HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Wishing every one of you all the best for the coming year.

Pre-New Year's party

Spent a wonderful evening with a group of friends at a wonderful bar/club called BED in the old district of Beijing. It's hidden in a hutong in the north-west of Beijing and it's pretty hard to find. It's a collection of traditional courtyards intersected by the rooms of old buildings decorated with old-style furniture - quite amazing. I'm sure in the summer they take off the temporary roof over the courtyards and it must be even more amazing. The greatest part is that inside there are lots of rooms with cozy "beds" where you take off your shoes and sit on pillows to drink and rest. It's absolutely out-of-this-world!


Gaetan and Katia on the dance floor. There was a DJ playing house and techno and we danced for about thirty minutes - it was really tiring! At this point we're about to leave so we've got our coats on. The place closes at 2 AM - hence the lack of people. But it was never packed, although there was a good vibe.
This pic is to give you an idea of what a "bed" looks like. The flash takes away the ambient lighting, which is mainly created by candles.
The place has lots of antique-style furniture and the cushions are super comfy.
In our room there was a funky hole and I took a picture...
This is what the waiting room for the bathrooms looks like. It's a roofed courtyard and there are two rooms on either side - the dance floor on the left and the entrance on the right.
Gaetan wearing my hat and Loic beside him. There was a group of Chinese people behind us.
We really liked the music. Here's Matt (American English teacher) and Guillaume dancing while sitting down. We did eventually go to the actual dance floor to dance. The door behind Matt leads to a covered courtyard and bar before there's the room to the dancefloor.
Our table after we've ordered our drinks...
Katia sleeping on our "bed." It may not look comfortable, but it was!

It was a really fun night and we're definitely going back. We weren't planning on staying late but we were enjoying ourselves so much that we stayed longer than expected.

Tonight we're going to a French/Chinese fusion restaurant. We made reservations for 8 PM. There'll be the French crew (6 of us including Jean-Baptiste) and I'm not sure about Matt or Tom (the American and British English teachers - we always make fun because their names put together mean "tomato" in French: Tom Matt = tomate). Our Chinese friends seem to have other plans. But a bigger group will definitely gather at the Tango club later where we'll dance the night away...

Vacation!

Finally finished my exams today! Yay! Hopefully there won't be too many complications, seeing as a few students didn't show up...I'm not sure what to do about them. Bob told me I should give them a "5" and not a "0" just because it's the New Year and everybody should get something...haha. Hilarious.

I think the funniest blooper that I can remember from my exams is when one of my students told me earnestly: "I watch my father do his business." A little TMI (too much information)...

There were many others but I forget. It was a tiring experience, some of my students really get on my nerves, but most of them are sincere and really nice. I had a few of them sweat profusely in front of me, it could be quite awkward. One of my students came in and asked me if I was tired because his classmates had said that I was smiling during all their exams and he thought I must be tired... Sometimes they'd tell me the funniest things. These young people have no counsellors so I think a lot of them are happy to have someone to talk to that's a little distant from their lives. On the other hand, many of them don't dare to tell me anything and that's also annoying, seeing as they're there to speak. Sometimes I'm pulling teeth:

Me: what are you doing for the winter holidays?
Student: Ummm...(after a minute) going back home.
Me: Where is your home?
S: Hebei province.
Me: What will you do there?
S (after a minute): see my parents.

And the student could be shaking from nervousness...I feel bad. It sucks that these students with all different levels and abilities are stuck together in one class. Oh well.

I can't view my blogger again. I think the freebie website my editor set up for me has expired. Sucks. With my cousin we just discussed all the websites he can view from vancouver and i can't view from china...all the ones about Taiwan and Tibet and Chinese political outcasts/exiles. Because it doesn't affect my everyday life I often forget what the government is capable of.

Making plans for New Year's. Probably going to a Russian restaurant for dinner and then clubbing, since there's not much else to do. OK, hope all's well with you.

Exams

This week is exam week. I gave my last class Monday afternoon. I'm pretty happy about everything. I can never be fully satisfied. I have the impression that my students didn't learn much of anything, but oh well, I guess I shouldn't blame myself.

So I give exams from 8-12, then 1-4 PM everyday. I sit in a classroom or office and have one student come in and sit in front of me and I ask them a question at a time and they answer for as long as possible until time's up. I see each student for about five minutes, but it's more like four... I've met a few students for the first time, since they've never come to class. It's interesting. My marking is hap-hazard. I'd like to think there's some continuity, but I doubt it. It changes from day to day, class to class, mood to mood.

My Chinese classes are going well. I haven't been studying the new words for the past week, so I can't read. Tonight I studied hard but there are still many new words I don't recognize. This doesn't stop me from loving Chinese school. :-)

Since exams and Chinese school aren't particularly photogenic, here are a few pix that I never showed you from one of our infamous Friday-night parties. It was late in November or early December that these pictures were taken...

