Saturday, January 21, 2006

Nearly two weeks in Vancouver

It's been two weeks since I've been in town. Although I sleep fine at night, I'm tired during the day. I find it's been difficult getting over jet lag.

I've seen a lot of people. I've kind of studied my Chinese. I've gone swimming a couple times. I've watched a lot of movies and videos and such. All in all, it's been a good two weeks.

On his last week-end in Beijing, Aoi, a Japanese student whom we met through Jean-Baptiste (JB & Aoi are roommates), hung out with us for the first time ever (it was the first time I saw him). He was in Beijing for a year, studying Chinese. We drank and had dinner and hung out. Here's us before dinner at my apartment. From left to right: Aoi, Tom (British English teacher), Katia, me, and Gaetan.
Part of the Llama Temple in Beijing - I just really like it!

And here are some more pictures. It's totally by coincidence that they're grouped in groups of 5. I'm just lucky that way.

Robson

I had lunch with my two good friends, Rachel & Nik, on a weekday. Then I spent the afternoon doing nothing with Nik at his place - well, he worked on his application to the UBC Education Department and since I'm so disorganized and I forgot my student card, I couldn't do a goddamn thing. Oh well.

The wonderful duo - Rachel & Nik. Rachel's so fancy in her work clothes & pumps. Nik's always fancy.
The now-not-so-new Kiehl's store on Robson, along with a whole bunch of restaurants and then Aldo, the shoe store, on the right.
Zara on Robson. I hadn't noticed the winter decorations - the large snowflakes and red & blue banners on the poles.
Robson strasse - Vancouver's shopping street, although all my Japanese and Korean students used to say it was absolutely nothing compared to what they were used to, shopping-wise.
On the left is the revolving restaurant from which you can have the best views of Vancouver on a fine day.

Kerrisdale

I had coffee at the Starbuck's in Kerrisdale with a couple of high school buddies - Grace & Rita. It was a Thursday morning. I would've liked to have taken more pictures of Kerrisdale, but it was raining and the opportunity didn't make itself evident. So I took some pix of my friends :-)

The lovely and sophisticated Grace.
The lovely Rita who hates having her picture taken. Given the circumstances, I think this one turned out pretty OK - especially since I only took a single shot of her!
Grace and me hanging out. Grace just likes to have her mouth shut. She doesn't have disfigured teeth or anything, and she does talk to us quite openly and regularly (she's not silent).
Baby shoes!!! Not that we're thinking of buying any anytime soon...
Elmo booties! Haha, they're funky.

Vancouver Houses & Papers

Some houses in my neighbourhood...


red house
cute house
blue house
free newspapers pricey newspapers

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Graffiti

As I was walking towards Tinseltown (a movie theatre) downtown near Chinatown, I noticed this empty space between two buildings. I thought it was pretty cool so I took a picture and decided to post it, despite my friends' dissatisfaction - they say it's not "aesthetically pleasing." Well, it's a part of Vancouver.
A close-up of the graffitied building. A man's walking in the alley, but he's camouflaged.

I think the graffiti looks good. Graffiti's not all bad. In Beijing, the only graffiti I've seen is of false phone numbers. I don't know what the phone numbers are for, but I've heard that if you call you can get fake papers or something like that...

Monday, January 16, 2006

Vancouver pix

I've been going downtown quite a bit these days. Doing some shopping while in town because I'm used to the shopping here. I'm discovering some stores. It's nice and relaxing.

Well, blogger didn't upload the pictures in the order I wanted, but doesn't really matter. I spent Saturday afternoon with my high school friend, Grace, and she was patient enough to wait for me while I took my pictures of the beautiful light that occurs in Vancouver just before the sun sets. It was the first sunny day in a month - 26 days to be precise.


We went to see Pride & Prejudice at Tinseltown and after the movie we walked up Pender I think it is... I used to work in this neighbourhood so I know it pretty well. Gastown's just down Cambie to the right.
You can see the mountains better in this picture. My mother gasps at how ugly Vancouver is - one of the most beautiful cities in the world but it's true, the architecture is sometimes scarily ugly. The big red building in the background is 322 Water Street.


I was walking down 18th Avenue on my way to Dunbar to catch the bus downtown when I noticed this worker climbing a crane. Although I knew my bus would be coming any minute (I had checked the schedule) I decided to spend two minutes taking a couple pictures. I really like this picture, with the view of downtown Vancouver in the background, but unfortunately I did miss my bus and I was late meeting Grace at the Elbow Room - an all-day breakfast place on Davie.


A picture of the Rockies from the plane. It's 10:27 AM Vancouver time, January 9th.


