The future

My Chinese teacher. Not the most flattering picture...


Canada in 2020: What will the country look and be like? The CBC along with other big media outlets have decided to organize a big dialogue about the subject of Canada's future, starting July 1st. Should be interesting to follow.

It's been raining the past couple of days, so I've been watching movies. OUT OF AFRICA, JEUX D'ENFANTS (Children's Games), DE BATTRE MON COEUR S'EST ARRETE (The Beat that My Heart Skipped), and BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY. My favourite was OUT OF AFRICA. Besides it, I wasn't particularly taken by any of them. I found fault with all of them. But I enjoy watching movies so it was entertaining.

That's what I did this week. I'm leaving for at least one night - we're going to the countryside with a group of foreign friends. Taking the train this afternoon (Friday) for one or two hours and heading for a big park where we can sleep in rooms and frolick in the stream and lie on some sand and go hiking and all-in-all relax in nature, away from the city. Hooray!

It's a big day for Katia and Gaetan, who are going to send their 50-page research essays in Economy to their French university. It's 12:30 PM (half past noon) and they're still writing...but they'll be done in time (2:30 PM) to leave for the countryside with us! Hip-hip-hooray! This past week has been cram-time for them. They've had since March to write it... So this week-end will be an extra big party week-end for them. For the foreign students who have been studying Chinese, it's the end of exams (last one's today!) so everyone is ready to celebrate.

Take care everybody and...have fun!!!

Street food and stuff

When Jessie was here (back in May!) we had a lot of street food. For 3 yuan we at these sandwich/wrap-like thingies, very good! They're made from little stalls on wheels that can be pulled by bike around town.



Me digging in to one of them. Yum!
A group of us went to a Japanese restaurant last Thursday. It wasn't very good but we were able to see some World Cup action. There was Katia, Branko, Guillaume, Diana, Mariana, Gaetan, Loic and his Chinese friend, Eva.
The Pavillon, which is a bar where we watched three World Cup games. They have couches and chairs outside on their terrace, but we've never gone ealy enough to get seats! Although the place is huge, it's always packed! You can glimpse the big screens way in the background... We usually sit at the back on grass.

Chinese food & Boat party

My friend Jun came over one day to make me lunch. Here are the ingredients set out before us...
He asked me to cut some green-onions. It took me forever! He wanted it very fine - very small pieces. It took me maybe half-an-hour or more. Then he finally took over and was able to do it so quickly, so fast! I was quite embarassed...
The end of the meal...it was a little too salty, but it's always nice eating home-cooked Chinese food. :-)
A group of foreign students went to a "boat party" - we got on boats and partied. From L to R: Katia, Yas and Simon. We went to the lake district in Beijing (a chain of lakes in the north-western section of the capital) and rented out boats there. The boats had motors...
Me and a new Japanese friend - Daisuke. He won the university tennis championships. Yay! He received 300 RMB for being first. What's cool about Japanese friends is that you have to speak Chinese with them - good practice!
One of the "other boats" - Branko with his then-girlfriend Anya, who's Cuban and awesome (lots of fun!). Behind the pole is a Quebecker (Matthieu) and to the right is the Australian Leslie, who happens to be Katia's Chinese school classmate.
"Our boat" - rocked!!!
Yas (white hat), Simon, me, Daisuke, and Diana with Daisuke's glasses!!!
Yas, Katia, me and Daisuke. Yay for boat parties!!!

People from my university

Let's start with the manicure I got last month - cost me a whole 25 RMB (7 RMB = $1 Cdn) for all ten fingers, and my students tell me that's expensive (some said it was OK). I loved the manicure though - thought it suited me very well and everyone complimented me on it. :-)

A close up of the design - the way the lady did it was that she put three white dots on the red background, then took a pointed tool and zig-zagged through the fresh white "paint" to make the cool-looking flower design. Loved it!
The "Frenchies" - as we're called on campus - have staked out this area outside the second cafeteria, right by the sports ground, which we call "les arcades," and which more and more foreigners have been using as their hang-out.
One lunch, there were more of us than usual. Here are Katia's two roommates. Diana's on the left (Ukranian 17-year-old studying here for four years - this was her second of the four), and Mariana (Russian 20-year-old studying Chinese in Beijing just this year, although she's been studying it for six in total, I think, and speaks very well, and she can also speak English and French) is on the right.
Gaetan. Where was Loic that day?
Branko (Croatian - 22? 23? - studying in Moscow at a Russian university) and Katia. He's a funny guy. Likes breakdancing.
Yas - Katia's Japanese friend...
He was particularly handsome on this day - must've been very happy to see Katia. :-)
We went to a park one Sunday afternoon to go to an outdoor swimming pool and found a group of people practicing water calligraphy on the ground. The characters dry - and therefore disappear - practically on the spot since it's so hot and dry out these days... We practiced a little too! It was fun. This guy was really good.
Katia, Diana and Mariana at the outdoor swimming pool. It was perfect - very hot outside but cool in the pool.
The four girls hanging out on the slice of beach that existed by the pool. Places to sit were sparse at this pool - no grass!!!
Guillaume was the only guy who came with us. Katia's taking the picture - her nose is in the bottom right.
"The beach."
The "official" who kept tweeting his whistle at foreigners because he didn't know what to do with them when they broke regulations. He tweeted at us for eating our chuar - BBQ meat on a stick - on the beach, which isn't allowed.
After refreshing ourselves in the pool we went to do some colouring in the park. You fill a black-and-white drawing (it has 3D black borders that stick out a bit) with paint and then cook it and then the drawing can come off and you can stick it on your fridge - yay! What fun! For a whole 15 yuan.

