Caroline in China

Sorry

2006-11-24T13:26:00.000+08:00

So it's been a while since I last posted, and the main reason is: I've been busy. But also, I'm trying to post pictures and it's taking F-O-R-E-V-E-R. Blogger really has a problem...it shouldn't take more than a minute to upload a picture - a minute is already way too long! Plus, often blogger won't even let me upload pictures - it just doesn't work! So it's very frustrating.

Lately I've been preparing for my mid-term exams. I had four last week - spoken spoken (dialogue with a partner), reading & writing, listening, and spoken written (a written exam for our speaking class). I did OK, not used to getting such low marks, but I was pleased in a way because considering I've only been really studying for two months my results weren't bad. I received average marks.

Learning Chinese is hard. It's hard to remember all those characters. Memorizing them comes a lot easier now (I'm more used to it) but then right after the tests I tend to forget most of them...and continuing to use them is near impossible since I'm learning around 120 new words a week (that's on average 25 new words a day - when I learned how to teach English I was told the maximum a student can realistically take in is around 7 or 8 new words a day).

I was sad to hear that my dog Cleo died. She was 13 years old (her birthday's in October). She died contentedly and without pain, thankfully. It was peaceful.

I'm excited to hear that my brother will probably come visit me end of December. Yay!

Because I wrote about those people trying to flee from Chinese mountains, I can't view my site anymore, so I'm going to cut that part out and see if I can view my site again.

Pictures are up!

2006-10-31T09:36:00.000+08:00

Take a lazy afternoon and check out CBC's photo galleries at your leisure. I recommend "World Press Photo '06" - the best photos of 2005.

I now have the cable that goes from my camera to the computer, but no time and real motivation to put up the long-awaited photos from my trip to the South during the October 1st Golden Week Holiday. So here are some pictures of my cute roommate, who - big news! big news! - found herself a nice boyfriend, so he's either in our apartment everday or she's out at his place (he lives off campus; goes to another university) so I don't see much of her anymore....

Min Ji doing her favourite passtime: cell-phoning! Yes...she did have two cell phones at one time.
Her boyfriend. And I did have a pic of the two of them, but blogger's screwing up and I can't post it.

This was the week I came back from my trip to the South. On a Wednesday I gathered a few people I had met to come together for some drinks. We went to the campus pub. To my right is a Russian girl, who's roommate is the other white girl on the side (also Russian) - I've been clubbing with them a couple times. And I went shopping one day with the Japanese girl beside the blonde. The rest are Japanese guys, except for the Korean in a purple top, who I met in the elevator... The guy to my left (in white), is my neighbour - he lives in the room next to mine! And the guy beside him (in black) lives on my floor.

Seductive Shorts

2006-10-25T21:50:00.000+08:00

:-) No, not seductive shorts as in the clothing shorts (which can or cannot be seductive, according to your personal taste)...seductive shorts as in short movie shorts. Prepared in order to be eventually downloaded on mobile phones (AKA cell phones), ten directors were asked to make two-minute shorts that would be able to be looked at on the small cell phone screen. Click on the link to watch them!

Languages in Canada

2006-10-24T11:41:00.000+08:00

Well, I guess it comes as no surprise that the top languages spoken in Canadian households are English, French and then "Chinese languages" (that encompasses a lot!). Check out CBC's website: click on each province and find out what the top 5 languages are spoken there.

I had a nice week-end. You?

Yamikasi

2006-10-20T00:42:00.000+08:00

It has been a while...I'm waiting for the cable between my camera and my computer (which I left in Guangdong Province and my student's cousin's new wife brought back to Beijing with her, but I have yet to get it back from her...) to download pix of the wedding and show you what my trip to the south of China was like.

In the meantime: I watched a movie (in Beijing - fake DVD) I had forogotten I had already watched while in France on vacation five years ago called Yamikasi. It's about a group of guys who climb buildings...without any equipment. Well, these type of people really do exist, and if you hurry and watch today's news in Marseille, France, you'll catch a glimpse of today's Yamikasis... Really quite interesting. If you visit this site too late (maybe it's changed), you can see some pix of what they do:

Guess it's not only "residents only." :-)
They use the urban city as their playground - nothing is too challenging, they can do it all!

In other news: on campus I watched a group of Chinese workers build a wall around a future building site. The wall was made of bricks and didn't look very strong, but then it was plastered in a black cement-like material which made it smooth and alright-looking, and then they painted it a bright green, which made it quite respectable and all. However, just a slight problem - they hadn't let in the machines that were going to help the workers build the future site!!! So how do you solve such a problem??? Well...in China you simply break the newly-built wall down! Yes indeed, they broke a huge hole in their wall to let through the machines and simply built the wall right back up afterwards - and cemented it and painted it (I suppose they'll break it up again once the building is done to let the machines out again...so funny...). Ahlala, China, China, China...

My friend is on TV!

2006-10-10T21:55:00.000+08:00

Do you remember Eva from last year? I met up with her this year before she left for France, where she now teaches Chinese in a French high school. She's on French TV! She's on during the fourth story on the news about the hundreds of foreigners coming to France to teach their native language to French students. When I was nineteen I did that in a Parisian suburban high school....

Stop Global Warming

2006-10-09T21:01:00.000+08:00

Help Blue Man stop global warming...

Takes a while to load, be patient.

October 1st Holiday

2006-10-09T17:39:00.000+08:00

October 1st is a national holiday - Mao Ze Dong officially declared the beginning of the People's Republic of China on this day in 1949. Chinese people get a week vacation to celebrate the birth of their great nation. I left early (September 26th), missing four days of class, and took a plane to Guanzhou, in the south of China (Guangdong province) and then a six-hour bus ride to Zhan Jiang, my former student's hometown, where his family warmly welcomed me. Over the next week, we prepared my student's cousin's wedding, which took place October 2nd. On the night of October 1st, I was sick to my stomach, threw up a bunch of times, and went to the hospital from 6-9:30 AM, missing the very important part of the wedding where the groom, with his male buddies in tow, woos the bride and her bridesmaids and takes them from her chambers (a hotel room) and sweeps her around town, using nine cars and taking photographs in nice-looking places. I missed that. But I was there for the dinner....

The day after the wedding we left for an aunt's house, who lives near Guilin, a famous back-packers' destination. It's set in a beautiful location - super strange-looking but very beautiful hills. We took a 4-hour boat ride down a river. I took around 40 pictures - and you'll think they all look the same! Don't worry, I'll edit....

It was also a grastronomical experience. I ate everything from congealed pig's blood to dog and horse meat to miniature crabs (shell and all) to...dog's tails! And it was all quite tasty.

Left the line that goes from my camera to the computer, so I need to buy a new one. Until then, no pictures I'm afraid! The magic number of pictures allowed on one post is 9. We'll see how many posts it takes to show the pix from my vacation...I took over 1 GB of pictures!

The Great Wall - people shots

2006-09-24T22:48:00.000+08:00

Yesterday (Saturday) I went to the Great Wall with the rest of the foreign student population of Beishida (the university I attend). It doesn't cost a thing to go when you go with the school, which is a nice bonus. We spent six hours in the bus (3 there and 3 back) and three hours at the wall and it was exhausting.
Me and a new Korean friend I met on the wall. Although he's Korean, he's been studying Chinese for three years already in JAPAN, so he speaks Japanese as well. And his English is quite good.
A mother and child posing while the father (out of the pic) took a shot.
Me on the Great Wall!
Me holding a Beishida flag - Bei Jing Shi Fan Da Xue.
Two Japanese girls we climbed with - very picturesque!
Me and a Korean guy who lives in my dorm and with whom I had dinner on Friday (his roommate's Japanese). We climbed the Wall together.
Me and my classmate who I happened to meet on the Wall. She's Korean.

The Great Wall - scenery

2006-09-24T21:44:00.000+08:00

Some views...

We went to Simatai, which is where I ended up last year when I walked the Great Wall with Jessie. With Jessie, if you remember (May 2006), we departed from Jinshaling and walked the 10-11km to Simatai. With my school, we continued further along Simatai, so I was covering new (although familiar) territory.

I think the pictures speak for themselves. I had forgotten how steep some parts are...
Up and down, up and down...lots of up at Simatai, which in the end means lots of down, I suppose.

Some areas are pretty scarily not safe. :-) Adds to the adventure.

For 30 yuan (just under $5), you can ride the zip cord to a place nearer to the parking lot. Looks like fun, but you should see the zip cord: it's old and rusty and looks pretty damn scary!!!

My lovely class

2006-09-24T20:39:00.000+08:00

Last Wednesday I organised a class outing - we all ate lunch together. The Koreans knew of a good hotpot place just north of the university (we went by taxi, although I came back on foot, which took around half an hour). Hotpot is boiling water that you put different ingredients in and it cooks immediately (or near immediately). I like it, although it's better in the winter because it warms you from the inside out!
Me on the left, Tina the British woman, a Korean girl, a Korean guy (Hao Jun), two Korean girls, an Indonesian guy, Jonathan, an American, Roni, a Czech girl, and another Korean girl whose name I've forgotten but we playfully call her Mian bao - bread.
Hao Jun and two Korean girls (both are really nice! I just can't remember their Chinese names...). Hao Jun's 23. He did his military service and fought North Korea in the DMZ.
Korean girl, Indonesian guy, and Jonathan.
Roni and Mian bao. I'm glad I got the picture because they don't enjoy being taken in picture...I love Roni's top: green ladybugs and red clover leafs.
Me and Tina enjoying our hot pot.
The two lovely Korean girls. The whole class didn't make it. Some students wanted to go to the test that would allow them to change classes (go up a level), which was taking place that afternoon.

My sister's artwork

2006-09-21T12:19:00.000+08:00

My sister in Paris sent me this beautiful drawing. I really like it.

Web Addiction

2006-09-20T23:18:00.000+08:00

I'm always surprised at the huge numbers in China. Because of its humungous population, there are that many more people affected... I read this article in the September 2006 issue of BEIJING TODAY, an English newspaper published by the Beijing Youth Daily.

"Boot camp for young web addicts"
By Han Manman

China's first camp designed to help wean Internet addicts off their surfing addiction saw its graduates return home Wednesday from the center in Beijing's Daxing district.

Over 60 web addicted youths, selected from 900 applicants from across the country, completed the five day course of treatment, at a camp jointly organized by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China, Central Civilization Office, and the General Administration of Press and Publication of China.

Zhang Wei, from the Youth League, said only eight youths volunteered for the camp, with the rest coming only after being forced by their parents [that means over 50 were forced...]. The Internet addicts, ages ranging between 12 and 23 years old, were all 'typical problem youths' with experience of drug addiction, web love, suicide attempts or running away from home, Zhang said. Some suffered from depression, and most have dropped out from school.

Five days in healthy fresh air and sunshine is a world away from the average young Internet addict's darkened bedroom. Zhang said the youths were divided into nine teams of seven. Each team had a doctor, a military trainer and a volunteer care worker. The five days of therapy included military training, watching movies and psychological counseling. The trainees also played a real-world version of the popular online first-person shooting game Counter-Strike [I know some of you are thinking: how cool would that be??!!].

"Playing real-world Counter-Strike helps the young people distinguish between real and virtual worlds," said Zhang. "At least one of the youths' parents was asked to join the training camp and receive training with their child, because a lot of web addiction in the young is down to a lack of understanding between children and parents." [the sentence is grammatically incorrect in the newspaper]

Zhang said some positive results were already apparent after the five days of treatment. Some of the young people seemed more willing to make friends and to communicate with their parents. "We also created video and document records for each family to make it easy for us to follow up on trainees' progress in the future," added Zhang.

The total number of the Internet users across the country hit 120 million by the end of this June, according to the China Internet Network Information Center. The Internet's rising popularity is fueling concern that some surfers have become dangerously addicted to the Web.

According to Professor Tao Hongkai of Huazhong Normal University [I'm at Beijing Normal University!!!], who has conducted studies on Internet addiction, there are more than 10 million young Chinese people with problem surfing habits. In extreme cases, Internet addiction has been linked to psychological problems, violence against arents and crime. Many addicts drop out of school and become lost in a virtual world. Professor Tao said that online games have changed the fate of thousands of families and children.

*****

More than 10 MILLION with "problem surfing habits." Now, go figure what that actually means, but I can tell you that the internet bars around universities are packed in the evenings where I am at the moment. And so many of my male students last year spent entire nights at internet bars, playing internet games and then skipping class during the day. And this was a regular occurance. A Chinese friend and I were at a restaurant the other day and I remarked how bored a girl-sitting-at-another-table-with-two-guys looked. My friend told me the guys were talking about an online game, so of course she was bored....

I can totally understand how you can get lost in these kinds of games. When I was in high school my friends gave me a tetris-like computer game that I played for hours on end and even dreamed about the sequences I could make...and that's just a stupid tetris-like game!!! SimCity was pretty time-consuming too... I could see how people could get caught up in a game and not want to do anything else. It's like a good story that you keep wanting to get back to.

Oh well, glad I don't have that problem. :-)

Good night!

random

2006-09-20T18:22:00.000+08:00

Last Friday I went to Beijing's one and only IKEA store with a classmate from England (her name is Tina). I would never have thought of going to IKEA but Tina's a great home-maker and she wanted to make her room look inviting and warm, so off we went. Oh right...that's not where I bought this bookshelf. I actually bought a closet organiser (very very useful, by the way!) at IKEA for a whole $5...Then on Sunday we went to Carrefour (big French supermarket chain) and that's where we both bought this very sturdy (I'm being sarcastic here...) bookshelf for around $15. Only thing is we had to build them ourselves and I'm not very patient with these kinds of things. Oh well, I built it Sunday and we're Wednesday evening and it's still holding out so I'm happy.

It really helps me. I was finally able to un-pack and put my clothes somewhere (the closet's too small to fit all my clothes). And now I can put my books somewhere other than on my desk (so I can actually use my desk!). All in all, it was a really good idea, and I never ever would have done it without Tina, so thank you Tina, for making my life easier.
Here's the birthday cake I bought for my roommate MinJi's and my Japanese friend Yosuke's birthdays. Both have their birthdays on September 11th!!! I dived right in and went to the bakery store myself to order the cake and everything...didn't realise the inside would hold pineapple stuff (which I didn't particularly like), but MinJi and Yosuke enjoyed it so that's the main thing, I suppose (at least they pretended to...).
Kenji and Yosuke on their last evening in Beijing. The evening started out all right with us just hanging out and taking pictures in my room...

