Got some things achieved today, the main ones being a) getting my passport back from the Indian Embassy with a nice Indian visa inside and b) eating really wacky street foods at Wangfujing. For all the aggravation I went through trying to get ahold of the Indian Embassy to find out if my visa was ready yet, it was amazingly easy to get. It took, seriously, about 10 seconds. Silly times. I went shopping at Silk Street and got pretty pink presents for people, and made some salespeople seriously unhappy, a reliable sign that you've gotten something for the cheapest allowable. In the evening we went to Wangfujing snack street, and ate lots of weird things, including dog, scorpion, sparrow, snake, and sea mushroom. They were all okay, although everything was fried and overly salty, and it was really hard to get to the edible part of the scorpion through the exoskeleton. Also the vendors were totally the most obnoxious ever, and they spoke English, which is somehow so much more annoying than being hassled in Chinese. One time four of them were simultaneously telling me at the tops of their lungs that I needed to buy some fruit on a stick, and they wouldn't take no for an answer and wouldn't stop yelling no matter what I said, and I finally just turned around and yelled SHUT UP at them, which didn't have much effect, but I felt better. Later I yelled it in Chinese, which was also satisfying. Seriously, they were the most loud and obnoxious vendors ever, even worse than the ones who come out and grab your arm. One of them kept not listening to our order and putting in things we didn't want and being super annoying, and we yelled at him like 3758429758392 times, and at the end he asked for my phone number. Seriously, these guys just did not get it.
New CIEE summer students are here! They seem pretty nice, but they will never be the old CIEE crew. What can ya do. Doesn't matter, I'm leaving on Saturday anyway!
Monday, June 25, 2007
Rain
Rain is good:
-cools things down
-takes the pollution out of the air
Rain is not so great:
-makes all the benches wet so I'm forced to wander for hours without sitting down
-China doesn't exactly smell better when wet
Today's other notable features, besides rain:
-last Sunday at my Beijing church
-lunch meeting with migrant school people. Discussed goals for program; realized that promoting things like creativity, imagination, leadership, and self-esteem are pretty much alien concepts in the Chinese educational system. slash society.
-long mission out to the other side of town to pick up my suit, which I discovered needed more alterations. Couldn't leave market because it was raining, so I wandered around for a couple more hours and let some sweet little Chinese gals at the food court talk me into ordering twice as much food as I actually wanted to eat. Resisted end-of-day laziness and made the hour-plus trek home using only public transportation and my own two feet. Cabs are for wimps. Consequently, currently cannot move/feel feet so well
-read 183 pages of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned because it was lying around Casey's room. Remembered that I like to read books for fun
-stayed up past 3 am for no discernible reason
-cools things down
-takes the pollution out of the air
Rain is not so great:
-makes all the benches wet so I'm forced to wander for hours without sitting down
-China doesn't exactly smell better when wet
Today's other notable features, besides rain:
-last Sunday at my Beijing church
-lunch meeting with migrant school people. Discussed goals for program; realized that promoting things like creativity, imagination, leadership, and self-esteem are pretty much alien concepts in the Chinese educational system. slash society.
-long mission out to the other side of town to pick up my suit, which I discovered needed more alterations. Couldn't leave market because it was raining, so I wandered around for a couple more hours and let some sweet little Chinese gals at the food court talk me into ordering twice as much food as I actually wanted to eat. Resisted end-of-day laziness and made the hour-plus trek home using only public transportation and my own two feet. Cabs are for wimps. Consequently, currently cannot move/feel feet so well
-read 183 pages of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned because it was lying around Casey's room. Remembered that I like to read books for fun
-stayed up past 3 am for no discernible reason
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Whatever Else I Did This Week
Oh! On Wednesday Pei and I went to Women's Street, which is a super non-touristy and totally authentic place where lots of actual Chinese women buy their clothes. The only problem with it was that the clothes were, for the most part, ugly. You see Chinese people wearing kind of silly things, like a shirt made of two fabrics that clash with each other, and it doesn't faze you because hey, it's a Chinese person, and it's kind of cute that they tend to dress like refugees from the lunatic asylum. Today on the subway I saw a man dressed in nice slacks and what looked like leather business shoes, but when I looked for real I saw that they were, in fact, black leather business-shoe-shaped sandals with navy blue socks under them. Ahhhhh. But anyway, it's rather endearing in Chinese people, but realistically I know that I can't buy these kinds of clothing because a) I could never wear them in the States and b) they look pretty stupid on me anyway. If I dressed all cutesy like a Chinese person I'd just look like a huge overgrown 12-year-old. Whatever, Women's Street had some delicious street food so we were happy. That night we went for dinner with Jooree and Kim and their new roommate, and afterwards we got this amazing almond dessert, but the restaurant it comes from was so packed that there were no tables, so we talked the waitress into bringing it outside to us, and we ate it sitting under a tree and then just took the bowls back, which in my opinion was nicer than eating inside anyway.