From left to right: Loic (French teacher), Bob (Chinese friend), Gaetan, Katherine (Loic's student).
Loic, me & Bob.
Bob, me, Carl (Matt's Chinese friend - Matt's an American English teacher) & Tom (British English teacher who used to be a journalist).
I went to see some of my students go to a special karate class with a sensai (instructor) from Japan. It was pretty cool. I went to take a picture of him at the end of the lesson and he wanted me to be in his pic!!! So there I am...I felt pretty awkward, can't you tell?

Isn't Chinese medicine beautiful?

During my first week in Beijing I caught a cold and the people I was with got me some Chinese medicine to help my throat. They gave me a small plastic bag filled with what looked like small nuts of some sort. I was told to put them in hot water and keep refilling the cup when I was done drinking the medicine-infused water.

So Sunday night I felt a slight itch in my throat and not wanting to be sick I quickly made myself a steaming cup and dumped in two of the magical nuts.
Sometimes the orange date + time is extremely annoying, but here it allows you to notice the length of time it takes for the medicine to metamorphasize.
This is what it looks like after I've drunk my first cup - ooey-gooey goodness!
And this is what it looks like after I've finished my second cup - it's grown!

Well, whether it really works or whether I wasn't really sick to begin with, I felt fine today. I spent five minutes with 48 students (4 hours non-stop) this morning - asking them questions about their parents and their Spring Festival plans and the like. It's the beginning of a week of passing exams, 8 AM - 4 PM with an hour-long break for lunch at noon. Nice...

I love my life. I say this completely seriously, too. I was in a great mood this evening, which some might find surprising after the day I've had. I was supposed to see 6 students at 1 PM and only 3 showed up. Nobody was competent enough to find either one of the two keys to the photocopying room so I had to print all 66 copies of a hand-out I had made using my printer and only fifteen minutes before the start of class... I was a little stressed. But tonight I'll sleep well (hopefully) and I'm not stressed about tomorrow. It's all good.

Hope all's good for everyone of you, too.

Shang Dan Kwai Le!

So many of you are like my students, asking me what I'm doing for Christmas - how I celebrate and what activities I've prepared. So it's well-known you can't celebrate without a Christmas tree, so courtesy of Katia I had a lovely Christmas tree in my room...

Saturday evening we met up around 6 PM and went shopping for dinner. Katia decorated my place with lights and tinsel. Matt's on the left, he's the American who teaches English and lives on the third floor. This is us after making our wonderful centerpiece. Doesn't look like the traditional French centrepiece, but it did its job and lasted the whole evening.
We had to wait for Loic, who because he's a French teacher, had to sing a French song at a concert organised by the French department. He came over around 9:30 PM and at this time we're pretty much starving.
My student gave me a sandwich maker which I found out makes great toast, as you can see in the pic. Matt brought over some take-out beef & potatoes, we had ham & cheese, fois-gras brought in specially from France (delicious!), and saucisson (French salami). Quite a feast. And then came the best part...crepes!!! Guillaume took a recipe off the internet and we had a few crepes each with Nutella (bought at Carrefour) and jam...very hao-chir (delicious)!
I think the tiredness is visible...but the candles are still tall and we ended the night when the candles went out so the night is still young in this photo.
They all came over this afternoon to help with the cleaning up...
We had a gift exchange and here's Guillaume wearing his present - thoughtfully thought of by Gaetan: a straw hat and a typical made-in-China broom that's already dirty and will dirty up your floor more than it'll clean up. He's sitting on the stairs outside my apartment. The blue stuff is what we threw at each other whenever somebody entered the apartment.
This morning we had a get-together among colleagues (a bit more serious...) at an American woman's apartment. Her name is Caryn and sometimes we go eat together. She teaches American culture at the university. She spent a year or more in Switzerland and speaks French well. The woman on the right of the picture is a wonderful lady. I haven't quite pinned down whether she's Canadian or American. She speaks French, German, Arabic, Russian...and her Native language is English. She can get a bit crazy, she looks a little crazy, but we all love her. She sang Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer for us. The guy on the left is the American who lives above me and sings opera. He spent twenty years singing opera and twenty years on Wall Street before his job went to some guy working in India who was willing to work for a tenth of his salary...
We did a gift exchange at this party too, and here's the guy who received my present - a hat with Chinese candies inside. He seemed to like it. I don't know him, I just see him in the hallways and we smile at each other. He's American, I think.
Guillaume, Matt and Katia with their presents from the gift exchange. Matt got Loic's present - two stuffed dogs. :-) Katia got a portable coffee set and Guillaume got a huge funky-looking mug.
Tally - an American studying Chinese - with her present from Matt (a lovely lantern-light) and Guillaume showing the right side of his mug.
Me showing my present (who knows who it's from) - a "China" plate - Loic, Gaetan, and Tom showing his present - the bracelet.
Tom, Caryn (the hostess), Guillaume, and Matt. There was champagne, red wine, and vodka served at this party (which started at 10 AM), and some people were drunk by noon (not me!). Tom had slept only three hours since he partied hard with other friends the night before.