Part II

2006-09-20T15:16:00.000+08:00

So remember there was a group of Japanese students from the same university (in Tokyo) who all lived on my floor in my residence? They left last Saturday morning (early morning: 6:00 AM to be precise). I was sad to see them go. They were my first friends upon arriving in Beijing and it would've been fun to get to know them better and continue hanging out throughout the year. Oh well. There will be others. So Yosuke and Kenji came over to our room around 11 PM to say good-bye (others had come earlier) and they just stayed a while...and...we talked...and we talked...and suddenly it was 1 AM! And then everyone was hungry. So we decided to go for chuan (meat on a stick), but the small gates were closed so we had to go to the main west gate to get out of the university, and that was a big detour, so it took a while.

Here's us still on campus, maybe around 1:30 AM. Yosuke in green, Kenji in blue, and Min Ji (my Korean roommate - she's staying for the year) in pink.
Kenji in the middle of a deserted Beijing street (right outside West Gate of our university) - remember it's nearing 2 AM.
At the restaurant we took pictures of our tired faces...that's my lovely Korean roommate and me.

Yosuke and Kenji...can't wait to eat!!!
Yay!!! Nothing beats meat-on-a-stick at 2 AM!!! Can't get a better last-experience-in-China moment!
Back on campus we walked around one last time (for them), checking out the main building (which has the library) and not really doing anything very productive.
There's a famous bell-shaped looking thing on campus.
It's lit up with green lights, so we played with the lights a bit. From L-R: Kenji, MinJi, and Yosuke.

Kenji and I discovered we could purse our lips to look like fish...yeah...it was a pretty wacky night. We went back to my room and played cards (after racing Yosuke in a couple of sprints) - a Japanese game involving slapping other people's hands and Crazy 8s.

Friday Night - Part 1

2006-09-19T10:03:00.000+08:00

I think the problem is blogger will only allow me to put up a certain number of pictures (not sure what that number is yet...), so here's part one of my Japanese friends' last night in Beijing (Friday, September 15th).
Yosuke and I had a race, and of course he was much faster than I was, so the picture only caught me...the slow poke...
Tried to get a picture of our shadows on the road...flash went off and ruined it.
We had fun killing each other...

Youske and Kenji played...In Beijing, when construction's going on, there often aren't really any protective measures to avoid the public from injuring themselves on site. This machine was just there, right by the road...
Yosuke, Min Ji, me and Kenji in the elevator on our way home to the 7th floor (maybe it's 3-ish?).
We played cards on my bed, and then kinda laid about...

And Min Ji cuddled up in her bed... It was a nice evening. Kenji and Yosuke left our room around 5:40 AM, and the Japanese group left our dorm at 6 AM.

Last Sunday

2006-09-16T11:05:00.000+08:00

My first week of class! I started on Tuesday. Here's my schedule:

Not that many of you can read that... I remember my work giving me the equivalent last September (2005), and I couldn't understand a thing, mostly because I couldn't read a word of Chinese (I didn't even know 1, 2, 3 - on the left - stands for the days of the week) and I also wasn't used to having the times up top (usually it's the days of the week up top and the time on the left; in China it's the opposite). But now I know... I was put in class 101-06. 100 is complete beginner, so I'm semi-beginner, what in ESL I would call B2 (Beginner 2). It's really tough, but I'm so excited. I don't understand a lot, but I'm learning tons. I have three teachers and they're all really nice (all women) and I think I like my listening teacher the best even though I that's the class I understand the least.

I'm learning how to write, which is an awesome experience. I'm learning how to write such things as "Not long ago, the roads didn't have as many cars," and "studying Chinese at the same time as studying English" and "Beijing's deepest impression on me is: lots of people, lots of cars, traffic is very crowded." It seems like the running theme among all the classes (Listening, Speaking and Writing) is traffic and taxi drivers. Fun!

So remember I told you that this park was closed to the public? Well here are people enjoying the green space in the evening. Nice lighting...
So last Sunday afternoon (September 8th), I spent with Yosuke, a Japanese guy living on my floor. He's doing a project on the environment and he wanted to go to Beijing's Environment Centre so we left our residence around 1:30-2 PM and walked around a lot, and asked a lot of people how to get there, took the bus, and Yosuke forogot exactly where it was so we had to walk some more...and we finally got there around three hours later!!! And it wasn't even very far!!!
This is us in front of the building we were looking for - we're very happy!!! Yosuke can't have a beard while going to university in Japan so he decided to grow his beard in China. We talk in Chinese to each other, although when there's a breakdown in communication we use English words.
So...we finally find the place and then finally find the entrance (another adventure because in China it's not always easy to find the entrance to buildings)...and...the centre's closed! Nobody from the centre comes in on Sundays! So we chatted with the security guard and took some pictures with his cap (there are his comrades' caps on the windowsill behind us too).
I hate how my face is so much whiter than the rest of my body. :-P
Yosuke being a monkey in front of the Centre's entrance.
There are pedestrian bridges that go over huge (kuan le) streets. Yosuke and I wandered around and took some pictures...
This is the other side of the street. It was a beautiful warm day. It took us one bus ride and maybe a 20-minute walk to get back home...

:-P

2006-09-11T10:03:00.000+08:00

A friend of Min Ji's rang the doorbell this morning and I rushed to get it. I was barefoot and the cleaning lady had just passed the mop on the floor and I fell...hard...argh! It was bound to happen. I just hope I've learned my lesson and it doesn't happen again. I hate falling on my back on a marble-like floor.

Saturday night I went out in the Wudaokou area with Nur, a friend from Turkey, and some of the Japanese guys on my floor, and my former student, Yang Yang. Wudaokou is where Beida (Beijing University) and Tsinghua (AKA Qinghua) universities are; they are the two biggest universities in Beijing and there are a lot of foreigners who go there to learn Chinese. So the area is swamped with foreigners, which means a lot of Koreans. We went to a club I've never been to before, and it was a bit of an adventure trying to find it. The good thing about having gotten there so early was that we got seats. The music was African R&B and reggae - loved it! And rum & cokes were $1.50 Cdn (10 yuan) each.
Meng Jiu Sheng, me, Shao Long, and Yang Yang.
Yosuke and Nur, from Turkey.
Yosuke and Meng Jiu Sheng. I really like this picture. Although MJS was pretty drunk when he took it, the framing is perfect and the green light on top adds interest.
And this was when we went back to the club because I had forgotten my camera and we found it again and were so happy... I had put my camera by the DJ's music and when we left for Beishida I forgot it. We were in the parking lot of Beishida when MJS was like, "Where's your camera?" and the three of us took another taxi back to the club to get it.

Continuing On...

2006-09-10T12:04:00.000+08:00

I was walking along a Beijing street (shopping with Ming Ji) when this ad caught my eye - what Chinese company would use a Hollywood movie about a man who has 12 children as its subject? Look closely...but of course! A sterility hospital!
Beijing is making efforts to become "green" - as can be seen from this newly-installed green space (not yet open to the public). The waterfall looks a bit too man-made for my taste, but it's a nice gesture. The whole riverbed should look quite nice when completed.
The four-storey cafeteria right across the way from our dorm. That's right, four storeys. And yet it's still packed during peak hours - one of the things I hold against the system here: you can only eat at certain times, which doesn't help the over-crowdedness problem since everybody's forced to eat at the same time.
The view of my dorm from the steps of the cafeteria.
The entrance of our room...only two pairs are mine.
Our bathroom is directly to the left when you come in. There's hardly ever a separate shower in China; it's just part of the rest of the room.
Our room!!! I sleep on the farther bed (not near the wall), and I have the desk by the window.

My room: Part 1

2006-09-10T10:34:00.000+08:00

Blogger's not cooperating again, so pictures will have to come in two installments... I wanted to bring you from the exterior of our building to my room as if you were walking the same route I do...but since blogger won't let me put up the pictures I want, this will have to do.

Our entertainment area. The TV and fridge (bottom right) are gifts from the residence. The water machine's Ming Ji's (my roommate's) and it's great to have hot water whenever you want.
Our room...
You would have had the view from the entrance too, so you could see the window beside our two desks. Oh well, soon...
The two bags I bought while shopping with Ming Ji and Nur (from Turkey) last Tuesday I think it was. I bought the small pretty one for 50 yuan (70 yuan = $10 Cdn). It was my first purchase of the day and I knew I had gotten ripped off, so then I bought two Kate Spade bags for 50 yuan. One of them went to Nur. I also got a shop keeper to go down from 380 to 85 yuan for a very pretty beaded bag that Nur wanted. I was proud of my bargaining skills, even though it's like gambling, although you get the high of feeling like you're winning, deep down you know you're losing.
If we didn't have Ming Ji's water machine we'd have to walk down the hall with our "container" (two examples are shown on the bottom left; every room has one of these things) to this old thing, which constantly has hot water. Those containers are powerful things, though (although foreigners don't use them), keeping water hot for up to three days (I experimented last year)! Chinese students all have one of these containers and they have to go to a certain hot water dispensing area (often outside) to get their hot water. They also have to line-up to shower (the showering area is also outside their dorms).
The washing-machine area, right beside the hot-water dispenser. Our floor has this area, while the floor underneath has a kitchen with a microwave and hot plates.
Our hallway.
The view from our 7th floor. Not the view from our window, but from across the hall. In the distance you can see the sports grounds of the university across the street from our university. Our dorm is on the edge of campus.
The building in front of us. You can see the mountains in the distance. Last year that's where I went with my students and some friends to go "skiing." Sunsets are very pretty from this balcony that we have on our floor (public balcony).

Last trip to the countryside before leaving Beijing (June 2006)

2006-09-08T22:00:00.000+08:00

Hadn't been able to put up pictures on blogger for a few days, which is why the second installment of pictures from our last trip to the countryside is so late. Plus, today's beautiful outside, I'm hoping to get myself out and about, discovering more of Beijing.

We made this trip because there was going to be a "terrific" music concert out in the countryside on a Saturday, about an hour away by bus from Beijing. It was a package deal, where we could stay a night and do all of the activities on the camp grounds. So we went on Friday, did all the activities, then waited for the concert all of Saturday. We were hugely disappointed with the concert Saturday evening, not least because it was an outside concert and nothing had been prepared for if it were to rain - and of course...it rained. Then we left very early Sunday morning (we didn't reserve a cabin for Saturday night). Needless to say we were pretty exhausted. And when we left the place early Sunday morning it was under a downpour and there weren't enough busses to take everyone back to Beijing so people were fighting as usual to get on the busses. What an ordeal... Not the week-end we had been expecting, but adventurous nevertheless.
This is the BBQ pit where we ate dinner on Friday.
The pig roasting. It was pretty delicious pork!!!
Go-carting. Only three people could go at once.

We also went horse-back riding, which I hadn't done in years. We went twice around a ring-like path - wasn't all that exciting. We galloped a bit. It was fun being on a horse again. Katia and Eva had their horses walk around with a guide holding the reigns...
It was Gaetan's first time on a horse. It was pretty funny to watch his reactions. He had no idea what he was doing....
Loic had a good-looking horse! The horses knew what they were doing and just had to be encouraged by the guide to go faster to start galloping.
We did a little archery. Katia looks like a pro! Archery took some getting used to...it's hard on the arms!!!
And some paintball...point a gun at a cardboard man and shoot. Wasn't very thrilling. Loic's taking aim in this picture.

Last trip to the countryside before leaving Beijing (June 2006)

2006-09-07T09:45:00.000+08:00

Eva (on the left), Loic and Gaetan checking out Katia's mini-golfing moves.
Look how hard some of the holes were!!! That's a lot of bumps... Gaetan and Katia look on as Loic concentrates.
Believe it or not, this small village had a tourism centre, which we went to and got a ride for 30 yuan (each person paid 6 yuan) in this funny-looking bus. It took us all around the small village (to a store for snacks, to a restaurant to eat, to the important sites (like the farm with the ostrich!) etc.).
View of the grounds where we stayed - one of the concerts took place down where you see yellow to the left. We lived further behind in a cabin in the middle of the forest.
A farm we visited with our funny-looking bus.
The ostrich!!! There were actually two of them, but this was the better-looking one.
A cat being lazy, its feet dangling...so funny.
The same cat a bit later, guarding the entrance to a lovely path to the unknown.

Branko the Croat, giving me a hug on my last night in Beijing. He looks better with longer hair (which is the case in this picture, taken in early July). When he arrived in Beijing in February, he had a shaved head.

BACK IN CHINA!!!

2006-09-03T11:20:00.000+08:00

So I'm back in China and I must say I'm enjoying it as much as ever. I'm living with a Korean roommate in a student residence on campus. I haven't had a roommate in five years and it's going pretty well so far (I arrived Tuesday night and it's now Sunday). We speak in Chinese because although she understands some English, she can't speak it.

We live on the seventh floor and there's a group of 21 Japanese foreign exchange students who arrived in July and are leaving September 16th (my Chinese classes start September 18th), who dominate our floor. They're friendly and I spent all of my Saturday with a group of them. We went to Yueheyuan, the new Summer Palace, which I've been to three times already, but it's so unbelievably huge that there's always something new to see. It's different every time.

The group. From left to right, starting with the back row: Kenji, Yosuke, Meng Jiu Sheng (Chinese name), Shao Long (in white beside me), and two Chinese women who are Yosuke's friends (I don't know how they know each other) who came along. The one in stripes is studying politics at BeiShiDa (my university).
Near the end of our visit we found a type of "sanctuary" that I find really beautiful. It's quiet and peaceful.
Yosuke and I.
Meng Jiu Sheng with his dictionary, which he carries around with him everywhere and takes out at every opportunity (it can be just a tad annoying at times...) and the two Chinese women resting. I love those pretty walkways!!!
Yosuke admiring the view...
Shao Long being a top model in a Chinese setting.
We took two boats and set off around the huge lake in the centre of the park for an hour. I wasn't able to paddle because I was wearing a dress and everytime I paddled I'm sure everyone could see everything under my dress...so I didn't paddle at all, lazy bum!!!

the New Summer Palace - people

2006-09-03T10:33:00.000+08:00

Yosuke (left) and Shao Long (Chinese name) - my boat companions who did all the work of peddling the boat around for an hour: thank you!!!
"The other boat" - Meng Jiu Sheng (Chinese name), Kenji, and the two Chinese women friends of Yosuke's.
Kenji and Meng Jiu Sheng knew a photo was being taken, but not Yosuke (green shirt) or Shao Long (in white)...
Kenji, me, and Yosuke inside a pagoda. There is supposed to be a view but...