A picture by Canada Place. I loved the colour of the clouds!
Here I wanted to take the lights reflecting in the water. Ooooh, neat lighting effects.


A view of Vancouver's port. I love those red cranes...so funny-looking!


Wish I hadn't put the date on this one. I had to take a pic of the in-coming tug boat and the orange tanker sailing by in the background and the rocky pier in the foreground - it all works.

I hope you're all doing well in your corners of the world. I had a peaceful day today. Restful.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Back in Vancouver

Well, I'm back in Vancouver. Funny thing, yesterday, Monday, January 9th, at 11:10 AM, I was both eating brunch with Yang Yang and Xiao Sheng in the 2nd cafeteria on Erwai's campus in Beijing, as well as in the plane making my way to YVR - Vancouver's airport. I was in two completely different places at the same time :-)

My toilet in my Beijing apartment held out for a record ten days before the chain broke again...

The workers never returned to finish putting in the new furniture in my apartment. I got Xiao Sheng to write me a few "Do not touch! I want this" signs to put on the armchairs and swivel chair that I'd like to keep. Who knows if it'll work...

I was extremely proud of the fact that I was able to converse for a good half-hour with the taxi driver from Erwai to the airport. It was filled with "I don't understands" and of what I pretended to understand it probably wasn't what he was really saying, but nevertheless, whatever I said he was able to understand and I was able to answer quite a few of his questions. It was tiring...but very cool.

Monday morning I was supposed to see one of my big bosses to talk about next semester and the new textbooks I bought for my classes but he didn't show up and he didn't answer his cell phone when I called. Oh well. I got paid for the overtime I did in December. I was happy about that.

It feels good to be home. I slept three hours yesterday afternoon and five hours during the night. I'm going to be tired this afternoon. I think I should go swimming or something to keep me awake.

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Last Day...

Well, it's my last day in Beijing before my two-week return to Vancouver. I leave at 4 o'clock in the afternoon Beijing time on Monday, January 9th, and arrive in Vancouver the same day but at 11 o'clock in the morning... The wonders of modern transportation and its effects on time.

Friday night we went to Yu Dong Yi Shang - a nightclub we've been to twice before, the last time for the reggae night. The same live reggae group was there but we arrived right at the end of their show (around midnight?) and mostly danced to recorded music. We came home at 4 AM.

Not such a good idea because the next day (Saturday) it was Jean-Baptiste's 22nd birthday (well, he's turning 22 on Thursday) and Bob had prepared an awesome evening for him. We went to a Chinese restaurant where Bob had chosen an amazing array of delicious dishes ahead of time so that when we arrived everything was already ready. JB had brought four bottles of cider and we had bought a bottle of Chinese champagne (20 RMB for 1.5 L - $4 Cdn). Chinese champagne is really cider disguised in a champagne bottle.

After dinner we went to the local KTV/brothel. You pass by the dancefloor and go through a room full of women waiting on sofas before entering the "rooms" area and then going up some stairs to the KTV place. We sung in Chinese and English. I'd like to learn a Chinese song by heart before I leave in July. That'd be cool.

We left the KTV place around 11:30 PM to go to Bar Blu, a night club in the Sanlitun area. It was the first time I went there. It's not a bad club, but we were too hot on the dance floor. The music is top 40 stuff from the 80s, 90s and 00s. Lots of classic favourites that get everybody singing and dancing. There's a terrace on the top floor that must be cool to go to in the summer.

We've been delivered new furniture. I'm glad because my bed was falling apart (the head post would fall everytime I moved). Now I can actually hang my clothes in my closet and close the closet doors. Yay. Thing is, in classic Chinese style, they started something and didn't finish. I have a huge TV and a table waiting to be assembled in my entrance. I have two halves of a chair in the middle of my living room waiting to be put together! It's that bad...

Plus, they're going to take away some of the old stuff that I want to keep! Like the comfy arm chairs: even though they're a scandalous yellow and purple I've gotten used to them.

This morning I was woken up at 8:30 AM by the super loud chattering of the cleaning ladies right outside my room. They even turned on some music! Hello! It's Sunday morning!

I got a haircut yesterday with Katia. We went to the same place right outside north gate where the hair stylist greeted me with my Chinese name! I was able to have a semblance of a conversation. No, I won't flatter myself, it didn't resemble a conversation at all, but at least I was able to say two or three sentences which I wasn't able to say a month ago...

I'll spend most of my day cleaning and packing and asking my students to write a letter stating all the furniture I want to keep :-)

Hope to see most of you very soon!