Thursday was my last day of classes, so I spent the morning taking my last opportunity to bond with classmates and teachers. I'll probably hang out with my classmates some more next week, but I don't think I'll get the chance to see my teachers again and I loooooove them! They are sooo cute! So that was a little sad. But in the afternoon Pei and I went back to Ya Xiu to get our suits fitted, and that was pretty cool. Afterwards I went to the English Corner office to hang out with those guys a little bit, and they were looking at the receipt from my suit and reading the comments written in Chinese about my figure, primarily the part where the tailor wrote about how my butt stuck out. There are little diagrams that they circle for figure type, with stick figures that have lumps in different areas to indicate a hunched back, a beer belly, etc, and I totally got the "booty" one circled. Take that, Asians! I know you are jealous. Tomorrow I am going back to pick up the suit, so hopefully it turned out awesome!
On Friday I went with Pei to the Summer Palace, which is really near Bei Da, but I had never gone. It was insanely hot out, and we were both tired, and we climbed a big old hill at the Summer Palace and then were super tired and felt gross so we didn't stay long, just went home. I decided then that I didn't need to make such a huge effort to get to Beijing's other random historical palace/temple places, because when you've seen a few the rest get kind of boring, let's not lie. We're going to go to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen one more time, though. I think I was going to achieve something Friday afternoon, but then I took a nap instead. Also I tried about 5857829734589472389574392857 times to get in touch with the Indian Embassy to find out if my visa is ready yet because it really ought to be, but they haven't contacted me, and they are kind of a pain in the neck to contact because their phone always says it's busy or call failed or just rings and rings and rings and the one time I finally got an answer he wouldn't tell me anything because I didn't have my receipt number since my receipt was in my room and I was calling from elsewhere. It's been very frustrating, and they're closed on weekends, so I can't do anything about it until Monday. It had better all be managed nicely when I call on Monday, because I'm leaving the country on Saturday and kind of need my passport back. I still haven't registered my new residence since I have no passport, so I'm still technically living in my new apartment illegally, but it shouldn't be a problem unless I manage to get in trouble with the law within the next 7 days.
Today I woke up at 7 something to embark on a journey to the Liulichang art market with Pei Pei, my faithful shopping companion. I bought some arty things and we had some amazing tea and met an adorable tea-selling lady who we talked to for a long time before I realized I was late for meeting the other volunteers to head up to the migrant school. I hustled there and tried to call the girl in charge, but I couldn't get ahold of her, so I just went by myself, figuring they had left without me. When I got there, however, I found that none of the usual volunteers had come after all, although there were two new girls who came to help out, so we did painting and clay and musical chairs and it was pretty fun. There were little migrant babies today!!!! They were soooo cute and one was sooooooooo fat, I loved it. I played peekaboo with the babies and made faces at them until they laughed. It was super educational. Mostly today I just played with the kids and occasionally, while watching a couple of them play their little connect-5 game, abetted the smaller child a little bit. The little guys never spot the diagonal ones. I love my migrant kids! We took some group pictures because it was my last time, although I don't think we managed a single one where nobody looks kind of goofy. See for yourself:
In the evening I ate in one of the little restaurants on my street, where after 2 weeks I am still a novelty item. One of the guys came out of the kitchen on a break, and upon seeing me commented loudly to the waitresses "hey, we've got a jinfa!" (lit. a gold-hair) It annoys me when people talk about me in Chinese in front of my face, although fortunately I have a well-practiced "hey, I know what you're saying, buster" glare that I'm not afraid to unleash in appropriate situations. It depends on whether people are nice in the way they comment on my waiguoren-ness. Today at the migrant school the mother of one of the little babies was telling the baby "say hello to ayi ("auntie," a form of address kids use for grown-up women)! Ask her how her hair is so yellow!" The baby didn't say anything (small children tend to stare at me and clam up), but it was awfully cute. On the other hand, sometimes when I buy things and I ask how much they are, the salesperson won't even speak to me and will just hold up the number of their fingers, which I find slightly insulting. Even if my Chinese was terrible, at least you'd expect me to know numbers, right? Grah. Oh well, China isn't going to stop being horribly prejudiced and un-PC and completely into judging based on appearance any time soon, so might as well get used to it.