Yay! New Post!

So I know it's been a while and people have been asking me what's going on, so here's a run-down.

Monday I had no hot water. I washed my hair and that was it. The whole day I was left in the cold, and when it's freezing outside it's not so pleasant.

Tuesday the cleaning lady came and got my toilet fixed yet again.

Wednesday morning the toilet sounded like it was going to overflow and nobody at the front desk seemed to care. But when I came back from work it was working again, but I had to take off the tank's top to flush again...*sigh*

Chinese class has taken up a lot of my time. Outside of class I study a lot too. And then I've been preparing for my students' final oral exams which are happening next week.

I received a few Christmas cards from my students. Well, actually, I received a couple and they're all from one class (Wednesday morning) so now I'm wondering why...

After Chinese school I've been spending some time practicing my Chinese and going over my Chinese work with Xiao Sheng and Yang Yang. They're both good teachers for their own reasons. I enjoy working with them.

Last night I spent three hours watching old episodes of Friends - Xiao Sheng bought all ten seasons for 300 RMB! The mouths' movements don't always correspond to the sound of the voices (not synchronized) but it's fun to watch - didn't realise what I was missing in Vancouver!

Gaetan got asked to be a gigolo by a Chinese guy in one of the study rooms where Gaetan goes to study...kinda funny. If he wants he can make my monthly salaray easily in a few nights...not that he's thinking of doing it! :-)

Katia tried to decorate Loic & my room, as well as her own (which I haven't seen yet!), but the decorations (the tinsel) fell down... I should get lights. I like lights...

Yesterday I had a funny day. I do such disparate things. In the morning I had class, then I came home and talked to friends in Vancouver over MSN, then I went to my office to talk to my boss and on the way bumped into some Korean friends. My boss invited me to lunch at the nearest cafeteria, which I had never been to, and we sat with some coworkers I had never seen before, and they talked to me in their broken English, and I was too tired to think and didn't know what to say, but they invited me to lunch next week, and to a party Monday evening. Then in the afternoon I watched a French movie in Loic's class (Loic teaches French) and I was the only one who laughed because there were no subtitles and the Chinese students couldn't understand. The movie was called "Tais-toi" (Shut-up) with Gerard Depardieu and Jean Reno (two famous French actors) and it was an entertaining comedy. Then there was hardly any time to study before Chinese class, where I spent two hours not really understanding my teacher, but getting the gist and being able to read the Chinese characters (I love Chinese school!). We finish at 7 PM and we go have dinner together in the cafeteria usually, but this time we went to a Muslim restaurant just above the cafeteria - Guillaume, Katia, Loic, Gaetan and me, the original French crew. We syruped (French origin) there for a while. And then I went to watch a few hours of Friends - how random is that?

Weird. Anyway, I've got class. My cell phone doesn't work. Ran out of batteries last night and I wasn't able to recharge the battery for some reason. It could be the chord's problem, the phone battery's dead, or my phone has simply gone kaput (I certainly hope not!!!). Sigh. Life sucks without a cell phone. All of my students' numbers were in it, which means I can't get in touch with them about the exam next week.

Hope you're all doing well in your part of the world!

Christmas

Well, I'm preparing a "Christmas class" this week, seeing as it's already Christmas next week-end...crazy!!! And as I was doing my research I found this site that denounces the rumour that the modern image of Santa Claus was created by Coca Cola (it concludes that it was simply perpetuated and maybe cemented by Coke's early ad campaigns).

I'm sooooo tired because last night we went to a reggae concert at a club in Sanlitun (foreign bar district). The music was sensational and we had an awesome time - there was a huge group of us: German, French, American, British, Chinese, even Russian this time!!!

Yang Yang left me his MP3 player and I've become a music addict - I'm gonna hafta get me one of those gadgets! This morning as I contemplated life from the blissfulness of my bed I listened to a slew of songs and felt wonderful....

A hospital burned in a north-eastern province of China; 33 patients died...

Just finished watching a Chinese movie about Tibetan antelopes. In the 1980s-1990s there were lots of poachers who destroyed the antelope population from millions to less than 10 000. In 1993 an unofficial civilian group banded to try and stop the poachers. They worked for five years, during which time many of their members died trying to save the antelope (wth is the plural of antelope???). One of their members was even killed by a group of poachers and a reporter from Beijing was sent to Tibet to record the group's activities - how they tried to stop the poachers. This movie is the couple of weeks he spends with them and the perils they run into. There's this one scene where a guy is literally "eaten" by quicksand - it will stay in our brains for a long time...it was really impressive. Took my breath away. The Tibetan antelope is one of the five Olympic mascots for the 2008 Games in beijing.