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

The Big Easy

The jazz bar we went to on Monday evening was the best - and almost only - jazz bar in all of Beijing, and it was really quite good. It's called "The Big Easy" and it's right by where JB's parents live - in a snazzy part of town. There are live bands playing every night, which is pretty cool since that means there's a different show every day. Slight glitch: the drinks are expensive. My delicious chocolate milk with alcohol cost me a whopping 45 RMB (6 RMB = $1 Cdn). I can eat three dinners in a normal Chinese restaurant with that, or eight or nine dinners at the second cafeteria...
There were six of us that evening: Tom (British English teacher drinking beer), Mariana (off the pic to the left; she's Russian but she speaks Chinese and English really very well; she's learning Chinese at Erwai), Guillaume (to the right; he's looking for an internship in order to stay in Beijing next term), Katia (off the pic to the right), Loic and I.

If you look closely you can see the jazz band playing in the background.

Katia and Loic in front of the bottle-infested bar. We had the best seats in the house for the number of people in our group. The bar's pretty small and we had to be imaginative to make a comfortable spot for us where we could all sit and talk and watch the jazz band at the same time. We were very successful and I'm afraid next time we might not be as lucky...

Today I must finish my grading for my first year students. Argh!

Pictures

My 20-year-old student, Yang Yang, performing a trick for us outside the cafeterias. He broke his arm last summer (fell from a jump) and hasn't been skateboarding much since.
Guillaume tried his hand at it and although he looks good in the picture, he wasn't super successful in real life. He's in front of "di er shi teng" - the second cafeteria. We very often eat dinner there now, since we go right after Chinese class finishes at 7 PM.
Pictures from Bed - the cool bar we went to Friday night (December 30th).
We were falling asleep so Katia took a ton of pictures of us.
Katia, me and Gaetan - I gained weight, yes, but not to the point of having a double chin!!! It's just the picture...
Matt - the 24-year-old American teacher - was there.
Guillaume was also there. This is us sometime in December. We went to a Muslim restaurant not far from Erwai (our university) and there happened to be no electricity that evening so we ate in our coats (we were freezing) and by candlelight (very romantic). Bob's to my right (on the left of the pic) and Loic's student is on his left (on the right of the pic). Her name's Nina and she's 23 and in Loic's "adult" class - they're older than his usual students.
The flash ruined the atmosphere of the candlelight. Here's us digging in - the food is delicious.
And to finish - we bought fake snow-in-a-can and decorated my apartment's windows (with snowflakes) and the window outside my room in the hallway. Joyeux Noel = Merry Christmas.

Today I had to wake up at 9 AM because the cleaning lady was to come at 10 and I had to clean up beforehand. I handed in the grades for my Year 2 students and then I went to Xidan by myself. Xidan is a crowded shopping district in the city centre. I browsed the bookstore for books on Speaking English and bought three. I went to Yang Yang and Xiao Sheng's apartment and I helped YY with some of his homework and he helped me with my Chinese and then I napped because I was exhausted and then it was time for class already...crazy!

We had dinner with Kim (Guillaume's Korean roommate who is going back to Korea this Saturday) and Andy, his friend, at a Korean restaurant called A Sa A Sa! We'd been there once before. This time it was pretty expensive. Kim eats a lot. :-)

After dinner we went to Katia's and watched a Bill Murray movie I had never heard of called BROKEN FLOWERS. It was slow-going and some would say pointless, but I liked it. It was about an "over-the-hill don juan" who receives a mysterious letter saying he has a 19-year-old son, so he goes to see the four lovers he had at that time to guess which one is the mother - which one sent him the letter. Well, I won't tell you the ending, but it's not a movie you see to find out what happens. It's a movie you enjoy just because of the present moment.

And with that I wish you good night!

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Resolutions

In the year 2006 I resolve to:
Point and laugh more.

Get your resolution here



I also really want to seriously study Chinese. That's easy enough...

And I want to lose all the weight I've gained while in China. No problem...

A new week begins...

I literally spent the whole day organising the marks for my students...and I only finished the second years - that's four classes out of nine! But the rest will go quickly I hope.

I woke up at 9 AM and worked until 4 PM without moving from my apartment.

I had a few house calls from friends, I'll admit.

Had Chinese class from 5-7 PM. We learned how to say "welcome."

Teacher (in Chinese of course): Caroline, will you welcome your teacher to Canada?
Me: Of course I'll welcome my teacher to Canada.
T: Loic, will you welcome your teacher to France?
Loic: Of course I'll welcome my teacher to France.
T: Gaetan, will you welcome your teacher to your house?
All of us: burst of laughter.