Thursday was my last day of classes, so I spent the morning taking my last opportunity to bond with classmates and teachers. I'll probably hang out with my classmates some more next week, but I don't think I'll get the chance to see my teachers again and I loooooove them! They are sooo cute! So that was a little sad. But in the afternoon Pei and I went back to Ya Xiu to get our suits fitted, and that was pretty cool. Afterwards I went to the English Corner office to hang out with those guys a little bit, and they were looking at the receipt from my suit and reading the comments written in Chinese about my figure, primarily the part where the tailor wrote about how my butt stuck out. There are little diagrams that they circle for figure type, with stick figures that have lumps in different areas to indicate a hunched back, a beer belly, etc, and I totally got the "booty" one circled. Take that, Asians! I know you are jealous. Tomorrow I am going back to pick up the suit, so hopefully it turned out awesome!
On Friday I went with Pei to the Summer Palace, which is really near Bei Da, but I had never gone. It was insanely hot out, and we were both tired, and we climbed a big old hill at the Summer Palace and then were super tired and felt gross so we didn't stay long, just went home. I decided then that I didn't need to make such a huge effort to get to Beijing's other random historical palace/temple places, because when you've seen a few the rest get kind of boring, let's not lie. We're going to go to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen one more time, though. I think I was going to achieve something Friday afternoon, but then I took a nap instead. Also I tried about 5857829734589472389574392857 times to get in touch with the Indian Embassy to find out if my visa is ready yet because it really ought to be, but they haven't contacted me, and they are kind of a pain in the neck to contact because their phone always says it's busy or call failed or just rings and rings and rings and the one time I finally got an answer he wouldn't tell me anything because I didn't have my receipt number since my receipt was in my room and I was calling from elsewhere. It's been very frustrating, and they're closed on weekends, so I can't do anything about it until Monday. It had better all be managed nicely when I call on Monday, because I'm leaving the country on Saturday and kind of need my passport back. I still haven't registered my new residence since I have no passport, so I'm still technically living in my new apartment illegally, but it shouldn't be a problem unless I manage to get in trouble with the law within the next 7 days.
Today I woke up at 7 something to embark on a journey to the Liulichang art market with Pei Pei, my faithful shopping companion. I bought some arty things and we had some amazing tea and met an adorable tea-selling lady who we talked to for a long time before I realized I was late for meeting the other volunteers to head up to the migrant school. I hustled there and tried to call the girl in charge, but I couldn't get ahold of her, so I just went by myself, figuring they had left without me. When I got there, however, I found that none of the usual volunteers had come after all, although there were two new girls who came to help out, so we did painting and clay and musical chairs and it was pretty fun. There were little migrant babies today!!!! They were soooo cute and one was sooooooooo fat, I loved it. I played peekaboo with the babies and made faces at them until they laughed. It was super educational. Mostly today I just played with the kids and occasionally, while watching a couple of them play their little connect-5 game, abetted the smaller child a little bit. The little guys never spot the diagonal ones. I love my migrant kids! We took some group pictures because it was my last time, although I don't think we managed a single one where nobody looks kind of goofy. See for yourself:
In the evening I ate in one of the little restaurants on my street, where after 2 weeks I am still a novelty item. One of the guys came out of the kitchen on a break, and upon seeing me commented loudly to the waitresses "hey, we've got a jinfa!" (lit. a gold-hair) It annoys me when people talk about me in Chinese in front of my face, although fortunately I have a well-practiced "hey, I know what you're saying, buster" glare that I'm not afraid to unleash in appropriate situations. It depends on whether people are nice in the way they comment on my waiguoren-ness. Today at the migrant school the mother of one of the little babies was telling the baby "say hello to ayi ("auntie," a form of address kids use for grown-up women)! Ask her how her hair is so yellow!" The baby didn't say anything (small children tend to stare at me and clam up), but it was awfully cute. On the other hand, sometimes when I buy things and I ask how much they are, the salesperson won't even speak to me and will just hold up the number of their fingers, which I find slightly insulting. Even if my Chinese was terrible, at least you'd expect me to know numbers, right? Grah. Oh well, China isn't going to stop being horribly prejudiced and un-PC and completely into judging based on appearance any time soon, so might as well get used to it.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Things My Wal-Mart in Beijing Has That Your American Wal-Mart Probably Doesn't