I'm sorry there haven't been many pictures to keep you entertained. I know that's a main attraction, but I still haven't gotten Katia's memory card... One day, and then there'll be pages and pages and pages of pictures!!! yay!!

BIG NEWS: Lucas TdS got himself a full-time permanent position as a music teacher in an elementary school in Burnaby (near Lougheed Mall). CONGRATS!!! This is amazing news, especially since he just started subbing this year. He starts after the break, in January. I'm so happy for him!

Inventions

This has got to be one of my most favourite (most favourite??!!!) American patented inventions: the motorized ice-cream cone!!! Check out the archive for totally absurd inventions that are actually patented! Not enough time to browse them all...got Chinese class in an hour: need to cram!

The strange life of actors

I feel sorry for this guy - especially since he's a millionnaire!!! What strange things actors put themselves through... I'm sure there would have been other ways to portray Mao realistically. I don't think the result will be worth it, but I'll keep an eye out on the look-out.

Today I have a "dictee" in Chinese class. The teacher will say a word or sentence and I'm supposed to write it - in Chinese characters. I know how to write three Chinese characters in total, and then again, only badly. What does our teacher expect? We haven't learned how to write in class yet. I'm not entirely sure of the stroke order!

Up-date

It's getting colder and colder. As the site says, it feels like -16!!! The wind makes everything ten times worse. I have to run from building to building to keep warm. I still need to buy a hat.

This morning my students are taking an exam, so I don't need to go to class! Luxury...

I'm realizing how there's hardly any time left until the end of school...so excited!!! Many of you are already finished, or are going to be finished this week. But remember, you didn't get a week off in October like I did! And what an adventure that was!

For the first time the cleaning lady's going to come to my apartment today. Everyone else has had a cleaning lady come every week, but I had to ask for her to come to my place for some reason.

I hardly think about Christmas here. Go into the city centre and there are huge Christmas displays in fancy banks and shopping malls; there are decorations in the restaurants in and around campus; but I really can't wrap my mind around the fact that Christmas is in a couple of weeks... Next week I plan to teach and sing a few Christmas carols with my students. My singing has improved since I got here, thanks to kareeokeeing (I'm joking of course!).

There'll be a gift exchange (no gift should be more than 30 yuan = $5 Cdn) at an American teacher's apartment Sunday (Christmas) morning, but other than that, we don't have any concrete plans. Not sure we'll even find a Christmas tree! However a few from the French crew have or will be receiving care packages from home and I do believe there's foie gras on the menu. Another reason hanging out with French people rocks: we constantly talk about food and sometimes we're treated to eating French food straight from France (we've had saucisson a few times).

Oh right, almost forgot. I started Chinese class last night. I'm in a class with Gaetan and Loic. There's just the three of us and the teacher so we get plenty of practice. It's everyday from 5-7 PM, which kind of sucks but there was no other time that suited us all. In our first lesson the teacher started writing on the board directly - we can't write in Chinese! Much of it was in our book already, but still... She asked us a lot of questions that we didn't always understand but in general we got the gist. She wrote down many two-sentence dialogues about our age, our boyfriend/girlfriend status (very important!), if our parents were well, where we ate...so much new information!!! Crazy! But it's so cool to learn Chinese, I'm very excited, although a little anxious about the speed at which we're learning... Apparently we have a test on Wednesday!!! Okay, enough exclamation points; it's as if I were sixteen again.

Check out James' site for pictures...it's cool seeing what he looks like now.

And Lucas' webcomic is revealing an awesome plot twist this week!

The Great China Firewall

Here's an article that may be the reason I can't view my blog in China. It's weird, I wasn't able to view it when I first came to China, then it worked for a couple of months, and then these past couple of weeks I haven't been able to view it anymore...

Congratulations

I'd like to congratulate a few of my friends for getting on in their lives and completing a few life-altering steps.

Rachel Pan just got herself what sounds like an amazing job! She'll be working as an accountant next year until May, at which point she'll go back to school to learn to be a Chartered Accountant - paid for by her company, thank you very much!!! I'm so happy for her!

Cheryl Li has an interview with Amazon.com on Monday - good luck! She wants to be a web developer, which would be way cool in the world of Amazon.com. I hope to get some discounts!

***up-date*** Cheryl's job is in Seattle!!! ***up-date***

Lucas TdS got a job as a TOC teaching music until Christmas break. This is old news. He's been teaching a while now. What a trooper!

Nicole finished her LSAT (yay!) and is applying for law schools as well as looking into an International Development Project Management program in Toronto...sounds cool to me!

My brother had his house-warming party (finally his apartment's finished!!!) and I can't wait to look at the final product when I come back in January.

I wish you all the best!