Kenji & I. Kenji probably spoke the least Chinese; well, he spoke the least period, of all of them. Silent type. But has a great smile!!!
Can't delete specific pictures without deleting all of them, so here's the same pic over again...
A group picture. Shao Long's making a face and Yosuke's laughing at him.
Kenji and Shao Long goofing off. There are a lot of boulders that are fun to climb, even though we're technically not supposed to.

New Summer Palace - scenery

2006-09-03T09:58:00.000+08:00

There's a beautiful lake in the middle of the Summer Palace and a 17-arch bridge that's very famous. Unfortunately the weather wasn't that great, but you still get a good idea of the splendour of the place.
A rock courtyard. Chinese people love these rocks that have many holes in them. I once heard that the "uglier" the rock the more value it had in the Chinese way of thinking...
A decorative gate. Yosuke and Meng Jiu Sheng are down on the bottom left.
A view from a pagoda on the man-made hill at the north side of the park.
Same view but close up. Large boats in the ancient style (seen to the right) carry passengers from one side of the lake to the other.
Yosuke.
Some impressive architecture by the North End of the park.

I'm taking a distance education course on the social history of modern China and there's this one phrase from one of my readings that I enjoyed: "...to purchase everything needed for the morning and evening meals means the members of the family will merely sit and eat. Is this the way things should be?" The moral of the story: you should work in the fields and eat what you harvest and have made on your own. This of course questions the way our modern society works, but I can tell you, that in my present position, I can't imagine spending half of my day toiling in my fields and preparing my own food. It'd be impossible. "Purchasing everything needed" and "merely sitting and eating" is my fate.

Beihai Park

2006-09-03T09:25:00.000+08:00

We went to Beihai Park on Friday - "we" being my roommate, Min Ji, and Meng Jiu Sheng, who lives across the hall from us in our residence and is Japanese. I'd already been to Beihai, but agian, these parks are so big - even the "small" ones seem big! - that you can go over and over again and have the impression you're seeing things for the first time.

The famous "Nine Dragon Screen" wall - the original's in the centre of the Forbidden City.
There's a huge lake that we walked around to get to that centre island you see behind us.
Workers working - all of Beijing is either under construction or renovation in preparation for the 2008 Olympics.
Meng Jiu Sheng resting in a pagoda.
The weather these days isn't too great. I remember last year I arrived on August 22nd and for a week the weather was pretty bad, but then, on September 1st, the sun came out and hardly ever left after that. Every day was beautiful. Hasn't been the same this year...
The roof of the pagoda.
In the bus on the way home. The bus on the way there and back had air conditioning, but because buses are often crowded it can get pretty hot...

Success

2006-08-22T14:19:00.000+08:00

Success comes in many different forms. I think my brother's annual quote went something like this: "Everyone says that the definition of success is whatever you make it out to be. I'm still looking for a better dictionary." Well, the Vancouver Week-end to end Breast Cancer "[raised] 5,500,000 dollars for BC Cancer Foundation in support of research and enhancements to care at the BC Cancer Agency." Yay!

And last night I watched a pirated DVD from China about a British DJ (based on a true story!) who did drugs and got drunk a lot but was this amazing dance/techno DJ who got the party going like no other DJ...until he went completely deaf and his performances were terrible (because he couldn't hear what he was playing!) and he couldn't make a CD because it was crap. His trophy wife leaves him and he isolates himself in a room for a few months, where nobody bothers him and all he does is hope that by staying in the quiet his hearing will come back. No such luck. He comes out a new man, learns how to lip read, falls in love with his lip-reading instructor, who takes him out to watch a flamenco dancer. He realises that he can't hear the music or her dancing, but he can feel the vibrations from the port in the glass on the table. They go to a club and he can feel the vibrations coming from the huge speakers on the dance floor. So he goes back home and puts his feet on his speakers and decides to make music that way. He makes a CD which people think is better than the one he made when he wasn't deaf! He never hears it, he just "feels" it with his feet! He does this one absolutely out-of-this-world concert that has everyone raving about him - and then he disappears with his girl (the lip-reading instructor) never to be seen again. People don't know where he is! He just wanted to prove that he could DJ again and then he vanished!! It was a bit documentary-style with narratives from people who knew him, or people in the music business. It was a cool movie that I had never heard of but I bought because I liked the cover (yup, I'm that shallow; and for $1/DVD, I don't have to be picky).

So another success story. And I'm off to bed. Sweet dreams to ya!

Another great week-end...

2006-08-21T15:25:00.000+08:00

I spent Friday volunteering at the Plaza of Nations collecting donations from the participants of the Week-end to End Breast Cancer. All afternoon in the sun. It was hot. It was registeration day and I was told it would take the participants a minimum of two hours to get through the whole process - first they line up to watch a "safety video" which lasts 20 or 25 minutes, and then they come to us if they have any last-minute donations (many of them did, so that's another line-up), and then they actually register (yet another line-up), getting their name tags and such, and then they have to go to tent assignment (since they sleep in tents)...all that just to participate. They pay an incription fee ($150 or $200 or something) and they must fundraise $2000 to participate in the walk. This one woman had only collected around $1000; she couldn't fork up $1000 on the spot, so she was going to spread it over five months. I felt so sorry for her. I almost felt like telling her not to do it!!! $211/month for five months....that's a chunk of money from a paycheque to hand over to a charity.

On Saturday I went to paintball for the first time in my life. It's a type of war game where you're put in teams, led to one side of a "field" (although it's full of trees and bushes and built hiding spots), and then you must "eliminate" the other team (who's hiding on the other side) by hitting each player using your gun, which shoots balls of paint that splatters on the enemy, thus making it clear they're "dead," and therefore must stop playing. We also played capture the flag, where you're still being shot at and trying to shoot the other team's players but the added bonus is you must bring the other's flag back to your homebase. It gets the adrenaline going. I thought it was a pretty cool game, except for the fact that I always got hit before being able to shoot anybody. I didn't kill anybody. And it's not because I didn't move. I did move in all of the games except one, where I sat and protected homebase - where the flag was - and not a single player from the other team got anywhere near us!!! Not my fault!!! It was cool because there were enough people from our group (around 20) to get our own field just for us. It was a hot and sweaty but very happy day.

And I have two war wounds on my chest to show off!!! James gets my right boob and Jeremy my left...thanks guys!!!

I feel bad because I killed a spider while taking a shower the other day. I did everything possible to prevent it - even stopped showering! - but the stupid creature ran into the water, crunched up into a ball, and then fell into the drain...poor thing.... I don't like it when spiders die. I really don't like spiders - they scare me! - but I hate it when I watch them being killed like that. They're so practical, interesting, even amazing (have you seen them make a web??!!??!!!

I hope to have pictures up soon. I really didn't take that many pictures this summer. A lot less than I would've liked. Oh well.

IMPORTANT NEWS

2006-08-15T06:49:00.000+08:00

So I'm going to volunteer at the Plaza of Nations this Friday from 3-8 PM (ie: all afternoon) for the Week-End to End Breast Cancer. Women start walking 60 kms all around Vancouver on Saturday, I think, but Friday is DONATIONS day. I will be COLLECTING DONATIONS at the Plaza of Nations so please, please, PLEASE come on down and say hello and at the same time: give some money to a worthy cause!!!

Funny thing, the walk goes right down my street (Crown Street), so I'll be giving those neigbours living on either side of Crown street (from King Edward to 16th Ave) a pink ribbon to tie on a tree or pole or post to show their support! Rachel, that means you too!!!

In other news: Lucas celebrated 2 years of posting his comic (8 1/2 by Eleven) last week, so why don't you check it out?

Week-end

2006-08-14T16:29:00.000+08:00

I just wanted to say I had a wonderful week-end and I would like to thank all involved for making it so nice...BBQ-ing and beach-volleyballing and going-for-dessert-ing and all the rest of it...Vancouver and its weather and its people rock!!!

Memories...

2006-08-10T14:25:00.000+08:00

I have a student from my first-term adult class who sent me pictures which sent me back to October, 2006, when I spent a week-end "camping" (out in the Chinese countryside) with fourteen of my students and another English teacher (but she's Chinese - she's next to me in glasses).

Apparently I "blend right in" :-)
And if you didn't know, this class was known as "Class 7" - hence the depiction of a 7.
Here's me sticking meat on a stick which a student then cooked. I'm skewering the lamb I saw killed only hours earlier - all that squeeling and blood and everything. One of the students used to be a chef and he made us all this really great dinner. Worked very hard to make it perfect.

Registered

2006-08-09T11:12:00.000+08:00

Finally registered (thanks mom!) for History 480: the Social History of Modern China. Checked out other history courses offered at UBC and wanted to participate in every one of them!!!

Home sweet home

2006-08-09T05:07:00.000+08:00

Here's an amazing picture taken by my brother while he was in the south of France in July. It's a composite picture (originally there were twelve photos which he then stitched together on the computer and cropped) and I just really love it. The little guy in white coming down the path is the hereditary owner of the castle - called Comarque I think.

Did the Grouse Grind this morning. An hour and fifteen minutes. Quite proud for a first time this year (haven't done it in over a year) and seeing as I'm so out of shape.

1/4 mark: this isn't so bad. I can do this!
1/2 mark: my legs are getting tired
3/4 mark: I hate myself, I hate myself, I hate myself...
done: what? already? Let's do it again tomorrow! (just kidding...)

Now I'm so glad to be home and I'll probably sleep a good two hours before going to swimming practice at 6 PM.

Saw Miami Vice last night. Saw previews for it while in France and never ever thought I would see it. But I did and I actually quite liked it. Good summer blockbuster entertainment. Maybe I liked it so much thanks to the waitress' advice to "go in thinking it'll suck and that way you won't be disappointed." The point of paying the $11 is usually to see a movie you want to see.

200 Posts!

2006-08-08T02:00:00.000+08:00

I think today's or yesterday's post was the 200th! Woo-hoo!

Last night we had some dear old family friends over for dinner. The woman - who's in her sixties - told me, "Let's see, what was I doing at 25? I was married with a child and miserable." I can see myself being married with a child right now. I don't think of it as an impossibility...although for the moment I'm glad I'm not!

***FOOD***

On the topic of food, I forgot to tell you I went to Guu on Robson Street on Saturday and the food blew me away! I was very happy with the egg enveloped in pumpkin (deep-fried) and the truly delicious beef tongue (mmmmm!) and the salmon carpaccio (raw salmon slices). I go there and try food I would never eat otherwise. And it's good to go with just one other person, that way you really get a good taste of everything you order (because it's important to order lots of different dishes!). I find that when I went there with groups of friends I was never able to eat enough of the food to really enjoy it!!!

And last night (Sunday), we enjoyed a wonderful summer dinner at home. Washing the potatoes and cutting up the parsley - things that take me forever to do! - it was all worth the work in the end. Potato salad, hard-boiled eggs, tomato salad, smoked salmon, cold cuts, lots of baguette and cheese...it was delicious!

Love

2006-08-07T02:26:00.000+08:00

So I've spent some wonderful days in Vancouver. Extremely relaxing.

Friday I went to watch an American football game. I had never had this opportunity before! The last time I was at BC Place was maybe for a concert of some sort during high school... It was crazy big and not very intense and I was more interesting in players' bums than the actual playing...but I did manage to get the gist of the game by the end of the 3 hours!!!

It was an evening of firsts, because then it was off to the Blarney Stone in Gastown, where I had never been before. It was interesting because the live band was all over 50 (and there was even a violinist who was celebrating his - what was it? - 76th birthday?), playing good ol' Irish music and some Beatles, but the crowd tended to be young-ish - all early twenties. The ambiance was awesome, the dancing was great and very exhausting.

And Saturday could be summed up by the evening of fireworks. Mexico won, but totally didn't deserve to. China (last Saturday) was best! I don't know what the judges were thinking and I don't know if it's possible to protest or something.

I didn't do anything for Pride Week. Every year I say I'll go to see the parade in the West End and I don't. Oh well.

I was checking out an old website I used to visit when I was following an Earth and Oceans Science course at UBC, called the New Scientist (linked by my EOSC website). Not sure exactly how reliable it is, but it's got some funny articles on love! From May 2003, I like the headline:

Handsome men have the best sperm
Good looking guys have faster, healthier sperm than men rated less attractive by women, reveals a new study.

And have you ever heard of the "rickety bridge" theory? Very funny:

It's all because of a strong connection between anxiety, arousal and attraction. In the "shaky bridge study" carried out by psychologists Arthur Aron and Don Dutton in the 1970s, men who met a woman on a high, rickety bridge found the encounter sexier and more romantic than those who met her on a low, stable one.

So go to Capilano bridge immediately and meet the partner of your dreams! ;-)

And the "Love Chemistry Graphic" is very entertaining. Some good Sunday afternoon reading...

***Thanks to Cheryl (my website editor) for the change in title and the profile update!***

The next US Pres...or not?

2006-08-03T08:56:00.000+08:00

Have you seen this?

It's worth reading the press release to find out some things...

Interesting tid-bits

2006-08-03T07:52:00.000+08:00

Well, seeing as it's such a beautiful day, I thought I'd look at some pretty disturbing sites. Thanks to james for the links!

First of all, there's this actually quite beautiful (as well as fascinating) slideshow on shivs - which are weapons created inside penitentiaries and made out of what materials inmates can find. Amazing. I think prisoners can be so unbelievably smart and quick-thinking and...resourceful! It's too bad we can't put their talents to better use!

Just remember: "In looking at these as formal objects of design, we should not forget their use and the context of their making. These objects were made to kill people ... or to protect someone from being killed. They may be evocative on many levels, but they should not be romanticized in their isolation; they also speak to a larger context of fear and danger."

Also fascinating is a site showing off prisoners' inventions. If you go to the bottom of the page you can even watch videos of how to make such diverse things as a candle or paper-mache dice, using the most elementary materials!

And I also found this guy who was arrested for drug dealing on school property and who succeeded in escaping from jail! I picked him because he's my age. It's just a little...strange...to view the info of a guy who probably doesn't have much of a chance to make it in life. But he made it out of jail!

If you view the comments on the first shiv page, you'll find links to zip guns and how they can be made. Don't understand a word - I couldn't make one! - but it's interesting stuff. Gotta love the internet.