-Jellyfish
-Whole pig carcasses
-Garlic dish soap (I guess it kind of makes sense; you're just going to eat off them later so they might as well be garlicky)
-Connection to a subway stop
-Baby peeing in trash can
-One curious phenomenon in China that is found in Wal-Mart but also all over is the habit of requiring the ladies who give out free samples to promote a product to basically dress up as the product they're promoting. Not that the Lipton tea girls dress up as cups of tea or anything, but they wear bright yellow dresses the color of the Lipton box with company logos on them. I've never seen a person handing out samples who wasn't a) young and female b) dressed up to match the product packaging c) in a miniskirt and sometimes also color-coordinated go-go boots. I kid you not. I don't think I could deal with dressing up every day to be color-coordinated with, say, a bottle of Minute Maid, but I am not Chinese.
-"tasty tuna tidbits"...packaged like a candy and unrefrigerated, so I really don't know what they could possibly be like:
(I just got major deja vu thinking about blogging about tuna tidbits, but I'm pretty sure I've never done it before)
and conversely, Things Your American Wal-Mart Surely Has But My Beijing Wal-Mart Is Sadly Lacking:
-whole-grain bread
When I get home I am going to eat bread with so many grains you won't even be able to think about them all at once!! Living in China isn't the best for me nutritionally, I'm afraid.
-Whole pig carcasses
-Garlic dish soap (I guess it kind of makes sense; you're just going to eat off them later so they might as well be garlicky)
-Connection to a subway stop
-Baby peeing in trash can
-One curious phenomenon in China that is found in Wal-Mart but also all over is the habit of requiring the ladies who give out free samples to promote a product to basically dress up as the product they're promoting. Not that the Lipton tea girls dress up as cups of tea or anything, but they wear bright yellow dresses the color of the Lipton box with company logos on them. I've never seen a person handing out samples who wasn't a) young and female b) dressed up to match the product packaging c) in a miniskirt and sometimes also color-coordinated go-go boots. I kid you not. I don't think I could deal with dressing up every day to be color-coordinated with, say, a bottle of Minute Maid, but I am not Chinese.
-"tasty tuna tidbits"...packaged like a candy and unrefrigerated, so I really don't know what they could possibly be like:
(I just got major deja vu thinking about blogging about tuna tidbits, but I'm pretty sure I've never done it before)
and conversely, Things Your American Wal-Mart Surely Has But My Beijing Wal-Mart Is Sadly Lacking:
-whole-grain bread
When I get home I am going to eat bread with so many grains you won't even be able to think about them all at once!! Living in China isn't the best for me nutritionally, I'm afraid.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Shopping-induced Satisfaction!
Today I went with Pei to Ya Xiu Market to get suits made! We went around and picked out material and designs and got measured and bargained it down and had a pretty super time. I love shopping with Pei because she is so good-natured and silly that it keeps me from getting shopping stress. Yay! We went to a bunch of tailors, and ended up both getting approximately the same suit, 3 pieces (jacket, pants, and skirt) for $100 American. And it's going to be tailored to fit; beat that! We are going back on Thursday to have them fitted. See, I may be spending buckets of money in China but at least I am getting a lot of bang for my buck, right? Today I also bought long shorts and a skirt with lots of colors and a short denim skirt that seemed to be the only one that wasn't obscenely short but I had to bargain really hard for it because it's True Religion (which, for those of you who maybe aren't as up on your really expensive American fashion, is a really famous and expensive American brand) and the girls who were selling it to me were SO CUTE. They wanted a high price, and I gave them my highest price, and they wouldn't agree so I walked away, and as I walked further they called out lower and lower prices to me until they were 10 kuai above my asking price. I didn't want to pay the last 10 kuai (can't lose face!), but they were like come on come on it's just 10 kuai, give us 10 more kuai so we can go buy ice cream, don't you want us to have ice cream? And they were so adorable and had been so nice that I really did want them to have ice cream, but I didn't want to give in to pay the extra 10 kuai. I got it for my price in the end after we agreed to buy some more stuff, but I still felt a little bad. I wanted to get them ice cream!