Saturday ski trip

So my students organised a skiing trip for this Saturday. I invited the French crew to come with me. They're all good skiiers. I was told I'd even be able to snowboard. For 120 yuan ($20 Cdn), transportation, lunch, equipment rentals (including a snowsuit) and the lift ticket would all be included. Even if it sucked the experience would be worth it.

We were to meet at 7:30 AM at South Gate. We met at Loic's place around 7 AM for coffee and baoze and then we hurried to be on time. We arrived and no-one was there! Just one student and she didn't know where the bus was or where the other people were... So we waited. Another student arrived and got us on the bus where we continued to wait...and wait. It was 8 AM and a few more students had arrived. We finally left around 8:15 AM and there were a dozen of us on the bus. We crossed the city and went into the Western suburbs. It took around an hour and a half.

For most (if not all) of the students who came, it was their first time skiing ever. We arrived at the mountain - well, more like a hill - and realised that it was definitely fake snow (we had ancticipated this), and only ONE slope (we were wondering how many slopes there'd be)!!! It was just a bit worse than what we had expected...

Guillaume goofing off and I'm helping a student's friend get his skis on...for the first time in his life!

In the end, there was only one snowboard available, so I didn't snowboard. Renting the clothes was actually NOT included, so we didn't rent any clothes because there wasn't much of a point...I skiied in my Banana Republic pin-stripe pants!

There was the equivalent of a tow-rope on either side of the slope - you put a pole between your legs and let it pull you up the hill. There's Guillaume and I looking back at Katia. The guy in yellow standing near the top of the hill is a worker - there were a dozen of them on the slope, at all different points, and they pull up and move people who have fallen over themselves either in the tow rope area or on the mountain. They recover lost poles and skis and try to teach people a little...although not officially. It's funny to watch them running all over the place, helping people up.
The view UP the mountain. I guess this is the equivalent of Cypress' bunny hill.
And the view DOWN the mountain. It took maybe thirty seconds to go down... I spent a couple of hours in the morning teaching my students how to ski. I became a ski instructor! I was pleased with myself because after a couple of hours they were able to go down without falling. I taught them to snow plow and turn and everything. They were very happy themselves.
Gaetan and Loic in the cafeteria. Lunch turned out not to be included either! Good thing we bought our own picnics (sandwiches) and Loic and Guillaume bought some food. You can see the ski lift in the background of this pic, but it wasn't working when we went - there wasn't enough snow!
After lunch we decided to go for a hike in the nearby mountains rather than continue skiing... It was pretty cold but we were walking so it was a constant struggle between being too hot and too cold. I was wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt, a warm sweater, a fleece jacket, a wind-breaker fleece vest, and my big winter coat, plus stockings, tights, sweat pants AND my woollen Banana Republic pants. Many, many layers :-)
The path we took was quite well made.
We had some nice views from the top of the mountains that we climbed - this is of a lake that we decided to go down to. I didn't put a picture up of the lake for some reason, but it was quite nice, although it might've been some sort of a chemical dump. We did see ducks in the lake, and part of it was frozen, which means it couldn't have been that polluted or environmentally damaged.
A view of the industrial western suburb of Beijing. Lots of smoke stacks and pollution made it hard to see the extent of the city.

Gaetan, me and Loic at the back of the mini-van taxi we took to get back to the ski lodge. We had traipsed down the mountain to the lake and then had no idea how to get back...Katia didn't want to go back up the mountain because it would've been too difficult (we had done some bush whacking coming down...) so we continued along a road having no clue if it was going to take us anywhere near the ski lodge.

We ended up coming to a factory-like place that also breeded large pigs. Luckily we found a bus depot where we took a bus that would've taken us to the western-most subway station, but we got off ahead of time once we got on a main road in order to take a taxi back to the ski lodge. We stopped a mini-van who knew of the place we were talking about (we weren't sure of the name of the ski lodge!) and for 15 yuan ($2.50) we were brought safely to the school bus we were to take home. It was only 4 PM and we had been told to be back by 5 PM, but we left at 4 PM because the sun was setting and it was getting too dark and cold to ski.
Loic and Guillaume completely wasted (tired) on the bus home. We got caught in traffic and were home around 6 PM - took us two hours!
We partied at Loic's place Saturday evening. This is me - I do NOT have a mullet, Rachel!!!
Gaetan...
and Katia!!! So funny...

Anyway, that was my Saturday. Today I've got to work because I haven't been working!!! On Friday I had lunch with my Chinese colleagues and bought my plane ticket home with a couple of my students (they drove me in their car). It took two hours. Traffic was bad. I arrive on Monday, January 9th and will be leaving on the 27th with Nicole, who's coming to visit Beijing!!! We had dinner with Tom (the British dude) and Matt (the American dude). I forget what we did after dinner, but we must've sat around and chatted for a bit because I remember going to bed around midnight...and having to get up at 6:15 AM the next day to go skiing!