Yikes!

2006-08-02T07:13:00.000+08:00

Yikes, I forgot to register today... Missed the 9 o'clock start. Supposed to register for a UBC Chinese history course - by correspondance. Argh!

F*ck, I didn't pay the $100 registration fee. Why the h*ll does this always happen to me? Ah well. Tis life. I'll deal with it tomorrow...

Just finished reading a great little children's book set in Ethiopia. The author's Quebecois and the book's in French. How stylish is that?

Probably left the book I've been reading, Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky, at my father's place when I went to visit him yesterday. I'm hoping that's where I "left" it.

Katia and Loic made it safe and sound to France. Glad to hear it.

I start swimming lessons this evening. Yikes!

Oh right, that's me in the cold of winter in Beijing, practicing a super secretive, very difficult Chinese sport - Canadian style! Notice the campus is deserted - that's because it's too cold to be outside!!!

Eating in Vancouver

2006-08-01T04:35:00.000+08:00

To add to the list of things I've done in Vancouver: eaten Gyoza's, eaten Mondo Gelato ice-cream, and had dinner at the Candia Taverna, a restaurant my family has gone to for twenty years. Yes, Vancouver life is all about gastronomy - eating is a big part of my life anyway!

Clubbing in Vancouver

2006-07-30T16:49:00.000+08:00

Well I wanted to wish my friend Nik a very happy birthday. We went clubbing at CELEBRITIES on Davie Street this evening, "the straightest gay club in Vancouver," as many people like to call it. It's a very cool club, I must admit, with hot dancers, but unfortunately I was pretty damn tired and not really into it, I'm sorry Nik!!! So we left early-ish.

Beforehand we watched the fireworks at my brother's apartment. China was hosting and the show was spectacular. I would rate it better than Italy's on Wednesday. So many inventive, original, amazing fireworks!!!

And this afternoon I went to buy shoes that cover my socks. Because of my dying feet (they're badly cracked underneath), I was wearing socks to keep in the ointment and bandages that contoured my feet, and I had nothing else to wear but my sandals. Socks and sandals. What a terrible fashion faux-pas bubble-world was I living in???

I went on Robson street and bought pumas at the very first shoe store I encountered, but not before being teased by the vendor that anything looked better than the socks and sandals I had been wearing, and that I had to buy socks that were all of one colour - not like the ones I was wearing with the rainbow bands covering the tops of my feet (don't ask). Okay, I admit, my fashion sense is not always the best...:P

Friday night I played a game I did not know existed: Kareokee Revolution. Similar to Dance Revolution, but instead of dancing for points, you sing for points - and you must sing on key, of course! And since I have never been able to sing on key...well...I absolutely suck. But I enjoyed myself a lot and I have Jeremy, Chris and Cheryl to thank for that! Thank you guys!

And pictures...maybe I'll post some from my brother's computer. That's an idea!

New post!

2006-07-29T01:52:00.000+08:00

Well, I've been back in Vancouver a week and it's so good to be home. Since I arrived I've been down to the beach, swum in the ocean, watched a couple ultimate games (fun! fun! fun! threw a frisbee around and got cold...), played some beach volleyball (gotta love it!), eaten Chinese cafe food ;), eaten Japanese food and also Japanese sushi (different!), had dinner on the terrace at the Golf Club (so beautiful! so relaxing!), watched the annual fireworks from my bro's apartment, gone shopping on Robson (bought a pair of runners), watched movies at different locations, had bubble tea!!! (but not at the usual locations), had Starbucks AND Seattle's Best, biked around UBC, walked all over downtown, and...and...and...loved it all!!! This place rocks! Can't get over how wonderful Vancouver is in the summer. The fact that we've been having beautiful Vancouver weather has helped.

Really enjoyed meeting Cheryl's "teams": both the ultimate team (although that's almost over) and the new beach volleyball team. The undersides of my feet are too dry and cracked to play though...spent all Thursday with my feet up, creamed and bandaged..pretty harsh.

I'd like you to notice a new link to my friend Erika's blog, although she doesn't update all that much. She's in Montreal doing some really intelligent masters' program in some really specific science field. She'll never cease to amaze me. Good luck Erika!

And good luck to my friends in Beijing...soon to leave for their respective home countries (most of them leaving July 31st). It's the end of an amazing chapter in the book that we call our life.

Thinking about other places

2006-07-24T12:58:00.000+08:00

What do I miss about Beijing?

The cheap prices. That's about what it all comes down to. I think of the food, and what I mostly liked about the food was the very very cheap price; the convenience of it too - always less than five minutes away.

What do I miss about Paris?

The constant beauty around me. The bread and dairy products (two separate things).

I can't really say I "miss" these things, because I like to view Vancouver as simply "different," not necessarily "better" or "worse." I don't particulary "miss" anything, I just think about how cheap and convenient and beautiful and delicious things can be elsewhere...

My cousin, her husband, and her two children (Leo, 7 1/2 and Nemo, 5), are visiting Vancouver from Paris for two days. Life with them suddenly becomes loud, hectic, and tiring, but the boys are super duper loveable. No pictures. I'm bad with pictures these days. Don't want to think about it.

About me

2006-07-23T01:41:00.000+08:00

A red box means it's true for me...to some extent.

(Click here to post your own answers for this meme.)

✓ I miss somebody right now. (But at the same time I don't...is that understandable?)	✓ I don't watch much TV these days.	✓ I own lots of books.
✓ I wear glasses or contact lenses.	× I love to play video games.	✓ I've tried marijuana.
× I've watched porn movies.	× I have been the psycho-ex in a past relationship.	× I believe honesty is usually the best policy.
✓ I curse sometimes. (Sometimes it's bad, sometimes it's good.)	✓ I have changed a lot mentally over the last year. (Immensely. Have you noticed?)	× I carry my knife/razor everywhere with me.

* * * * *

× I have broken someone's bones.	× I have a secret that I am ashamed to reveal.	× I hate the rain.
✓ I'm paranoid at times. (At times. It passes...)	✓ I would get plastic surgery if it were 100% safe, free of cost, and scar-free.	✓ I need/want money right now.
× I love sushi.	× I talk really, really fast.	× I have fresh breath in the morning.
× I have long hair.	× I have lost money in Las Vegas.	✓ I have at least one sibling. (An older brother. We fought a lot in the day, now it's better.)
✓ I was born in a country outside of the U.S. (Canada!)	✓ I have worn fake hair/fingernails/eyelashes in the past. (Fake hair rules.)	× I couldn't survive without Caller I.D.
✓ I like the way that I look. (Of course I'd like to look better, but doesn't stop me from liking me now...)	× I have lied to a good friend in the last 6 months. (I don't think "keeping information" counts...does it?)	× I am usually pessimistic.
× I have a lot of mood swings.	✓ I think prostitution should be legalized.	× I slept with a roommate. (The only roommate I had was a charming French girl...I wasn't tempted.)
✓ I have a hidden talent. (If I told you what it was, it wouldn't be hidden anymore!)	× I'm always hyper no matter how much sugar I have.	✓ I have a lot of friends. (It's all relative...)
✓ I have pecked someone of the same sex.	× I enjoy talking on the phone.	× I practically live in sweatpants or PJ pants.
× I love to shop and/or window shop.	× I'm obsessed with my Xanga or Livejournal.	× I'm completely embarrassed to be seen with my mother.
✓ I have a mobile phone.	✓ I have passed out drunk in the past 6 months.	✓ I've rejected someone before.
× I currently like/love someone.	✓ I have no idea what I want to do for the rest of my life. (This one hits the nail on the head...)	✓ I want to have children in the future. (7 is ideal, but then I'd have to start now.)
✓ I have changed a diaper before. (My cousin's son's diaper. Not that bad!)	× I've called the cops on a friend before.	× I'm not allergic to anything.
✓ I have a lot to learn. (Too much to learn...it's depressing, no?)	✓ I am shy around the opposite sex. (Often enough.)	✓ I'm online 24/7, even as an away message. (Usually.)
× I have at least 5 away messages saved.	✓ I have tried alcohol or drugs before.	✓ I have made a move on a friend's significant other or crush in the past.
× I own the "South Park" movie.	× I have avoided assignments at work/school to be on Xanga or Livejournal.	× I enjoy some country music.
× I would die for my best friends.	× I'm obsessive, and often a perfectionist.	× I have used my sexuality to advance my career.
× I think Halloween is awesome because you get free candy.	× I have dated a close friend's ex.	✓ I am happy at this moment.
× I'm obsessed with guys.	× Democrat.	× Republican.
× I don't even know what I am.	× I am punk rockish.	✓ I go for older guys/girls, not younger. (I would say usually, but then I fell for a guy two years my junior...)
✓ I study for tests most of the time.	× I tie my shoelaces differently from anyone I've ever met.	× I can work on a car.
✓ I love my job(s).	✓ I am comfortable with who I am right now.	× I have more than just my ears pierced.
✓ I walk barefoot wherever I can.	✓ I have jumped off a bridge. (A short one of course...)	× I love sea turtles.
× I spend ridiculous amounts of money on makeup.	✓ I plan on achieving a major goal/dream. (I guess right now it's learning Chinese...to what extent has not been decided yet :-))	× I am proficient on a musical instrument.
× I hate office jobs.	✓ I went to college out of state.	× I am adopted.
✓ I am a pyro.	✓ I have thrown up from crying too much. (No...but I've thrown up for absolutely no apparent reason...on james' carpet. Sorry!)	✓ I have been intentionally hurt by people that I loved. (To inspire jealousy maybe?)
× I fall for the worst people.	✓ I adore bright colours. (Sometimes...)	× I usually like covers better than originals.
× I hate chain theme restaurants like Applebees and TGIFridays.	× I can pick up things with my toes.	✓ I can't whistle. (I've tried!)
✓ I have ridden/owned a horse. (I have ridden a horse and loved it!)	✓ I still have every journal I've ever written in. (And there are many.)	× I talk in my sleep.
× I've often thought that I was born in the wrong century.	× I try to forget things by drowning them out with loads of distractions.	× I wear a toe ring.
× I have a tattoo.	× I can't stand at LEAST one person that I work with.	× I am a caffeine junkie.
× I am completely tree-huggy spiritual, and I'm not ashamed at all.	× If I knew I would get away with it, I would commit at least one murder.	× I will collect anything, and the more nonsensical, the better.
× I enjoy a nice glass of wine with dinner.	× I'm an artist.	× I am ambidextrous.
✓ I sleep with so many stuffed animals, I can hardly fit on my bed. (This was me for many years...I forget when it stopped. At one point it was books...)	× If it weren't for having to see other people naked, I'd live in a nudist colony.	× I have terrible teeth.
✓ I hate my toes.	✓ I did this meme even though I wasn't tagged by the person who took it before me.	× I have more friends on the internet than in real life.
✓ I have lived in either three different states or countries. (Canada, France, China...)	✓ I am extremely flexible. (Oh yeah!!!!)	× I love hugs more than kisses.
✓ I want to own my own business. (If it were a success, of course, but it's too risky and too much worry.)	× I smoke.	× I spend way too much time on the computer than on anything else.
× Nobody has ever said I'm normal.	✓ Sad movies, games, and the like can cause a trickle of tears every now and then. (Sad movies and stories.)	× I am proficient in the use of many types of firearms and combat weapons.
× I like the way women look in stylized men's suits.	✓ I don't like it when people are unpleased or seem unpleased with me. (Umm, duh...)	× I have been described as a dreamer or likely to have my head up in the clouds.
✓ I have played strip poker with someone else before.	× I have had emotional problems for which I have sought professional help.	× I believe in ghosts and the paranormal.
✓ I can't stand being alone. (Sometimes I can't, sometimes I love it.)	× I have at least one obsession at any given time.	× I weigh myself, pee/poo, and then weigh myself again.
× I consistently spend way too much money on obsessions-of-the-moment.	× I'm a judgmental asshole.	× I'm a HUGE drama-queen.
✓ I have travelled on more than one continent.	✓ I sometimes wish my father would just disappear.	× I need people to tell me I'm good at something in order to feel that I am.
× I am a Libertarian.	✓ I can speak more than one language.	✓ I can fall asleep even if the whole room is as noisy as it can be. (If circumstances are right (ie: drunk))
✓ I would rather read than watch TV. (Sometimes.)	× I like reading fact more than fiction.	✓ I have pulled an all-nighter on an assignment I was given a month to do. (In high-school.)
× I have no piercings.	× I have spent the night in a train station or other public place.	× I have been so upset over my physical gender that I cried.
× I once spent Christmas completely alone because there was a miscommunication on which parent was supposed to have me that night.	× There have been times when I have wondered "Why was I born?" and may/may not have cried over it.	× I like most animals better than most people.
× I own a collection of retro games consoles.	× The thought of physical exercise makes me shiver.	× I have hit someone with a dead fish.
× I am compulsively honest.	× I was born with a congenital birth defect that has never been repaired.	✓ I have danced topless in front of dozens of complete strangers. (Not on purpose: my top fell. I changed.)
× I have gone from wishing I was a girl to revelling in being a boy to feeling like a girl again in the span of five minutes, and not cared a whit for my actual sex.	× I am unashamedly bisexual, and have different motivations for my desires for different genders.	× I sometimes won't sleep a whole night or eat a whole day because I forget to.
× I find it impossible to get to sleep without some kind of music on.	✓ I dislike milk. (Maybe I'm allergic?)	× I obsessively wash my hands.
× I always carry something significant around with me.	× Sometimes I'd rather wear a wig in day-to-day life than use my own hair.	✓ I've pushed myself to become more self-aware and thereby more aware of others.
× Even though I live on my own I still cry sometimes because I miss my mother.	× I hand wrote all the HTML tags in this document.	× I've liked something which a majority of people claimed was either bad or weird.
× I have been clinically dead for a brief period of time.	× Instead of feeling sympathy/empathy with people and their problems, I simply become annoyed.	× I participate/have participated in auto drag races and won.
× I do not 'get' most comedy acts.	× I don't think strippers are money-greedy or slutty for dancing.	× I don't like to chew gum.
× I am obsessed with history/historical things and can't wait for someone to build a time machine so I can be the first to use it.	× I can never remember for the life of me where I parked the car.	✓ I had the TEEN ANGST thing going for at least 2-3 years. (Whatever that means, I'm sure it's different for everybody. I was never a rebel, that's for sure.)
✓ I wish people would be more empathic and honest with each other.	× I play Dungeons and Dragons weekly.	× I love to sing.
✓ I want to live in my mother's basement when I grow up. (I am grown up and I do live in my mother's basement. Got a problem with that???)	× I have a custom-built computer.	✓ I want to create a certain someone's babies, even though there's a 0% possiblity of ever achieving it. (sigh)
× I would be in a relationship with one of my pets if they were human.	✓ I've gone skinny-dipping. (Yay!)	✓ I've performed in three plays. (I was young...)
✓ I enjoy burritos.	× I'm Irish and loving it.	× I have a thing for redheads.
× I am a twin!	× Most of the times, I'd rather do something intellectual instead of doing something generically 'fun'.	× Once I set out to finish something, I always stay at it until it is completed before I move on to something else.
✓ I wish there were a way to erase past mistakes.	× I sleep more than 12 hours a day.	✓ I wish I could be prouder of what I've accomplished, but it's never enough.
× I need more time to myself.	✓ I wish I was more open-minded. (Mmm...maybe not open-minded but more accepting of people for the way that they are. Sometimes people scare me and I wish they didn't.)	× I hope that I go really prematurely grey.
× I download songs from the internet.	× I've just reenacted chapter 58 of Death Note with my best friend.	× I say random things to freak people out.
× I'm still a little mad about the ending of Death Note.	✓ I love playing Truth or Dare.	× I love listening to slow music, but I hate singing to it.
× Music helps me remember that I am not alone.	✓ Playing my favorite sport makes me temporarily forget my problems.	✓ I think this survey is particularly long.
× I prefer my LJ friends to my real-life ones.	× I can only hate someone that I love.	× I've ordered an extra two shots of espresso to an Americano at Starbucks.