Ya Xiu was so much fun that Pei and I had to tear ourselves away at the end. We were in this little stall that was full of clothes that were walking the fine fine line between AMAZING and ABOMINATION. They were so crazy that they were kind of awesome, and we sort of wanted to buy things but they were so expensive it was making us sad. Bu hao. Oh well, there are lots more cheap and wacky clothes still out there. Hooray!
Tonight we had chuanr night and went to this place where we ate lots of food on a stick, including (my immediate family members will appreciate this more than most, for Bill Cosby-related reasons*)...CHICKEN HEART! It was pretty good, really. Better than congealed pig blood on a stick, even. Jealous? Yeah, you know it.
*Start smearin' that Jell-O!
Tomorrow after class will be more shopping adventures with Rebekah and Pei Pei! We are going to scour every market in Beijing for the prettiest of clothes and the awesomest of bargains before we leave!
Ya Xiu was so much fun that Pei and I had to tear ourselves away at the end. We were in this little stall that was full of clothes that were walking the fine fine line between AMAZING and ABOMINATION. They were so crazy that they were kind of awesome, and we sort of wanted to buy things but they were so expensive it was making us sad. Bu hao. Oh well, there are lots more cheap and wacky clothes still out there. Hooray!
Tonight we had chuanr night and went to this place where we ate lots of food on a stick, including (my immediate family members will appreciate this more than most, for Bill Cosby-related reasons*)...CHICKEN HEART! It was pretty good, really. Better than congealed pig blood on a stick, even. Jealous? Yeah, you know it.
*Start smearin' that Jell-O!
Tomorrow after class will be more shopping adventures with Rebekah and Pei Pei! We are going to scour every market in Beijing for the prettiest of clothes and the awesomest of bargains before we leave!
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Nao le ban tian
To both my amusement and my annoyance, the good ol' Chinese government Internet censor has started blocking my blog again. I can still access Blogger.com to post, but it won't let me view the blog in its public form, nor do I have any method of reading the comments. So, please continue to post comments (it makes me feel so happy and important!), but be aware that I won't be able to read them for a little bit, so if it's anything I should know before I go back to the States you might just want to drop me an email or Facebook or whatever.
Speaking of Facebook, I've posted our homemade skin whitener commercial there, but for those of you who are not Facebookly endowed, I got a Youtube account for the sole purpose of putting it in this blog, so I hope you're happy.
We are pretty much amazing. Can't you see why I'm sad to leave these people? I just realized today that I only have 11 days left in China! As much as I'm excited to get home and see everybody, I also really don't want to leave. I'm so happy with my friends and my teachers and my classes and my neighborhood and my general life in China, and there are so many things I realized that I need to squeeze in before I go. For one, I have to get the ding dong Indian Embassy to finish processing my visa so I can have my passport back, since I can't register my new residence without my passport and it's the law that foreigners have to register all changes of address so the government can keep track of them. We waiguoren are tricky like that. I called the Indian Embassy the other day, and had a conversation along the following lines:
"Hello, I've got a question about my visa"
"Okay" [pause, unintelligible comment to another person in the office]..."Sorry, there's nobody here right now"
"But you're there! I'm talking to you"
"I'm afraid you'll have to call back tomorrow morning"
"But...but...ah, whatever"
That wacky Indian Embassy. I'm sure I'll get it out of them eventually, but I'm going to be a busy busy girl for the next 2 weeks. I made a list of all the places I still have to go (Summer Palace, Women's Market), things I still have to do (eat scorpion, get acupuncture), and things I still have to buy (Beida T-shirts, more pearls). On top of my touring/shopping schedule, I will no doubt be having a couple of farewell dinners/parties to work around next week, not to mention figuring out how to pack all the stuff I've bought in this wonderfully cheap country.