Wildlife Photo Competition (the winners!)

To check out on a lazy Sunday afternoon: a wildlife photo competition (the finalists).

A game of billiards

I was supposed to work all afternoon...instead I spent it with my two students, Yang Yang and Xiao Sheng (AKA Kobe). I'll most likely be spending half of my winter break with them too, in the south of China. After lunching together in one of the cafeterias, they came over to my place where we talked, studied Chinese, played different card games, and finally had dinner with Katia and Guillaume at the Pink Door (Korean restaurant right outside North Gate) around 8:30 PM! After dinner we had a game of billiards; Bob and Jean-Baptiste joined us later.
Xiao Sheng, me & Yang Yang. My mother wanted to see what I looked like with the haircut I got a couple weeks ago...
Yang Yang and Xiao Sheng goofing around, as usual. YY's 20, XS's 22. I found out today that XS actually failed his first year in the HND program, so he's re-doing his first year.
Bob taking a shot, with J-B and YY looking on. Bob's really good - he can put in four or five balls in a row.
Jean-Baptiste taking a shot, while Guillaume and Yang Yang pose for my camera...
Bob's concentrating. I think he missed this shot and blamed me :-)
I loved the fact that YY would play with a cigarette dangling from his mouth... He plays it oh-so-cool!!!
Xiao Sheng enjoying himself...
J-B at the beginning of the game...lots of balls still on the table.
I cropped the photo to get Bob's "tiger" expression - so funny! He never cracks a smile while playing.

I won a lot during the card games this afternoon. Beginner's luck.

Yang Yang learned that his younger brother decided to join the army this week. Apparently the Chinese army is not the place you want to be, but his bro didn't like studying (he was going to become some sort of electrician which is a profession in huge demand right now, especially in and around Beijing).

Tomorrow I've got to really get down to work! Yikes!

Students

I had my Monday afternoon class over at my place this afternoon. It was kind of to make up for the fact that I missed my Monday afternoon class because I was sick.

I bought OJ and Coke, cherry tomatoes and lots and lots of cookies. They drank the two bottles of OJ, a third of a bottle of Coke and 2 L of water, and a few cups of tea (my good Emperor's tea). There were twelve of them.

They arrived around 2 PM (most of them were a little late) and left at 4 PM. There was talk of making dinner for me at my place, but then it was said I still needed to rest and we would do it another day. It was difficult to have a conversation with all twelve people. It was mostly me talking with one of the students and maybe two or three people listening and then the others speaking amongst themselves in Chinese. I had six chairs brought in from surrounding apartments so that everybody could sit. It was a success!

Yesterday evening the whole French crew and Bob were over at my place. I was on MSN with a couple people, including one of my students, and I had Bob (Chinese friend) type in pinyin for me on MSN. My student couldn't believe it! I led them to believe it was me writing in Chinese! It was so funny. I told Bob to tell them to keep the fact that I know Chinese a secret. My poor students...

Sunday afternoon pix

Pictures from my Sunday afternoon walk with Gaetan around the hutongs (alleyways) south of Tiananmen Square - in the Qianmen district.


An attempt at a park? I don't think so...
Hutongs being destroyed...it's happening all around Beijing as the capital tries to modernize as a result of rapid development. There are public washrooms everywhere in these residential neighbourhoods and Gaetan guesses it's because the people don't have private bathrooms in their homes - it's true that it doesn't look like the people living in these places have running water.

I thought this would be an interesting picture, but some guy (coming in on the left) came to ask for directions right then. The small guy talking to the police had a black face and was asking for directions himself. Who knows what he's doing in Beijing or where he's going.

Still sick

I slept until almost noon today. I woke up at 6:40 AM, got ready for work, and then I threw up...not so nice. So I told my superiors that I couldn't work again today and off I went to bed.

It sucks because I'm not *that* sick - I pretty much just feel crappy. So I can do stuff, just nothing big.

Saturday evening we celebrated a friend's 20th birthday at my place. We had gone to Carrefour, the French supermarket, the week before to buy some good food for the dinner. Guillaume was the chief cook and Katia was his assistant. They made us chicken strips, green beans, mushrooms in butter, and really delicious fried potatoes (like French fries but in cubes). We had banana cake & chocolate ice-cream for dessert.

Hence the ballons - they were a small attempt at decorating my place. This is my living room with the remains of the dinner party on the table. I usually put the table near the window - it's a nice place to work. At the back and to the right you can see my (white) desk on which can be found my two computers - the one the school gave me (flat screen) and my laptop.

The white box on the top left is my air conditioning. It can also heat the place up if I like, but the internal heating system works fine for now. I'm never cold.