Back in town

2006-07-23T00:46:00.000+08:00

Hey everybody, I'm back in Vancouver...and glad to be! Paris was extraordinary, I loved it, but I'm happy to be home.

Haven't cracked open my Chinese book yet...oh well!

No plans for my birthday, just hitting the beach. Hope to see many of you down there! Yikes! I'm 25!!

Paris

2006-07-11T23:16:00.000+08:00

I'm in Paris for ten days. Arrived last night (Monday, July 10th) around 10 PM local time. My mother was waiting for me at the airport. Yay for mothers! Although she seemed more tired than I was. I had gone to bed around 5 AM (watched the final, of course!), woken up at 7:30 AM, done some final moving out with the help of Loic and Gaetan, taken the plane at 11:40, arrived in Moscow around 7 PM Beijing time, left Moscow around midnight Beijing time, then arrived in Paris around 3 AM Beijing time, going to bed around 5 AM Beijing time...what a day!

It's so wonderful to be back in Paris. It's breathtakingly beautiful and I realise how ugly Beijing really is. I saw my grandmother this morning. She's thin and frail but still herself. She'll be 93 years old this year, I think it is.

Life is beautiful. I hope you're all enjoying yourselves.

I'm in an internet cafe because my laptop isn't working...which really sucks because I have all my Beijing pictures on my laptop. Hope I can retrieve the hard drive once back in Vancouver.

Take care and have fun!

Mafia party

2006-07-04T16:26:00.000+08:00

In April we had a mafia-themed party, which meant the guys dressed up in pseudo-suits and the girls dressed up like their chicks. It was quite funny.

Mariana and Diana. Diana had the most beautiful red dress on.
Katia and Loic. Too bad Katia's eyes are closed, but I don't have many "good" shots of this evening, since everyone was a little...tipsy. She was wearing a cool black dress, though. And Loic had a mustache drawn on his face using eyeliner. :-)
Gaetan and I. I had my hair curled for the occasion. I liked it!
Katia, Simon, me and Branko in pink. Such a fun night! Happy memories...

The train to the countryside

2006-07-02T13:02:00.000+08:00

We left for the countryside on Friday afternoon. Gaetan and Katia sent their papers (that is their 50-page graduating paper about foreign investment in China; they're doing a Masters in Economics) by email at 2:30 PM and we left the university by around 3 PM... We took a 3-hour long train to a small village where we then took a mini-bus to our destination - a hotel in the middle of nowhere that Diana and Branko had already been to on a previous trip.
It was John's birthday. John's an American studying Chinese here, that I never really got to meet or know. Oh well. In another lifetime maybe... Here he is with Diana. I didn't eat any of that cake - not very appetizing! But I did get a piece smashed in my face...Chinese style.
John, Diana and Katia - happy birthday!
Mariana and Leslie - an Australian studying Chinese who arrived in February. She's staying in Beijing another term, until end of December.
Gaetan and Eva, Loic's Chinese friend. Well...she's become all of us's friend...

We arrived at our destination around 8 PM I think. We ate dinner around 11 PM. We went for a "night hike," which in hindsight was pretty dangerous since we couldn't see anything.

Our hotel

2006-07-02T13:00:00.000+08:00

Loic, Yas, Branko and Gaetan. We weren't really "allowed" to smoke where we were sitting...but it didn't "really" matter...
Our "hotel" in the middle of nature. We had the whole top floor - maybe eight rooms in total (there were 16 people).
The top floor hallway.
Some little girls playing a game across the way...a very relaxing and fun place to hang out!

Scenery...

2006-07-02T12:55:00.000+08:00

The views from just outside our hotel were breath-taking...I was so happy!

When we had arrived the night before (Friday), we had heard there was water, but we couldn't see anything. We went for a "night walk" that didn't last very long, but was quite exciting...we couldn't see a thing!
Cliffs and green hills...what more could a person ask for?

The Bridge

2006-07-02T12:48:00.000+08:00

We had to get across a bridge to get to the hiking area on the other side. The previous night (Friday) we had crossed it no problem, but on Saturday, after a few hours of torrential rain, it had collapsed at one point...
The large red bridge in the foreground is an old railway track I think...it seemed to come from nowhere and lead to nowhere.
At first the old Chinese men that stand around the bridge - seeming to have no particular job other than to just "be there" - didn't want to let us pass. Then they told us we could pass but they wouldn't let us come back, which didn't make any sense. Finally we just went and everything turned out okay - nobody fell in the water and we weren't stranded on one side!
The current was pretty strong. I loved the sound of the water...
Crossing wasn't all that tricky - many of us weren't thinking all that straight anyway, the night before having been a little rough...

A Walk in the "Jungle"

2006-07-02T12:43:00.000+08:00

The way was definitely green and bushy - almost like a jungle, but not exactly. ;-)
At one point we could hear a bees' or wasps' nest nearby. For maybe five minutes we could hear them buzzing loudly...it scared the hell out of Katia! But nobody got bitten - we just got thwacked by a lot of branches and bitten by a lot of small insects.
Katia was in her skirt and I was in my cotton dress - maybe a little out of place but we were very comfortable indeed!
There were many ponds/small waterfalls and it was all very, very relaxing and beautiful.

Pretty walkway

2006-07-02T12:27:00.000+08:00

We walked along stone pathways like this one...it was somewhat slippery. It had rained all morning - poured actually.
Gaetan among the greenery.
There were some really beautiful areas - and it was all so green!
A group picture by a pond we refreshed ourselves at. It was very warm outside. We were all sweating like pigs!

Waterfall

2006-07-02T12:23:00.000+08:00

We reached a waterfall that we were told measured 108 metres...it was quite impressive.
We took a break by the waterfall and wished we could go swimming...we were very hot!
Yas, Katia, Eva (in pink), Branko, Gaetan, Loic and Diana...happy to be in the shade!!!
After our waterfall break we continued to climb up the mountain. I love the colours!!!

Yay for greenery!

2006-07-02T12:19:00.000+08:00

The climb was not very difficult and the views were spectacular. It was so amazing to be out of the city and in nature...we didn't do this often enough this year! We regretted not having done more week-end outings of this sort, where we leave the city.

We reached "the top" of the mountain. :-)
On our way back down...Katia spent a lot of time walking with Yas. ;-)

Locals and transportation...

2006-07-02T12:12:00.000+08:00

Some Chinese men watching us as we crossed the bridge. Not even sure if they're locals or not. Might be migrant workers from the countryside...
A man sitting on old railway tracks (at least we think that's what they were...). He looked at us more than we looked at him...
We took a mini-bus from our "hotel" into town (the nearest "big" town, called "Miyun") - there were ten of us. We spent a little less than an hour in the mini-bus I think.
In Miyun we caught a bus to Dongzhimen - a Beijing subway station. We spent around two hours in this air-conditioned "big bus."
Many people slept (including me!) on this big bus. Here's Mariana and Branko (who usually slept with his mouth open, it was funny), and Simon's by the window.

The end...

2006-07-02T12:09:00.000+08:00

The Beijing subway system...not very convenient, not always effecient, but we're definitely happy to have some sort of public transportation!
A restaurant by the bus depot...
A typical Beijing street, across from the bus depot.
A man running - not a common sight in Beijing!

HAPPY CANADA DAY!

2006-07-02T11:42:00.000+08:00

Yay for Canada! We celebrate Canada Day a full week after Quebec's National Holiday. Simon doesn't celebrate Canada Day, only the Quebec National Holiday, something I didn't think actually happened, for some reason. Out in BC, I've never fully realised what it means to be a "separatist." Simon's not a full-blown separatist, mind you, just a patriotic Quebec nationalist. Before coming to China I didn't know there was a Quebec National Holiday.

Talking about National Holidays, I'm excited by the fact that I'll be in France on July 14th - France's National Holiday! :-) And that's the thing, what does it mean to celebrate your National Holiday? You watch the local parade and then the fireworks at night - if there are any in this security-crazy society. What does it actually mean to not "celebrate" Canada Day?

Anyway, on this day I feel a little obligated to post the necessary "Canadian" link. So here's a look at how Canada Day has been celebrated in the past and across the country...what makes us "Canadian" and all.

What I really wanted to talk about was ants. I've been fascinated by them since I was a child and here's an article that says that they have an interior mechanism that allows to them to know how far they've gone and how far they've got to go in order to return to their point of departure. What I find most astounding is their ability to learn from past experience and adapt so quickly to change - the scientists manipulated the ants' legs (either making them longer or shorter), so obviously during the first test the ants had difficulty, but afterwards they took this change into account and adapted their pedometre accordingly...amazing!!!

In other significant news: England lost and France won!!! We watched both games here in Beijing. The England-Portugal game started at 11 PM. We watched it at Jorgen's house because he's leaving for Germany with Hannoh today (Sunday) and we had a cozy good-bye party in his apartment. We then went to eat chuar (meat on a stick) at an out-door terrace by north gate, where we could watch the first half of the France-Brazil match on a small TV set placed on a table in front of the outside eating area. The game started at 3 AM and we left at half-time. We finished the match at Katia's house - we missed the goal!!! But we were very happy France beat Brazil...sorry Lucas!!!

The future

2006-06-30T12:22:00.000+08:00

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

2006-06-26T17:05:00.000+08:00

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

2006-06-26T16:32:00.000+08:00

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

2006-06-19T10:38:00.000+08:00

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 :*(

2006-06-12T23:40:00.000+08:00

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

2006-06-11T02:21:00.000+08:00

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

2006-06-09T16:55:00.000+08:00

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

2006-06-08T00:54:00.000+08:00

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...

Chuar and company

2006-06-05T12:54:00.000+08:00

Here's a nearby street (near to our university). It's a typical afternoon - you can see the markets, a guy on his tricycle, bringing stuff around, and a group of (my) friends chatting. To the left is a BBQ meat on a stick stand - what is called "chuar" in Chinese.

The same street at night. Here is another chuar stand. Now that it's summer, the evenings are warm and everyone goes out.

People love to eat chuar.

Gaetan & Guillaume in white. :-)

Including us. Here's the left-overs of our meal - maybe around 60 sticks of meat...
Guillaume (French) and Simon (from Quebec City) testing out Yorgen's (German) sidecar, which was given to him by a friend leaving the country. When Yorgen leaves, he will in turn leave it to someone else. It's quite a cool toy (although maybe somewhat useless) to have.

Yorgen (in green) and Simon.

Branko (Croation) in red, with Yorgen. Smokes are so cheap in China, everybody smokes. Don't worry mom, I haven't started.

Breakfast at Ron's

2006-05-28T17:14:00.000+08:00

This morning I had breakfast at Ron's. Ron is an American who teaches English here at Erwai and lives in the apartment above me. He sang opera professionally until the front wheel of his car was literally driven into his throat in a car accident when he was in his forties, killing any possibility of continuing his singing career. It took three years for him to recover full control of his voice. He became a Wall Street broker, lived in a $2700/month apartment in New York, until "some guy in India" took over his job. He's 67 and retired and doesn't like China one bit. He invited Loic (French teacher), Karen (an American teaching American culture and Women's studies), Helen (another French teacher), and I to breakfast this morning. It was delicious - French toast with real maple syrup (from Quebec, no less!), Canadian bacon, fresh fruit compote, real coffee...the works! It was delightful! And Ron is so entertaining. We watched bits of some ballet program he had on DVD, listened to one of his favourite singers - Marlene Dietrich - and of course, also listened to some of his many stories. He's watched legends on stage and met famous figures and tells wonderful tales of his adventures. He's quite a character.

So I thought I'd give you guys some pictures of cute kids. Lots of girls for once. Apparently there's 117 males for every 100 females in China. The world average is 103 females for 100 males. Of course the disproportionate ratio is much less apparent in urban areas, such as Beijing.

Forbidden City during the May 1st Labour Day Holiday.

After we (Jessie took one too) took this picture, the guardian that was with the two girls asked to have a picture taken with us, which we happily agreed to. They're dressed up in traditional imperial clothes. Gotta love kitsch!
In front of a very famous wall - the 9-dragon wall - in the middle of the Forbidden City.

Lots of gates, lots of doors inside the Forbidden City.

It's very funny - they're doing renovations at the Forbidden City, and because everyone's disappointed they can't see the main building, they've painted the main building on the scaffolding - brilliant!

And let's end with a shot showing the reason for taking photos at all - being able to look at them afterwards!

Snapshots of Beijing

2006-05-13T20:23:00.000+08:00

Thanks to Jessie, I've got a few photos of "life in Beijing."
We saw a group of cyclists go by in front of these pretty trees in bloom. Jessie must've taken 5 photos and in only this one is there actually a cyclist (in the others there's nobody!).

