

After my afternoon class I went for a run around the track for about 20 minutes. I felt so good I had to take the opportunity to do something! I came home and watched some TV - didn't want to do much. I was pretty tired.

Went out to dinner with Katia and Guillaume and met up with Loic and Bob (his Chinese friend) and three other Chinese girls. We stayed at this restaurant because a Hallowe'en party was to start at 9 PM. Shouldn't've stayed so long - needed to sleep more than anything. But oh well, that's life.

More pictures of my wonderful week-end to come later. Jack and Ching Ping (co-worker) are coming this evening - we're meeting at 5 PM to buy food for dinner.

Got to go to my 8 o'clock class.