My entrance hall. To the left is my front door. To the right is the (dark) door to the kitchen. Before it is the opening to the hallway which leads to my room and the bathroom. The fridge is found here because I don't have too much space in my kitchen...
My kitchen! To the left, right beside the door, is my useless washing machine (it only uses cold water), but I use it anyway to get rid of bad smells. It looks like there's lots of room to put stuff but some of the cupboards are too high for me to reach and the cupboards down below are too low! But I shouldn't complain. I like my kitchen. To the left is a nice big window which gives onto the hallway where everyone passes to go to their rooms.
My bedroom...Loic says it's nice because it looks "lived in." The problem is the closet they gave me is much too skinny to put anything in it...it truly is useless! So all my clothes go in a heap on my bed and I haven't taken the time to organize the piles yet... And I have nowhere to put my three suitcases. But again, I like my room. It's cozy.
The other side of my room. Can you see the thinness of my closet? If I put hangers in there I can't close the doors so they're always open... The pictures are of my trip to Israel with Nicole.
The stylish door to my bathroom. Fancy, eh?
My bathroom. I'm so lucky to have a shower with a door!!! Although it doesn't keep the shower from leaking - every morning there's water on the ground, which is why I have that green towel to mop up the leakage.
Ooooh...this is the infamous glass sink that broke in the apartment above mine. And in the foreground is my treasured floss (round thing that I found at Carrefour last week for $4.50 Cdn; there was a whole aisle of toothbrushes and toothpaste - like in every Chinese supermarket - but there was only the choice of this one dental floss string or those floss pick things that I dislike) and deodorant.

And that's my apartment! I really think I'm living the good life - I have everything I could possibly need.

CBC views

Sylvia Yu, living in Beijing, writes about how the Chinese view foriegners.

I think it's interesting how she was invited over for dinner by a Chinese couple simply to be looked at as a trophy. There are many students on campus who want to become our "best friends" simply because of the prestige it brings to hang out with white people. And then there's the fact that you speak English, and all they want to do is practice their English.

Okay, there are many super nice Chinese people who are simply super nice, who don't have any ulterior motives other than to be super nice, I suppose.

Like yesterday, I was looking for hot chocolate. I wanted the powdered hot chocolate I can make with hot water, not hot milk, because hot milk is too complicated to make at home (I don't have a microwave). I was trying to get this across to one of the hundreds of supermarket workers (there's one or two for every aisle; they stand around and yell their prices). She was being really nice about it by actually trying to understand, seeing as the usual reaction to a foreigner asking for anything is "Mayo" ("We don't have it."). But I wasn't being articulate enough ("Chocolate plus hot water, not want this" - pointing to the milk in the picture on the Nesquik box). So a young woman asked me in Chinese, "What language do you speak," and when I didn't understand she switched to English and she explained exactly what I wanted to the helper lady and I was very thankful, and the helper (another one, because there were two trying to help me by this point) eventually found something along the lines of what I wanted, but when I tried it at home it was one of those breakfast drinks with strange stuff in it and it doesn't taste like hot chocolate at all. Oh well. At least I make it with hot water instead of hot milk.

I'm sick today. I didn't work. My students were nice about it. I felt bad about missing a day of work...but it was nice to rest.

I'm bracing for cold weather. Of course, because of the wind, it always feels ten degrees colder than it actually is. I haven't dared go outside today. Loic hibernates in winter, even in France, so what's it going to be like here is beyond me...

Yesterday I walked around Qianmen area (south of Tiananmen) with Gaetan. We went for a brisk two-hour walk around the hutongs but we were quickly frozen and we were back home by 4 PM. I should buy a hat. Yang Yang, my student, lent me his, but I can't keep it indefinitely. That would be unprofessional.

Snow!

Wow! It's snowing here too! Just a tiny bit.

Went clubbing around 11 PM - left campus in a taxi and it was just starting to fall. Came back around 3 AM and a thin layer of white had actually stuck. It'll probably be gone by tomorrow.

I think it's highly coincidental that it snowed around the same time both in Vancouver and Beijing.

Spent three hours in a restaurant having lunch with my Monday afternoon students. They're helping me find a return ticket, Vancouver-Beijing. I'll know by Monday if they can get me a seat on an Air Canada flight for around 8000 yuan (6 yuan = $1 Cdn). They made me drink three glasses of this Chinese liquor (rice wine?) that I usually don't like but this time it seemed to go down OK. I was in a good mood all afternoon...

Went to the neighbouring Broadcasting University this afternoon to hang out with my wushu buddy Jun.

It's freaking cold out but because I had drunk a bit it was bearable. I understand why cold countries have the worst cases of alcoholism.

Tomorrow I hope to get Katia's memory card and show you some of her pictures.

Good night y'all!

Bad news

The world news is grim.

An Australian is facing the death penalty for trafficking in Singapore.

Another humanitarian disaster is looming for the earthquake-stricken Pakistanis who now have to deal with a harsh winter in tents...