My teacher's got a crush on Gaetan...but then, every Chinese girl does. Nothing new.

We went to the best jazz club there is in Beijing this evening. It was really awesome music. Mostly without a singer but then there arrived a young Chinese woman who didn't fit my idea of a jazz singer at all, but she sang very very well - she mostly skat (what is the past tense of skat??? Jessie would know...).

Tomorrow I'm going into town to look for a new textbook for my students for next term. Fun! Fun!

Hope you all had super kala fragilistic expee ala docious New Years'!!! All the best!!!

Monday, January 02, 2006

New Year's

For New Year's we ended up going to a French-Chinese fusion food restaurant in a chic neighbourhood where Jean-Baptiste lives. It wouldn't have been my first choice (I would've liked going to a small but expensive bar/restaurant in Hohei, where we can have dinner by a lake in the centre of the city; it's a nice area), but the food was good and had we gone somwhere else, we wouldn't have been able to go to JB's apartment after dinner.

JB, Guillaume and Katia. I had pork in a peanut sauce with mashed carrots. It was quite delicious. 120 yuan ($20 Cdn).
Me, Matt (American teacher), Tom (British), and Gaetan (Loic is sitting to Gaetan's left, out of the picture). This is after dinner. I ordered a latte with Bailey's for dessert - oh so good! Katia and I wearing our festive masks - the restaurant gave them to us.
After dinner - around 11 PM - we walked to JB's apartment (where his parents, who are diplomats, live). There, his father served whiskey and vodka and most importantly two rounds of champagne. JB's parents are really cool. They were very friendly and generous. JB lives on the 30th floor of a building and has a really awesome view. We spent the actual New Year's (midnight) there. We kissed everyone in the room at midnight.

Guillaume and I were both wearing hats that we bought while in Beijing.

JB and I (JB's wearing Guillaume's hat). We're in JB's room - nice, no? Can't believe he prefers to go back to Erwai and sleep on campus... He even has a bathtub in his ensuite bathroom!!!

JB's kind of introverted and shy and he hadn't planned to go clubbing with us, but we finally convinced him to come out once the midnight champagne drinking and one last beer were finished with.


This is the party we went to - it was mostly house/techno music and we literally danced from 1 - 6 AM. There were hundreds if not thousands of us - mostly foreigners - packed into this large space, dancing the night away. When we left around 6:30 AM there weren't that many people still hanging around.

At first we had to wait in line for a super long time to put our stuff at the coat check - the Chinese coat check system consists of putting your items in a large garbage bag and putting the bag in a disorganised stack in the back room. There's no organizational method so it takes an eternity to find the bag that corresponds to your number when you pick up your stuff. Since we arrived after midnight, when quite a few people were leaving, it took forever to put our stuff away, so we ended up giving up and putting our stuff on a seat in a dark corner. On our way to the dance floor, Gaetan got into a bit of a squabble with a couple guys near the coat check (Gaetan was pretty drunk) and the next thing we knew, he had suddenly disappeared. We looked for him but never found him. I thought I had left my bag with him - my bag had my camera - so I didn't take any pictures.

In the end we found out that Gaetan had left directly after the coat check clash - he was carrying Loic's leather jacket which cost Loic 1000 euros. All night I also thought he had my bag but when we went to look for our stuff I found my bag in plain sight on a seat beside our coats; nobody had stolen the 200 yuan or the camera I had inside. It's too bad I hadn't realised it was there earlier, or I would've taken pictures of the club. It was pretty cool.

Since Gaetan had only 5 yuan on him and he was all alone he took a taxi and ran when he arrived at Erwai. Terrible!

Two of Loic's students - Pascal and Melodie - came to the club around 1 AM.

The music was good - upbeat and danceable. I enjoyed myself.

When we came back to Erwai - Loic, Guillaume, Katia and I - we went to Gaetan's room to check if he was safe. He had left Loic's jacket on the floor of his bedroom. Wonderful! Everyone was happy. Tom, Matt, Pascal, Loic and JB had left in one taxi earlier.

Today I woke up around 11:30 AM - didn't sleep more than four hours. I had lunch with Bob and spent a couple hours going over my Chinese and listening to music at Yang Yang's. Then I went to Loic's and watched Shrek II before eating dinner (Tom joined us). After dinner we watched Assault on Precinct 13. I had already seen it but a long time ago so I could re-live the stress of the movie. Fun times. Now it's nearing 1 AM and I should really get some sleep.

Tomorrow I should do my students' grades for their exams and figure out their final marks. Sigh.