Note: If you were wondering, the title of this post means approximately "hustle and bustle for a long time." It's pretty much going to be my life theme for a lot of the immediately foreseeable future.
Speaking of Facebook, I've posted our homemade skin whitener commercial there, but for those of you who are not Facebookly endowed, I got a Youtube account for the sole purpose of putting it in this blog, so I hope you're happy.
We are pretty much amazing. Can't you see why I'm sad to leave these people? I just realized today that I only have 11 days left in China! As much as I'm excited to get home and see everybody, I also really don't want to leave. I'm so happy with my friends and my teachers and my classes and my neighborhood and my general life in China, and there are so many things I realized that I need to squeeze in before I go. For one, I have to get the ding dong Indian Embassy to finish processing my visa so I can have my passport back, since I can't register my new residence without my passport and it's the law that foreigners have to register all changes of address so the government can keep track of them. We waiguoren are tricky like that. I called the Indian Embassy the other day, and had a conversation along the following lines:
"Hello, I've got a question about my visa"
"Okay" [pause, unintelligible comment to another person in the office]..."Sorry, there's nobody here right now"
"But you're there! I'm talking to you"
"I'm afraid you'll have to call back tomorrow morning"
"But...but...ah, whatever"
That wacky Indian Embassy. I'm sure I'll get it out of them eventually, but I'm going to be a busy busy girl for the next 2 weeks. I made a list of all the places I still have to go (Summer Palace, Women's Market), things I still have to do (eat scorpion, get acupuncture), and things I still have to buy (Beida T-shirts, more pearls). On top of my touring/shopping schedule, I will no doubt be having a couple of farewell dinners/parties to work around next week, not to mention figuring out how to pack all the stuff I've bought in this wonderfully cheap country.
Note: If you were wondering, the title of this post means approximately "hustle and bustle for a long time." It's pretty much going to be my life theme for a lot of the immediately foreseeable future.
Monday, June 18, 2007
A Week That Went By Too Fast
I spent a lot of time this week recovering from last weekend's No-Sleep-Fest, wasting my days napping almost constantly and then not being able to sleep at night until unreasonable hours. It's a vicious cycle. I don't remember much from Monday-Wednesday...I went to Metro (think German Sam's Club) on one of those days and got a humongous container of peach juice (which I finished in about 1 day) and prepackaged sliced Gouda cheese(!) and chocolate and a fan to supplement my apartment's air conditioning, which unfortunately is only in the living room and doesn't affect my room very much. I had a heck of a time buying the fan, because I kept wanting other types of fans that were on display, but then they wouldn't have any more in stock, and they wouldn't sell me the display model, so the salesladies were trying to dance around the issue by directing my attention to fans that weren't out of stock (because like 2/3 of them seemed to be), commenting on how pretty they were so of course I wanted that kind. I found this to be at the same time delightfully evasive and also very silly, because a fan's prettiness is really not its important asset, and I told the salesladies as much. The fan I got in the end was decent, but it was probably my 4th- or 5th-choice fan after the ones I wanted more were sold out. Oh, China.
I decided to go on a quest to eat at all the sketchy little restaurants on my street, and with the help of my trusty pal Richard we discovered that the one right outside my gate is rather superb and a little more cleanish than it looks from the outside. A fly landed in our fish-smelling pork when we were almost done, and the waiter brought us a whole new dish of it which we were too full to eat, so I got a nice box of leftovers that made me very happy the next day at lunch. And dinner. Today we tried another little restaurant with Pei, and it seemed like the food was probably usually pretty good except the particular things we ordered. Everybody's else's food looked so tasty and ours was so sad! Oh well.
Thursday night was the big fundraiser party for Zigen Fund, which is the organization behind the migrant school that I volunteer at on weekends. The venue was really nice and the whole thing came off quite well, I thought. I was assigned a station at the welcome table, where my duty was basically to schmooze with people who came in. It was pretty fun, and a good outlet for my vast reservoirs of personal charm, of course. I think we netted about 10,000 RMB, which isn't so bad for an event run by extreme amateurs. Also our little informal choir did a short performance, which was fun. Go team! Feichang hao!