Hundreds of foreigners and Iraqis have been kidnapped in Iraq, including a couple of Canadians. Who knows what will happen to them. Some die, some are freed, some are still held hostage...it gives me the creeps.

And it's AIDS memorial day. I'm hoping to watch a special report on CNN this Sunday evening about the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Best friends

The best of friends at a nearby hot pot restaurant. A teacher couldn't ask for sweeter students.

A beautiful day

Today was such an amazing day. I had class from 8-10. Didn't go particularly well, but not particularly poorly either. Can't complain. And my students are always so sweet...

I went to see my Monday afternoon class because some of them work for Air China and I'm looking for a deal on my flight back to Vancouver for the winter holidays. And I succeeded in getting the photocopier to work (I've never used it before) in the teacher's office place, so I was able to do some personal photocopying (I figured I've been using my printer long enough for my work to owe me five photocopies).

I received a phone call from my mother, which is always nice, but she had plenty of bad news.

Then it was already lunch and I was wondering what I should do about that when out of the blue Tom calls. Tom's the British dude who teaches English. We went to Jie Jie, a restaurant right outside North Gate, and we ordered too much and ate plenty and talked about our students and writing and stuff.

Then I walked to South Gate where I was to meet two of my students - Yang Yang and Kobe - at 2 PM. We took the subway into the city, stopping by a CD shop that sells lots of foreign music (illegally?). We were going to bus part of the way, but the busses were loaded to the brim so we ended up taking a taxi to this market they wanted to show me.

It was an awesome place. I wish I had taken more pictures! But I'm sure to go back. It was mainly a pet market, with crickets galore (in the winter, Chinese people pass the time by betting on cricket fights), but also mice (as pets and as food for other pets), fish, cats, dogs, chinchillas (both Yang Yang and Kobe have a chinchilla), lizards, frogs, boas, pythons, iguanas, geckos...everything!!! Including a baby crocodile selling for over $1000 Cdn, which I'm holding in my very hands in the picture!

That's Yang Yang, my student, beside me. He's from Mongolia. And behind him is his skater friend (they met at a skateboarding park), Wu Yi (Wesley), who's 26 and a famous Beijing DJ who loves animals - he has 40 at home! He knows everything about animals and he grew up in the area so all the local shop people at the market knew him. He knew the names of so many animals in English too, like "reptiles and amphibians." I was impressed. His younger sister's studying in Vancouver.

It'd be fun to see him DJing.

According to YY, he's been skateboarding for ten years so he's one of the first skateboarders in China. Skateboarding has been around fifty years in the US, thirty years in Japan, and ten in China. YY loves talking about music and skateboarding - the two loves in his life.

Israel came up in our conversation and they didn't know what country I was talking about so I talked about the Jews. But then I had to define that. So I explained Judaism by saying Jews didn't believe in Jesus Christ. "Oh! I know!" says YY "It's old school! England is new school! Israel is old school!" That's right, Yang Yang, Israel is old school. I really do love my students.

We made it back to campus and they (YY & Kobe) took me out to dinner to a hot pot place (huo guo - my pinyin's probably wrong). It was super delicious. We dipped our cooked meat (mutton - YY kept calling it "mountain" and for the longest time I was wondering what he was talking about) into this delicious peanut sauce. I loved it.

Then we went to their new apartment (they moved into this smaller apartment - YY & Kobe sleep in the same double bed, but YY regularly goes to bed four hours after Kobe) where we watched LORDS OF DOGTOWN on Kobe's computer. The DVD was of course pirated, with some mechanical difficulties, but we managed to watch it without too much frustration. It's a based-on-real-life-events story about skateboarding. I liked it!

It made YY want to skateboard so he showed us a few moves as they walked me home. He's pretty good. He broke his left arm really bad last summer and he says it still bothers him.

It's funny to see a skater who's into punk and grunge music (only in English if you please!) hanging out with a "nerd" like Kobe, who goes to bed at 10 or 11 PM every night and listens to music from Hong Kong. They're such wonderful friends, too. I really enjoy hanging out with them.

December!

It's December already. Amazing.

I hear it snowed in Vancouver. Hurrah! It hasn't snowed here yet, but apparently we're expecting snow soon. We'll see...

I've updated my last post so that my pictures have captions. Don't forget you can click on a picture to see a bigger version which is often necessary if you want to get a good look.

Last night I went out for a hot chocolate with four Chinese students (Loic's students studying French) and the French crew. The lame drink cost me a whole 16 yuan (6 yuan = $1 Cdn), which is what I pay for a good dinner! I could've made the hot chocolate at home for 2 yuan! Oh well... The cafe looked cool and I suppose you pay a high price for trendiness.

My friend Lucas (his webcomic is to the right) received an award for best teaching practicum last week. I'm not surprised. He's talented and funny and I'm sure all his students love him. Right now he's teaching elementary music until the Christmas holidays at this one school. Good luck to him.