Australia 3-1 Japan :*(

Japan was winning the whole game...until the last 10 minutes, when Australia scored 3 goals. I didn't think it was out of the blue, since I believed Australia was the better team the whole time, but I was rooting for Japan. Poor Japan.

Tomorrow it's France against Switzerland I think...yay! Hao wanr (fun times)!

Tim Horton's goes to Afghanistan: http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2006/06/12/tim-hortons-kandahar.html

I don't know why, blogger's not responding properly...not sure any of this will work.

Good night!

World Cup

After a party-night on Friday (dance party at the school and then continuation at a club in Sanlitun - city centre), we weren't up for more than World Cup watching this evening (Saturday). We watched two games - England vs. Paraguay and Sweden vs. Trinidad & Tobago - out of the three that day. Inbetween games we (Katia, Gaetan, Loic and I) taught a Japanese friend (his name's Yas) the masculine and feminine found in the French language, but we taught it to him... in Chinese. So funny!!! Never would we have thought we'd be teaching a Japanese guy the French masculine and feminine (un and une) in Chinese!!!

Last night was a little crazy...it was good to spend a "quiet" evening at Katia's watching soccer. Guillaume is now back in our circle, since he's "with" Katia's roommate now, the Ukrainian called Diana. I'll just remind you folks that Guillaume studied at our university the first semester and now lives on the other side of the city because that's where he's fulfilling his internship. We only see him on week-ends, and for the longest time we hardly even saw him...

Gossip, gossip, gossip!

I spent a lot of time (around a week) figuring out my plane dates for my return this summer. It's settled, I'll be leaving Beijing July 10th at 11:40 AM and arriving in Paris on the same day but around 9 PM. I'll be staying in Paris for ten days, leaving July 20th for Vancouver. I'm so excited because my mother will be in Paris until the 16th - we haven't been in Paris together for ages. I haven't been in Paris period for at least five years, so it'll be nice to visit. Can hardly wait!!!

Dashanzi - Beijing's art district

What a way to spend a Sunday afternoon - Beijing's art district called Dashanzi. It was a beautiful day, we were lucky.

"The Frenchies" - from L to R: Loic, Katia and Gaetan.
Simon (Quebec City), Gaetan (France), Maisy (China, who's going to spend four months in the US next year), Mariana (Russia). Outside an art gallery. You can kind of suspect the factory atmosphere from yesteryear.
Simon & Katia. Simon just cut off his mohawk. I'm sorry I never got pictures of him when he had long hair (which he had for the whole year until May).
Chinese math teacher: 1+1=2. Duh.
Sissy and Emily, two Chinese friends playing...Chinese chess? Love the old-style wooden chairs.
Interactive art: put your head into the holes under the box (there are pictures of what a "traditional Chinese room" should look like glued on the inside of the box) and speak to the person infront of you. Very interesting...
The painting is really just white paste, the colours simply projected onto the white painting. It actually looked quite real...
Graffitti...
I loved these two pieces of bronze horse statues. I took quite a few pictures but only have chosen to show one of each...
*yawn* Taught my children students (the 8 12-year-old Korean children) the definition of "yawn" this afternoon. Along with "sneeze," "cough," "scratch," and "stretch."
These horses look so free...I love them!
A painted statue in front of a painted wall - so cool!
Chinese workmen...at work.
Statues outside some art galleries. No parking!
Funky graffitti. I wonder if the artists were paid...it doesn't look that professional. There is no graffitti in other parts of Beijing - only telephone numbers to get fake papers.
They're in love with Kobe from the NBA here. Basketball is big. Xiao Sheng, who invited me to his hometown in February, chose Kobe as his English name. I call him Xiao Sheng.
I was impressed by the delapidated and rusting metal tubes running above the pedestrian roads. Maybe one day they'll be up-graded into a high-tech means of transporting goods...you know, like in sci-fi movies...
Funky metal tubes...

And of course, why else would you go to Beijing's art district? Sure it's important to look at some of the art, but...Chinese people really like to sleep. Sleep is most important. We were in this room for maybe half-an-hour, looking at different works, and the whole time these two people slept - what looks like a very uncomfortable place - on the table.

Dinner

This evening we had dinner at Katia's. Katia has two roommates: Diana, a 17-year-old Ukranian girl, and Mariana, a 20-year-old Russian girl. Mariana is in Shanghai right now, for at least 10 days. She works with the Russian embassy. She speaks Russian, English and Chinese fluently, her French isn't bad, and I'm sure she gets by in some other languages.
Three weeks ago we went to Dashanzi, Beijing's art district. I've been there a couple times before. It's a wonderful place. It's an old factory neighbourhood transformed into funky-looking art galleries. It's a great place to hang out on a Sunday afternoon, strolling from gallery to gallery, looking at sometimes very interesting Chinese art.

Since it's so late, I'll put more pictures up later...

This evening's dinner was marvelous. Katia out-did herself. Chicken with "Hollondaise" sauce, steak with "cafe de Paris" sauce (these are packaged powdered sauces brought from France! simply add water and enjoy!), real Parmes Ham (jambon cru!) with real cheese, cherry tomatoes and melon...mmm....so good! And then we danced a bit, and then we played hide-and-seek outside in the building's playground. The security guards sometimes helped us look for our friends, sometimes scolded us for keeping everybody awake, even though they were being louder than we were!!! It was an enjoyable evening...