Friday night was Julie's last night in town, so we went out to the most ridiculous buffet everywhere. For 180 RMB (about $23 US), you get unlimited amounts of basically any kind of food you can think of. Sushi, sashimi, all kinds of seafood, dim sum, Taiwanese food, colorful salads, ox-penis soup, beef stomach, roast duck pizza, all sorts of crazy stuff, plus various juices, slushies, milkshakes, wine, etc, all included, not to mention a wild variety of fruits and desserts. It was insane. If I had known what a buffet it was going to be I wouldn't have eaten for like 2 days just so I could have room for one of everything. Seriously, it was ridiculous. Wooooo!
On Saturday I spent my afternoon volunteering at the migrant school. The school that a lot of students/teachers come from was having a field trip, so it was a small class. The woman I usually work with wasn't there, which was too bad, because I love her! Instead I was working with some young dude who apparently felt compelled to practice his English by relentlessly hitting on me, which was a little bit annoying. We didn't have much of a scheduled activity for the kids for a change, so we just took them outside and organized games for them. We played a little bit of Red Light, Green Light and then some of that kind of tag where only one person can move and if they tag you then you can tag people too but you can't move your feet, and I totally won a round despite my impractical shoes, so I felt super nimble because I'm pretty much a geezer compared to these kids. At night we went out to what is ostensibly the only Vietnamese restaurant in Beijing, which also happened to be slightly expensive, with rather small portions of completely unauthentic Vietnamese food (not that I know a lot about Vietnamese food but this is what my compatriots informed me) and the slowest service ever in the entire world. It was a silly time, but the rest of the night was good. We hung out around Houhai and rented a boat to go rowing on the lake. When we were waiting around debating boat rentals, a bird pooped on me. Eww. Actually it wasn't that bad...at least it didn't get in my hair. I thought it was kind of funny, really.
Rowing was super! It was me, Pei, and Richard, but there were only 2 oars and somehow the 2 people operating them could never go at the same speed as each other, so we were always going in circles, but oh well. Pei and I amused ourselves by singing loudly and not very well, to the great confusion of the Chinese people on other boats. There were a couple of times when Richard looked like he wanted to throw himself overboard, but fortunately this is China and no humiliating friends are as bad as the sketchy, sketchy waters of a Beijing lake.
Today the little international choir that I sang with at the fundraiser had a picnic at Beihai Park (to hang out together before most of the choir leaves China in the next month or so), and we all brought food and drinks and Christian brought a guitar and we sat on the grass and picnicked and sang and occasionally danced as well. This got a lot of looks as well as some Chinese people taking pictures of us, particularly because you're not really supposed to walk or sit on the grass in Chinese parks as far as I can tell, and there was even a little rope around the grassy area, but nobody yelled at us so whatever. Some people had brought music, so we sang all sorts of random songs until it was dark, when we marched out of the park singing the choir's arrangement of Goodnight Sweetheart in the most harmonious fashion. It was all kinds of fabulous.
That reminds me a little bit of some other time this week when I was walking down the sidewalk just outside campus listening to something really catchy on my iPod, and I was dancing a little bit as I walked and a man rode by on a bicycle and turned completely around to stare at the crazy waiguoren for a really long time and I was sure he was going to crash into a tree but he didn't. Which reminds me of another time when I was riding in a cab along the same road and I saw a man and a woman fighting next to a parked car with another man in it, and the woman was pushing the man and they were yelling at each other until the man got tired of being pushed, I guess, and went and laid down in front of the car so it couldn't go anywhere. I was quite curious as to what sort of situation it was, but unfortunately I couldn't hear/understand the contents of the argument. China is such a silly place.
I decided to go on a quest to eat at all the sketchy little restaurants on my street, and with the help of my trusty pal Richard we discovered that the one right outside my gate is rather superb and a little more cleanish than it looks from the outside. A fly landed in our fish-smelling pork when we were almost done, and the waiter brought us a whole new dish of it which we were too full to eat, so I got a nice box of leftovers that made me very happy the next day at lunch. And dinner. Today we tried another little restaurant with Pei, and it seemed like the food was probably usually pretty good except the particular things we ordered. Everybody's else's food looked so tasty and ours was so sad! Oh well.