I didn't talk much about spring in Beijing. There are cherry trees with pink and white blossoms, and many other flowers also could be seen. I didn't realise how brown and grey the campus was until spring arrived and all this new green sprouted about everywhere. It's really quite refreshing.

We took a pedi-cab twice. Pedi-cabs are very common in Beijing, but aren't all that cheap. They're good for very short distances. Jessie and I were happy to take one to get from a subway station to a nearby temple. However, the t-shirt design of our driver was a little disconcerting...the name and capacity of ten rifles.
We went by a wonderful-sounding mall: Alien's Street!!! I've never been...

"I chocolate you" is the slogan for a cell phone. Here's an ad for it in a Beijing subway station.

At the temple we saw these three girls wearing the same top, just in different colours. They looked cool.

Here are the three girls mentioned earlier praying at an alter at the Llama Temple. Aren't they cute?
Life in a Beijing subway...subway rides are always fun in Beijing. It's a great place to people-watch. And the funny thing is, many Chinese people love watching you back too!

We walked around some hutongs and found this child waiting in the back of a pedi-cab.Men playing a Chinese board game in the background, with a typical street worker in the foreground. He's pulling dirt. The players are sitting on bricks.

A famous street corner in Beijing. Can you spot the teapot in the middle of the picture, to the left of the woman-in-pink's head?

Children playing in the street. A street worker. There are quite a few of them in Beijing. On the whole, the streets are pretty clean, but there are many spit-balls squashed on the ground. Look at those green trees!!!
A security guard's head lost in the parasol at the south gate of my university. The red building you see in the background is the building in which I teach most of my classes! The security guards wear huge army coats to keep warm in the winter, and hid under parasols in summer...so funny!

The Great Wall

2006-05-03T22:24:00.000+08:00

It's an experience I wish everyone could have. It's evident why it's considered one of the Great Wonders of the World. I didn't know what to expect. Nobody told us you walked on a paved road to get to the wall. I didn't realise what "un-repaired" actually meant (it means rubble - slippery rubble ready to crumble!). I didn't think it would be such a work-out! It surpassed my expectations.

I don't know what these women expected...luckily I didn't have to put myself in their shoes!!!

I didn't expect so many stairs...imagine four hours of Grouse Grind!

Some amazing views...

Great Wall Graffitti!

Many parts were in disrepair, but this made cool photos!
Some parts were quite steep. Sometims we walked on the sides of stairwells...

It's amazing how satisfying it was to imagine we had walked from a point in the distance that we couldn't even see anymore. Yes, we zig-zagged all that way (that's behind Jessie) and still had the energy to continue!
Steep stairs in both directions - down, and then of course, up.

Steep stairs for children too... We saw a mother carrying her small child down some stairs - that's not recommended!

Phew! It gets hard!
But the views are well worth it...
At least some aren't complaining...
Some more rubbly-stairs in need of "repair."
Some more great views.
Nap time.
Yay! We walked from Jinshaling to Simatai in four hours. Absolutely amazing!!!
We were rarely by ourselves. There were often people around us.
I can't get over the views we had!!!
We made it! It was a trek that took us a couple days to get over. We were pretty exhausted after that. We had had to wake up at 4:45 AM to catch a 6 AM bus in the centre of the city (but it was the cheapest and least hassle-way to get there!) and didn't get to sleep until night-ish (the bus was back in the city centre by 7 PM, but we had to catch a subway home - an hour away at least). The next day we were up early again (8 AM?) in order to catch a glimpse of dead Mao, but his masauleum ended up being closed because it's a holiday!!! We were disgusted...

Jessie

2006-05-02T21:08:00.000+08:00

A high-school friend has come to visit me for five whole days: Jessie arrived Saturday afternoon and is leaving Friday. Today is Day 3 and every day is a huge adventure full of wonderful satisfying accomplishments. Horrah!

Sunday we visited Panjiayuan, a sprawling market I had never been to before, full of everything you could possibly want in terms of Chinese memorabilia...Mao watches, jade, wooden fans, scroll paintings, bronze statues - everything! In the afternoon we visited two other famous market streets - we finished all of Jessie's souvenir shopping on the first day! I even bought some art for a whole 40 yuan (around $5 Cdn). In the evening we went to a Beijing Opera and sat at the very back for cheaper, but it was very entertaining. Elaborate costumes and lots of acrobatics and amazing feats near the end.

Monday we went for dim sum (not as good as in Vancouver!) in a beautifully decorated restaurant, then for walks in two different temples, passing by the observatory, where ancient astronomical instruments were on display. In the evening we went to an amazing restaurant hidden in a hutong. It looked gorgeous in the inside, and the food was delicious! It's called the Red Capital and I'll definitely have to go back. It was picked from Jessie's guidebook.

Today was Great Wall day. We woke up at 4:45 AM and left the university campus by 5:30 (after grabbing a baozi and jiaozi breakfast to go) in order to be at a hostel in the center of the city by 6 AM. We ended up leaving the hostel in the tour bus at 6:30...:-P. The ride to Jingshaling lasted 3 hours, including traffic jams. The hike up the wall was awesome. It took us around four hours, including rest stops, to walk from Jingshaling to Simatai. The views were breathtaking, the workout challenging, and we were both thrilled about the experience. Back home around 8 PM, we went to the campus cafeteria for take-out and had a quiet evening in. We're exhausted.

Tomorrow is a big day: we want to see Mao's dead body (I still swear it's not him but a plastic copy!), the Forbidden City, Coal Hill (there's a fabulous view of the Forbidden City from there), and the Hohai/Beihai parks and surrounding bar district in the evening. Should be good.

Alright, time for bed. Good night!

Weather

2006-04-19T23:51:00.000+08:00

I was warned that spring in Beijing means lots of wind and sand, but I wasn't expecting this much wind and sand. Monday morning I woke up to dust-covered cars and streets - everything was coated in yellowish-brown dust/sand. The streets were deserted - nobody wanted to go out when the pollution levels are this high. My throat is now scratchy. My head hurts. It's not a day for a picnic.

Because I didn't take any pictures myself, good thing MSN was there to show you what I woke up to Monday morning.

And here are pictures from a local news agency to give you a glimpse of what it was like. Beijing's in there.

300,000 tons of sand is certainly a lot for a city sky to handle. I couldn't see any blue sky. Yellow skies are interesting, but a bit worrisome after two days...

Day by Day

2006-04-19T23:00:00.000+08:00

I know I haven't been keeping you up to date much, but I find my day-to-day life is no longer interesting, now that the novelty has worn off.

Saturday there was a huge pool party at a Beijing "spa" - whirlpools, swimming pools, massage showers & seats, steam rooms & saunas...plus all-you-could-eat buffet and beer (yes, beer! but being me, I didn't drink a drop). Unfortunately I wasn't hungry and I don't drink beer, but it was a great party. And it was cheap enough that everyone wants to do it next month.

More and more people want to be "my friend", which I don't enjoy at all. Let me explain. Chinese people will say over and over again how much they just want to be your friend - "we'll be best friends!" - but all it really means is, "let me practice my English on you!" My level of Chinese is not good enough for us to be equal language partners. In the future I'll gladly "be friends" with you, but not now, not anytime soon.

Chinese people are fascinated by our eyes. "They're so big!" "They're so beautiful!" It's happened to me at least a couple of times that I'm talking to a student in class and they'll tell me, "My, but your eyes are big!" It is quite distracting. Especially when you're trying to tell them something - trying to teach!

Disorganization is key in China. Don't try to plan anything too much in advance or believe what is said about time and location when setting up an appointment, because most likely, as with everything in developing countries, things change. It's a bit shocking at first, but you shouldn't take it personally. It's simply life in China.

For example, a group of friends were asked to do some work (serving tables, I think it was) for a reception that simply felt it was good PR to have "white people" around. My friends were asked to go to a meeting where they'd be told what they'd have to do. This meeting just happened to be on a Saturday morning (the worst day to hold a morning meeting). We partied Friday night until maybe 5 or 6 AM, and the meeting was scheduled at 9 AM. The modern office building where the meeting was to take place was an hour away by subway. At 9 AM, in their "refreshed" state, my friends arrived at the scheduled place and time. They waited 45 minutes around a large office table before being told that the boss wasn't going to be coming that day, so they could leave. They didn't end up taking the job.

Or some French friends, who recently arrived in Beijing to write a research paper for their studies and don't speak a word of Chinese. They had to renew their visas at a Beijing university. They arrived at 11 AM at the visa office and made enough of a fuss that the visa-lady finally conceded that she did speak some English before telling them that she had to go on her lunch break at 11:30 AM. In half-an-hour they had concluded the visa-lady was capable of speaking English but had decided not to speak in English before so that she wouldn't have to deal with them. They re-scheduled to meet after lunch at 2 PM. Our French friends went, but the visa-lady never did. Oh well.

France in pictures

2006-04-12T07:42:00.000+08:00

CBC did not report much on the protests that took place in France against the new law that their Prime Minister wanted to put in place which would let employers fire young adults (under 26) for no reason, but they have pretty pictures.

My week-end went well. We went to a deserted amusement park that closed at 5:30 PM (we arrived at 5 PM). We went to some hot springs just outside Beijing which were very nice and relaxing.

TGIF

2006-04-07T09:58:00.000+08:00

Yay! Fridays rock!

A friend of mine was super proud to give us a link to Amazon.com, an online bookstore no less, where after being forced to set up an account ("ma fan" - too much work!) we could pilfer a measly 200 mp3s from a specific site.

I want to introduce you to Baidu.cn, a Chinese search engine, which is rather more complicated a thing to create than you may think. As with most things in China, this search engine is a huge business venture, and on its "about Baidu" page - where it hopes to attract foreign investment - I quote:

"Applying avant-garde technology to the world's most ancient and complex language is as challenging as it is exciting. At least people here at Baidu think so. As having diligently disclosed in the Prospectus of our recent Initial Public Offering, we believe there are at least 38 ways of saying "I" in Chinese. It is important that we master all the ways of addressing oneself in Chinese because our users depend on us to address every one of their daily queries. And trust us, pin pointing queries in the Chinese language is an art rather than a science."

Chinese is hard. But Chinese is exciting.

But let us not get distracted. The point is, if you do get the chance to go to Baidu.cn, you don't need to know Chinese to click on the "mp3" icon and search to your heart's content absolutely any song you wish to download (try different languages, like Spanish or French!) - for free, and no account sign-ups or anything.

You're welcome.

Stuff

2006-04-04T18:15:00.000+08:00

Congratulate us! Our soccer team played a game last Thursday and we only lost 1-0! We played against the Spanish department (Chinese girls).

On Friday I went to practice martial arts with a professional who's learned from a great Chinese master - something of the sort anyway. We did a bit of combat and also some qi gong (similar to tai shi chuan). At least I think we did. To tell you the truth, I can't tell the difference...

Practice was lots of fun, though. It's an English lesson for the instructor, who learns how to say body parts in English ("belly button").

Loic, me and Gaetan in Chinese class. Yay!
Gaetan showing off our text book. It's not very interesting, but oh well...
Yang Yang and Stan - two of my students who are both learning karate together. Yang Yang cut his hair! I met them in the cafeteria...

Last minute decisions

2006-03-30T07:35:00.000+08:00

So my boss had told me I should give my second-year students three practice exams before they take the real IELTS exam in June, and for this I could use up all my class time and even have other teachers helping me give the practice exams.

So a month ago I prepare the exam schedule and tell my boss how many teachers I'll need and when. I tell my second-year students when to come. I prepare them for the exam.

Next week I'm to start giving them practice exams, when my boss calls me last night: "Caroline, we had a meeting yesterday. The teachers don't like the idea that you won't be teaching the students any more oral English. They're ready to help you give the students a practice IELTS exam but only once, when all the students are given the exam together, and at the end of the month."

I was so happy at the idea of not having to teach these huge classes anymore. I enjoy teaching my first year students a lot more, I've got to admit. Giving these practice exams was my boss's idea, I gave him my schedule a month ago, and he tells me a few days before I was going to start giving practice exams that I've got to change my whole plan, and start preparing for another three months of classes... *sigh*

And what will I look like in front of my students, who have been told for the past three weeks that they won't have class, and just need to come once a month to practice their exam? This is all such a joke...

student pictures

2006-03-27T11:30:00.000+08:00

Some students from Class 4: Henry, Xiao Sheng (basketball), and Liu Hao (purple jacket).

We're standing in front of the track (volleyball and basketball courts to the left of the picture), with building #1 in the background (that's where I teach most of my classes).

cockroach morning

2006-03-26T14:33:00.000+08:00

Yes...I found a dried-out dead cockroach lying on its back in front of my closet this morning. It was as big as my index finger. *shudder* It's okay as long as they're dead. However, that probably means that the staff has put poison in my room and I'm unwittingly breathing and eating trace amounts of it....

This is the third dead cockroach I've found in my room.

Okay, I wrote this earlier on in the day. Now it's night time. My day is soon going to be over.

This evening, Katia, Loic and I found ourselves in my apartment, eating real French "foie gras" (for those of you who may not know what that is: I don't think you want to know more than that it's a French delicacy) - left around Christmas time by Guillaume, who had just received a care package from his family - spread on toasts using the toaster oven one of my students had given me last semester, and watching a French soccer match on TV (remember I get a French news channel - TV5), Lyons vs. Toulouse. It was a tie, 1-1. Foie gras is so unbelievably delicious.

A Chinese student of Loic's didn't know what a barbeque was. You can't blame her. Why would the Chinese have BBQs when you can get the same thing (meat on a stick) down the street for less than 20 cents...ready made and maybe even more delicious. Plus - at least in Beijing - there aren't any backyards to hold BBQs.

I didn't study Chinese this week-end. Bad Caroline.

Life in Shanghai

2006-03-24T00:28:00.000+08:00

So much more than just an umbrella shop - behind is the entrance to one of the many tiny alleyways in Shanghai, which seem to lead to such secret worlds... A group of old men spend an afternoon playing Chinese chess, which is apparently quite difficult.

More Shanghai

2006-03-23T23:35:00.000+08:00

Shanghai Zhan - Shanghai's new train station where Katia and I arrived around 7 AM, Friday morning. Always a lot of people - everywhere!
Birds kept in close quarters at a "plant & animal" market we visited (near the expensive souvenir market we walked through first).
Fighting crickets that fetch high prices. Old men fight their crickets for money.
Saturday night we walked to the Pudong district, the very modern part of the city which is on the other side of the river from the famous "Bund," what was once "Shanghai's Wall Street," with many Western-looking buildings from the turn of the century (1930s...). In Pudong we went to the 88th floor of JinMao - the tallest tower in China and the 4th tallest in the world at 420.5 m, according to my Lonely Planet.
Views of the Bund (across the river) at night with the funky-looking TV tower to the right of the picture.
A better view of the Bund.
There's a viewing booth on the 88th floor which allows visitors to look down more than 30 floors to see the Grand Hyatt's cafe in their entrance hall on the 54th floor.
Of course, such spectacular views calls for a picture from "up top" - where it's in fact impossible to get a picture of both us and the view. :-)
The Bund during the day. As you can see, it's a beautiful day, but smog makes it look not so beautiful...
A view of the TV tower in the Pudong district across the river.
There are lots of different types of boats holding various functions that run along the Huangpu River in Shanghai.
Nanjing Donglu - Shanghai's Wangfujing (which is in Beijing). This is the flashy rather than ritzy pedestrian shopping street. Lots of shops with neon lights.
View of a modern tower behind an old clock tower, taken from a park we sat down in.
Modern Shanghai - a picture taken during a walk around the train station on our first day in Shanghai.
Run-down old residences in front of newly-built futuristic-looking apartment buildings. We actually walked along the dirty backstreets that ran through the old residences as we waited for Rita's train to come in (Rita is Katia's classmate who was in Shanghai to take an exam).
Our hotel room. It was cheap considering Shanghai's prices. Our Lonely Planet writes that "apart from a couple of dormitories, the cheapest double room will cost at least Y250." Here we had a double room with our own private bathroom (bathtub included and hot water when we wanted) for Y180, which is about $30 Cdn per night, to be shared between two people.

The morning we arrived we phoned a few of the "dormitories" listed in our Lonely Planet where a bed in a room of 8 or 10 would cost us Y100 each - everything was booked. A man came up to us and offered us a better price for a hotel "five minutes away." It ended up being on the other side of the train tracks, which meant finding a tunnel or bridge of some sort that would take us to the other side. This took at least 15 or 20 minutes in one direction, and another 15 or 20 minutes in the other...but this way we got to see another part of the city we would never have visited otherwise.

In the "old" Shanghai there's a very famous "Yuyuan" - Yu garden. It was very beautiful and very relaxing. We stayed there at least two hours.

The gardens provided a couple high-school students as free tour guides. It's a great idea - the high school students get to learn about their city's history and practice their English, while tourists get a free guide! We really enjoyed these tour guides (shown in the picture), but half-way through our tour guides were too flustered and didn't want to speak English anymore, so we got more serious students who weren't as fun.

These are some really nice views of the garden.

A little girl fed some fish her lunch while her mother looked on.
A famous "dragon wall" found in Yuyuan.
We went to the bathroom in a supermarket and fell upon these tea jugs - what must belong to the employees of the store. They bring their tea to work and keep it here, labelled with their employee number (or name).
An old Church we found by chance near Sun Yat Sen's old residence (which we visited for Y30 - around $5 Cdn).
A park we also found by chance and which displayed a "cow" exhibition that Katia had seen in Geneva and Moscow totally randomly. She was dumbfounded to find the same exhibition completely by chance in Shanghai. What a coincidence! She lives next to Geneva and spends her summers in Moscow (her mother is Russian).
The destruction of a building near the train station in Shanghai. It looked like a monster eating at it. It was pretty scary and quite a few people had gathered to watch.
A colourful shopwindow in "old" Shanghai - a touristy shopping bonanza district.
On Saturday we went to a well-known antique/souvenir market that was quite quiet, although the few people we did see there who weren't shop keepers were white-skinned foreigners. The prices for everything were outlandishly high and the shop keepers weren't willing to go down because they knew they'd find tourists careless enough to buy at their asking price. As a result, we didn't buy anything - no point wasting money on stuff we could most likely find in Beijing!
OK, so you see a Chinese woman in the foreground, but you can bet she's just passing through. It's better if you click on the pictures to make them bigger. It's hard to see clearly when the picture's so small.

To give you an example of the prices, Katia wanted to buy a beaded bracelet with a large stone in the middle. The asking price was 80 yuan. Katia would buy it for 20, maybe even 30 (crazy!). The lady went down to 60 yuan and wouldn't budge from there. Everybody was asking for 80 yuan for their bracelets. And another lady asked for 30 yuan for 16 postcards that we could buy in Beijing for 20 (and even then it's a rip-off!).
I loved Shanghai for its hanging clothes - they're everywhere. Makes the dull brown streets colourful. The blue-suited people were loud. When we passed they were yelling at each other for who knows what reason.
A sampling of what was offered at this market. There were also some beautiful wooden boxes.
The chinese enjoy their birds. You'll see old men slowly walking in parks, holding their precious bird cage and listening to their bird's song. Or the men will have sat down to play a game of Chinese chess, with their birds floating in a nearby tree. There are at least five cages in this picture...
On to a completely different part of town - the "old" part, the "original" Shanghai, which is actually an extremely touristy (and therefore newly restored and "re-fabricated") part of town. This part of town is always crowded. There are a great number of tourist shops along all the streets diverging from this "centre." What caught my eye for this photo was the mural of Chinese women on the wall in the foreground. And the man's head in the corner is an unanticipated bonus.
A classic advertising poster on one of the "old" buildings of Shanghai.
A shopping street in "old' Shanghai.
Starbucks and a bicycle in "old" Shanghai. It seemed like there were a lot more Starbucks coffee shops in Shanghai than in Beijing. Shanghai's a lot more Westernized.
Katia (in green) and Rita, one of her classmates who speaks English. Rita's actually the one who spurred Katia to go to Shanghai, since she was going to be there for an exam on Sunday. We ended up only spending Friday morning together, since we didn't take the same train, Katia and I slept in a hotel while Rita stayed with family, and we didn't see her after we separated early Friday afternoon... Rita went to Nanjing for a few days before returning to Beijing yesterday (Wednesday)! They're in a shopping street running east of the "old district" and towards the Bund - the famous walkway by the river.
More typical Shanghai architecture. This photo was taken not far from our hotel. Those bicycle carts (you can see one in the foreground) are so typical in China!!! You see many of them (and in worse condition!) in Beijing.
Old and new mashed together.

Wandering sellers set up shop pretty much anywhere and everywhere along the street. Katia bought two pairs of socks at this intersection. We later used the socks on our hands to keep us warm in the evening...
If you zoom in you can see the beginning of a neat little street in the centre of the picture - opens up a whole new world that may depict the "real" Shanghai.
However "westernized" Shanghai pretends to be, you'd never see somebody carrying a plastic bag like that on their shoulder in North America, nor a man pulling a wooden cart... If you look closely, you'll see there's a white wedding car to the left. A couple men lit super loud firecrackers that blew up high in the air right beside where Katia and I were buying socks. We soon realised it was for a wedding, since a groom came running out carrying his bride in his arms (she was wearing red slippers!). He brought her to the car, where a few photographers took pictures (I didn't have time to take out my camera!) and then off they went amid a crowd of well-wishers. It was totally out of the blue - we had walked into a not-at-all touristy neighbourhood where we were the only whites around.
Another street picture, with the possibility of zooming in to see some "back-alley" material.
Poverty is picturesque.
The constant reminder of how close progress and stagnation stand side-by-side in Shanghai. SUVs parked in a parking lot across the street from run-down apartment buildings with modern-looking towers in the background. The parking lot is for a hotel called "The Magnificent." How funny!

Ecological Footprint

2006-03-23T17:33:00.000+08:00

Hello! I watched an ad for BP energy on TV and went to their "carbon footprint" site and realised that I use up around 4 tonnes of CO2 per year. That's higher than the 2.4 average in China - no duh!

So this reminded me of my "ecological footprint," which I googled and found this footprint calculator. If everybody lived like me (mostly one person in a huge apartment with no green technology) there would have to be 6 earths! Yikes!

For those wanting to learn more, here's MEC's version of the calculator.

It's the week-end! My afternoon adult class went very well. I got them to do group discussions about travel. There were three groups and one decided to go to Thailand, the other to Egypt and Hainan (Chinese island to the south of China that I spent four days on), and the last to the coast of Shandong province.

Hump day!

2006-03-22T18:00:00.000+08:00

Today is Wednesday - the official "hump" day - my work week is almost over!!!

Of course, yesterday's post was about a new student in our wonderful Chinese class. He was half-an-hour late yesterday. He puts me on edge.

**For those of you who speak French**

I'd like to draw your attention to a new link in the sidebar. It's Guillaume's new blog (even though he's been here 7 months, lazy...).

**For everybody**

Going to Cafeteria #2 with Maluyi (his French name is Loic) and Geyidong (Gaetan) for dinner. Party at Katia's after.

**Chinese culture**

A Chinese student has told me that he and some friends would invite me to dinner if that would procure them a passing grade even if they didn't come to any of the up-coming midterms and exams...

A Chinese student who doesn't do anything in class comes up to me at the end, telling me I'm so lovely...

I was to study Chinese today, but I surfed the net instead. *sigh* I'm no better than anyone.

It couldn't last...

2006-03-21T07:47:00.000+08:00

Last night (Monday), there was a new student in class. He came late. He wanted the teacher to translate everything in English. His cell phone went off at least five times during class, and he kept looking at it. He would talk to us in English. He would make jokes that nobody appreciated...

I don't particularly like him. He's macho. I hope he doesn't stay...

He's here to "play" (so he told us) - and find "business." He's here for a year to I suppose foster connections with Chinese companies.

He told us in his last school the teacher would speak in Chinese and he'd write what he understood in English. Hmm...

It's funny because in class we would speak in French, but now that there's a guy who wants us to speak in English and keeps asking us what things means in English, we hate it.

Six hours of class ahead of me...*sigh*

Shanghai - street life

2006-03-20T13:15:00.000+08:00

Alright, blogger's being a pain and the pictures aren't uploading properly, so here's just a start of the pictures to come (4 out of a total of 54). It took me half-an-hour to post these four and I'm not going to waste any more time. Hope this site works better soon, there'll be more later.

Shanghai's museum is the large circular-shaped building on the left, Shanghai's opera (not the best architecture) is the white semi-circular building in the middle, and out of the frame to the right is Shanghai's urban exhibition centre. We didn't visit one of them, but we walked around them all. We did visit Shanghai's contemporary art museum, which was really quite good (albeit small) It had a funky music video created by a Japanese artist that both Katia and I really enjoyed. It also had a handsome English-speaking guard who talked to us about one of the exhibits which was a door and a classic Chinese instrument that had been burnt in a wired cage...
Saturday seemed to be "washday" - so many people were cleaning their clothes in tubs (some using ancient wooden washing boards) along the street, and then clothes were hanging everywhere to dry, even on the conveniently-located bamboo scaffolds, sometimes dripping onto inconveniently-located pedestrians down below.
If you enlarge the picture, you might notice that it's of a whole bunch of small hole-in-the-wall restaurants. The architecture is quite different in Shanghai - a lot more European-looking.
Some wokers pushing bamboo poles along a street. Some more lovely architecture in the background. We did a lot of walking.

Quick decisions

2006-03-16T17:16:00.000+08:00

After feeling a little blue these past few weeks, admittedly more blue these past few days, Katia proposed we set off for Shanghai this evening, and so in a split second I made the decision to leave for the "Paris of the East" in a few hours.

Life is beautiful once again.

Soccer

2006-03-14T17:33:00.000+08:00

I just came back from playing soccer: foreign women against Chinese women. The foreign team had never played together. I haven't played soccer in 15 years. The Chinese team plays against other universities and some of their players are on the Chinese national team...

We lost 7-0. But I was happy. I was playing on a team!

I started my Chinese classes. 7-9 PM every evening, Monday to Friday. I love it. I'm still with Gaetan and Loic - three students to one teacher - and we make fun of each other all the time.

Wednesday

2006-03-08T07:30:00.000+08:00

It's amazing how quickly one gets used to only working three days a week. Wednesdays are my good days. I've got good classes pretty much all the way through. And this week's lesson plan is better than last week's. Yesterday I only failed two people who didn't prepare a good enough dialogue. I ask so little of them and they return even less. Sometimes it's depressing.

I watched an American movie with a famous French actor called Jean Reno yesterday. The movie's called LEON THE PROFESSIONAL. It has a very young Nathalie Portman playing the part of a "Lolita" - a seductive little girl - who wants to revenge the brutal murder of her little brother, her only love. Let's just say she learns to love again.... I liked the movie.

Katia, Loic and I checked out a local gym yesterday. For 500 yuan a month ($80-90 Cdn) we could go to their pool, ping pong rooms, or learn to dance. Their actual gym is very small. Not what we expected and not what we want. It's way too expensive!!!

I prepared my classes for the week and went swimming on Monday - that's what I did. Swimming was nice. It's 20 yuan for two hours (around $3 Cdn), though, which is expensive for China.

What are you up to?

My week-end

2006-03-05T21:27:00.000+08:00

Katia's housewarming party was super - I was very happy. There were lots of people - Japanese, Korean, Chinese, German, Russian, Canadian, French, French-Canadian :-) And I spoke Chinese! (kind of) I ended up sleeping over at Katia's. So did Loic (he slept on the sofa - such a gentleman). We woke up around noon today and watched a French movie about married couples that didn't stop yelling at each other.

Then we (the three of us) went to North Gate and took the first bus that had free seats and we got off at a random stop and walked around for a bit.

Katia suggested we go to an all-you-can-eat restaurant she had been to with Guillaume, so we walked for a good half hour, probably longer, until we finally found the place. It was actually all-you-can-eat drinks (bubble tea and slushies) and ice-cream. Very funny. For 18 yuan ($3 Cdn). I drank two bubble teas, a slushy, and three ice-creams.

The only other thing we had eaten that day was OJ and chips and a couple slices of Russian cheese.

When we came back we had more substantial food at the campus cafeteria. I was glad I hadn't spent the whole day on campus - we actually went out and walked around and enjoyed the nice weather.

I'm so glad I don't work on Monday...brilliant!

2006-03-04T15:58:00.000+08:00

So we got new furniture during the holidays - all the foreign teachers in our building did, which is all 32 of us. I had my office chair half-built, sprawled on my living-room floor for a few days before I left for Vancouver in early January. My new king-sized TV was still packed, my table hadn't been set up... In their usual efficient way, the Chinese had started giving me my new furniture, but left it half-way done and didn't touch it for at least a week until after I left.

When I came back to Beijing with Nicole in late January, everything was ready but...the two single beds that they give us had these unbelievably thin - and therefore very hard - mattresses. Although not ideal for reading in bed comfortably, I didn't have any problems sleeping.

Some teachers did. And complained.

Enough for administration to go to the trouble of changing our mattresses. A notice was put up in the entrance, stating that the "tentative time" for mattress changing was going to be either Thursday or Friday and we were to prepare our beds. So I did.

I came home from work at 4 PM on Thursday and had no mattresses.

Around 6 PM, a couple guys came in with the new mattresses and they plunked them down on my beds, plastic wrap and all. I broke a couple nails taking the plastic wrap off the mattresses and then making my bed myself. I lead such a hard life....

To tell you the truth, the new mattresses are not that much thicker than the old ones, and aren't particularly softer, although among teachers we tell ourselves that "with time" they'll be "broken in" and become more comfortable. However, that process might take years.

In other news, I gave my first lesson to my "adult class" Thursday afternoon. They're a nice bunch, although quite large - maybe around 30 of them, or more.

Last night I went to listen to reggae at a club near the Worker's Stadium called Yu Gong Yi Shan. We've been there at least three times. The music's always the same, but I like it a lot - it really lifts me up and puts me in such a great mood. Reggae rocks.

Tonight is Katia's housewarming. She moved into a new apartment with a Russian girl and a Ukranian girl. They speak Russian together. Between the three of them they invited around fifty people, but we'll see how many show up...

It's an amazing 16 or 17 degrees here in Beijing. All of a sudden it's spring. I was walking around in a t-shirt with my jean jacket, while two days ago I was still shivering in my down winter coat. Crazy.

And since nothing particularly exciting has happned to me lately, I'll tell you what Matt, the American teacher, saw just outside North Gate the other day. He was coming back from the dry cleaner's when he heard this loud whipping sound. He saw a guy on his carriage whipping his horse like a maniac, and the horse was galloping full speed ahead into the particularly busy intersection just outside Erwai's North Gate (Erwai's the name of our university). Then there were eight police guys in uniform running after him (on foot), and typically looking totally confused and disorganized. They yelled at the driver of one of those small motor bikes that can carry up to three people a short distance, to let them use it to catch the guy - they wouldn't go for any of the numerous fast cars found everywhere on that street... Matt saw the horse and carriage make a left at the intersection - which was full of cars veering out of the way and pedestrians running away. What a mad dash. It sounded so funny. Wish I were there to take a video...

I'm going to work on collocations with my students this week. For those of you who don't know, collocations are a set of words - usually two - that are usually found together, they just "go" together and sound right, and it's hard to say why, it just is. Like we say "take a break," (not "do a break"), "turn in your homework," "make an appointment" (not "take an appointment"). CITY OF GOD inspired me at 2 o'clock in the morning, early Friday...or maybe it was the new mattress...

People Pictures

2006-03-03T18:57:00.000+08:00

Here's a picture of me, Nicole, and Xiao Sheng's cousin's 7-year-old son at a park in Guangzhou. The elephants behind us are made of small tinted glass bottles.

We went to the beach in ZhanJiang - we were chauffeured there in a sleek black car by Xiao Sheng's father's company chauffer. I rode a camel. My hands smelled atrociously for a couple of days afterwards, no matter how many times I washed them.
Yang Yang riding a horse - he was really very good at it. Apparently he rides horses in Inner Mongolia, where he comes from.
We drove around on these little all-terrain vehicles, which was quite fun. The beach was pretty deserted, which was nice. In green is Yang Yang (20), that's my head, and Nicole's standing between me and Xiao Sheng, who's 22.
After the beach we went strawberry picking in a field beside the street that led back home in ZhanJiang. It was fun and the berries were delicious, although technically "forbidden" since we aren't supposed to eat fruit that we can't peel or that hasn't been washed in non-tap water.
In the evening we went out with Xiao Sheng's "ge-ge" or "older brother," who's actually his cousin. We went walking by the beach and he took a picture of us in a cool-looking tree.
A pic of us with Xiao Sheng's cousin in front of a lit-up military boat that was renovated into a restaurant/bar-type place.
Xiao Sheng let us ride his scooter, but we didn't go far - it takes some getting used to!
We're right outside his residential building, built for his father's company's employees. I'm in front of a public garden where the residents can grow their own vegetables.
Us on the bus. Xiao Sheng's in red.
Yang Yang and Xiao Sheng in a taxi, I think it is. Yang Yang is wearing the "Canada" Roots toque I bought for him as a present.
Xiao Sheng and Yang Yang could fall asleep anywhere, I swear, no matter how loud or how shaky!
My students and I on the beach at a beautiful bay near Sanya, in southern Hainan.
A picture taken from our hotel window of restaurant workers preparing vegetables for the evening meal. They're in a courtyard just outside our hotel.
Nicole and I in front of some boulders found at what Chinese people call "The End of the Earth." It wasn't very impressive. Nicole and I had been expecting cliffs and beautiful scenery as if we were in Ireland or something, but it wasn't at all what we expected. Just a few rocks with Chinese written on them.

family pictures

2006-03-03T18:45:00.000+08:00

Because we were visiting Xiao Sheng's home province, we saw a lot of his family. Here's a picture of his aunt and uncle's family in their home, where we ate a couple dinners.

Xiao Sheng is in red, with his cousin's 7-year-old son, who beat Nicole and me at chess in three moves (but then we beat him in a game that took over an hour...:P). I'm between his cousin and his aunt. They were very warm, welcoming people. At dinner the uncle would clear his throat and pronounce that he had something to say in English before saying his one phrase in English, it was pretty funny.
The same family picture, but with Nicole instead of Xiao Sheng.
Here we are at a restaurant in ZhanJiang. From L to R: Nicole (in purple), Xiao Sheng's "older brother" (cousin), his fiancee, Xiao Sheng's aunt, and me. We spent an evening with the cousin - we walked along the beach and went to a bar, it was nice.
From L to R: Nicole, Xiao Sheng, me, Xiao Sheng's mother, grandmother and father.
In Xiao Sheng's hometown living room. From L to R: his mother, Nicole, his grandmother, me, Yang Yang, and...I'm not sure what the relationship of this guy is, I was never introduced - probably another cousin. Xiao Sheng's in the striped t-shirt.

More pictures

2006-03-03T18:08:00.000+08:00

A picture of a sign we saw at a park in Guangzhou - too bad the right side got cut off. The park was pretty amazing - lots of statues made of silk and tinted glass bottles of different sizes and real china (cups and plates and the like), and everything lit up at night.
Houses near a shopping district in Guangzhou.
A street in Guangzhou.
The view from on top of Xiao Sheng's residential building in ZhanJiang (a small city in the south of Guangdong Province, in the south of China).
Another view from the top of his building.
The last view from on top of my student's residential building.
A funky boat we saw from our ship to Hainan island. Our ship was quite picturesque as well - made of decaying iron and packed with Chinese people. Wish there were more pictures...
When we saw this smoking ship we were sure there was a fire, but we later realised it was simply pollution leaving the ship into the air....
Sanya, the city we stayed in in Hainan, is known for its seafood. Lots of fresh seafood was on display in front of restaurants.
Beautiful turtles...but I think they're set to be eaten...
For the last day of the New Year's celebrations (they last 15 days, I think), there's the "lantern festival" and we lit fireworks on the beach in Sanya.
We bought a ton of "sparklers" and the guys bought some "real" fireworks which they lit closer to the water and which were very impressive.

Beach views

2006-03-03T17:43:00.000+08:00

The beach in Hainan was great, although one of the days was a bit too windy.... The water was warm enough to swim in, but wasn't too warm. What was great was that the beach was only a five-minute walk (or less) on foot from our hotel.

This is actually a photo from "The End of the World" - the water was really beautiful but we couldn't swim here because of rocks and zooming motorboats.
A photo taken from the taxi as we went to a tourist attraction further inland.

To the left is a pic of the lush greenery found further inland.

City of God

2006-03-03T00:24:00.000+08:00

Just finished watching CITY OF GOD, which I bought for $1 at the local video store. It's amazing. It's so well done. Everything works. The story is brilliant. It runs smoothly. I was extremely impressed.

It takes place in the slums of Rio de Janeiro - called the City of God - and it's about the life of a young man and what he goes through in the underworld of drug dealing, violent gangs and corrupt cops to end up as a photographer. What an awesome 160 minutes...

It's 12:30 AM and I'm going to bed.

ZhanJiang

2006-03-02T18:25:00.000+08:00

Xiao Sheng's hometown is right by the beach. We went riding on some vehicles...

Olympics

2006-02-28T13:29:00.000+08:00

Congratulations to Canada and the rest of the countries that participated in the 2006 Torino Games.

I really enjoy having 4-day week-ends. I have the time to party hard on Friday, sleep all day Saturday (recovering!), see friends and family on Sunday, and do everything that I have to do on Monday...and feel good about it too!

I went to Tsinghua university and Beijing Languages & Culture University, both in North-Western Beijing. I walked around too much and hurt my feet (I'm still wearing-in the boots I bought in Vancouver). Nobody could give me more information than was on the internet. It wasn't very useful. However, I was able to get a "feel" for the campus. They're much, much bigger than the campus I'm working at now. I get the impression I won't be leaving the campus much since I can buy everything I need on campus - a bit like at UBC but not as modern. :)

I'm tired. Didn't get enough sleep last night. I'll probably nap after class finishes at 4 PM.

It snowed last night. There's been a cold snap recently. It was warmer-ish when I got back from vacation in mid-February, and then it got cold last week, and now it's snowing. The ground is slippery.

People still hoark and spit in the streets; I avoid walking on the gobs of white spit that remain on the ground.

I've discovered real-flowers chrysanthemum tea. My cousin made it for me Sunday night and I bought some for myself and I love drinking it. Pierre's mother used to make me delicious chrysanthemum tea, but I never made the effort to buy it for myself. It's good. And it's fun seeing flowers float in the water. And it hydrates my body seeing as there's no caffeine or milk or sugar or anything in it.

I've got class now. Only two hours left...

Pet splurge

2006-02-24T20:17:00.000+08:00

Why am I not surprised??? Some people have too much money to splurge on their pets...

Photogenic Vancouver

2006-02-24T09:21:00.000+08:00

I love my hometown of Vancouver. Here are some photos from when I was there in January. It rained a lot of the time. But thankfully Vancouver doesn't look bad in the rain. I went for a walk first with my brother and mother and then on my own along the beach and took dozens of pictures. I understand how my sister in Paris was inspired by the beach for a whole set of paintings she once did, even if that beach wasn't Vancouver's.

Vancouver's skyline coming out of the mist...
Solitary walk.
People do use umbrellas in Vancouver. I love those tanker boats.
Sand and logs and boulders...what a great combination!
It was a Sunday afternoon so there were quite a few people, despite the rain.
The beautiful Rachel and our pal, Nik.
My buddies from History at UBC: Angela and Lucas TdS. We just came back from watching Lucas play at the Cottage on Main Street. I loved it!!! Thanks Lucas!
Angela and Lucas outside Lucas' house. Lucas has a beard in order to look more "mature" in front of his students - and it works!

Sorry

2006-02-24T09:01:00.000+08:00

I really haven't been keeping my blog up to date, have I? Well, it's been kind of strange returning to the hum-drum of life in Beijing.

I talked to my mother about this: in September it was the excitement of starting something new and different. Now I'm simply coming back to what I already know, what I'm already used to.

However, this term does look exciting. I'm only working 16 hours/week. I was thrilled to hear that I was working only 14 hours at first, and only going to teach my HND students (nine first- and second-year classes, where students will pass an exam to try and finish their studies in England), but then my department added another two-hour class of "trainees" - adults who work in companies who send them to Beijing for four months to improve their English skills. So this is an extra class I'll have to prepare for but usually adult classes go a lot smoother than my younger, larger HND classes.

There are lots of reasons I take an interest in my classes this term, but I won't bore you with the details because it's really not all that important.

What's important is that you realise that I only work on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays!!! I have a four-day week-end!!!

And Gaetan's off with his girlfriend from France for three weeks so we won't start Chinese class until he comes back. I hope this means I can do some short trips on week-ends. Unfortunately, Loic has class Friday evenings and Monday mornings which isn't cool. Katia and Gaetan are only taking two freaking classes this term, and they're both on Wednesday, so they have six-day week-ends!!! We'll see what happens...

I was extremely sick last Friday. I don't know why. I woke up and puked and decided to shower and get dressed anyway. I had to go to work to pick up my schedule and I went to buy water at the campus grocery store. I didn't make it back home without puking on the side of the road...but nobody who saw me seemed to mind or care. I spent the rest of the day in bed, sleeping and throwing up. It was horrible.

But Saturday morning I was fine. And Saturday evening I had dinner and watched a movie with my cousin, whom I haven't seen in a few months. And then I went out to party with my French buddies in Beijing's foreign bar district. Gaetan and Loic came over afterwards and didn't leave until 5:30-ish in the morning...it was quite the long night. Gossip central: Katia wasn't there because she's trying it out with Guillaume - at least we're all hoping they get together.

Katia, Loic and Gaetan came back from their trip around the western and southern parts of China a week before I came back from Hainan. They had a great time, it seems, with many adventures. They randomly ran into a few people from Erwai (our university in Beijing), crazily enough. Gaetan showed me his pix, Katia showed me hers, they're wonderful. Guillaume was traveling with his parents before coming back to Beijing to move; he's now living in north-west Beijing (opposite corner from us) and doing an internship at some company.

This afternoon I'm going to finally buy a new cell phone with Yang Yang and Xiao Sheng. I'm excited. I love the feeling of being connected that a cell phone gives me. I haven't had one in two months!!!

My mother is getting me to seriously think about my future. I'd like to do different things. I'm going to visit Tsinghua university (north-east Beijing) on Monday to ask them what kinds of programs and courses they offer foreigners. I just might stay here another year!

sites

2006-02-16T22:57:00.000+08:00

What the world would look like if Canada ruled it. It's a photoshop site with a very cool idea. Thanks to James for the link.

And also thanks to him for this very cool site where you get to pick some words to describe me. I'd like to know how you'd describe my personality!

I made it to 11 PM without napping! This is truly extraordinary! Tomorrow I get to sleep in - yay! Vacation's not over!