Thursday night was the big fundraiser party for Zigen Fund, which is the organization behind the migrant school that I volunteer at on weekends. The venue was really nice and the whole thing came off quite well, I thought. I was assigned a station at the welcome table, where my duty was basically to schmooze with people who came in. It was pretty fun, and a good outlet for my vast reservoirs of personal charm, of course. I think we netted about 10,000 RMB, which isn't so bad for an event run by extreme amateurs. Also our little informal choir did a short performance, which was fun. Go team! Feichang hao!
Friday night was Julie's last night in town, so we went out to the most ridiculous buffet everywhere. For 180 RMB (about $23 US), you get unlimited amounts of basically any kind of food you can think of. Sushi, sashimi, all kinds of seafood, dim sum, Taiwanese food, colorful salads, ox-penis soup, beef stomach, roast duck pizza, all sorts of crazy stuff, plus various juices, slushies, milkshakes, wine, etc, all included, not to mention a wild variety of fruits and desserts. It was insane. If I had known what a buffet it was going to be I wouldn't have eaten for like 2 days just so I could have room for one of everything. Seriously, it was ridiculous. Wooooo!
On Saturday I spent my afternoon volunteering at the migrant school. The school that a lot of students/teachers come from was having a field trip, so it was a small class. The woman I usually work with wasn't there, which was too bad, because I love her! Instead I was working with some young dude who apparently felt compelled to practice his English by relentlessly hitting on me, which was a little bit annoying. We didn't have much of a scheduled activity for the kids for a change, so we just took them outside and organized games for them. We played a little bit of Red Light, Green Light and then some of that kind of tag where only one person can move and if they tag you then you can tag people too but you can't move your feet, and I totally won a round despite my impractical shoes, so I felt super nimble because I'm pretty much a geezer compared to these kids. At night we went out to what is ostensibly the only Vietnamese restaurant in Beijing, which also happened to be slightly expensive, with rather small portions of completely unauthentic Vietnamese food (not that I know a lot about Vietnamese food but this is what my compatriots informed me) and the slowest service ever in the entire world. It was a silly time, but the rest of the night was good. We hung out around Houhai and rented a boat to go rowing on the lake. When we were waiting around debating boat rentals, a bird pooped on me. Eww. Actually it wasn't that bad...at least it didn't get in my hair. I thought it was kind of funny, really.
Rowing was super! It was me, Pei, and Richard, but there were only 2 oars and somehow the 2 people operating them could never go at the same speed as each other, so we were always going in circles, but oh well. Pei and I amused ourselves by singing loudly and not very well, to the great confusion of the Chinese people on other boats. There were a couple of times when Richard looked like he wanted to throw himself overboard, but fortunately this is China and no humiliating friends are as bad as the sketchy, sketchy waters of a Beijing lake.
Today the little international choir that I sang with at the fundraiser had a picnic at Beihai Park (to hang out together before most of the choir leaves China in the next month or so), and we all brought food and drinks and Christian brought a guitar and we sat on the grass and picnicked and sang and occasionally danced as well. This got a lot of looks as well as some Chinese people taking pictures of us, particularly because you're not really supposed to walk or sit on the grass in Chinese parks as far as I can tell, and there was even a little rope around the grassy area, but nobody yelled at us so whatever. Some people had brought music, so we sang all sorts of random songs until it was dark, when we marched out of the park singing the choir's arrangement of Goodnight Sweetheart in the most harmonious fashion. It was all kinds of fabulous.
That reminds me a little bit of some other time this week when I was walking down the sidewalk just outside campus listening to something really catchy on my iPod, and I was dancing a little bit as I walked and a man rode by on a bicycle and turned completely around to stare at the crazy waiguoren for a really long time and I was sure he was going to crash into a tree but he didn't. Which reminds me of another time when I was riding in a cab along the same road and I saw a man and a woman fighting next to a parked car with another man in it, and the woman was pushing the man and they were yelling at each other until the man got tired of being pushed, I guess, and went and laid down in front of the car so it couldn't go anywhere. I was quite curious as to what sort of situation it was, but unfortunately I couldn't hear/understand the contents of the argument. China is such a silly place.
Friday, June 15, 2007
New Digs
If you should happen to be walking south on Yiheyuan Lu, and you pass the KFC outside the southwest gate of Peking University, go around behind the bank with the big red 24-hour-ATM sign, climb the fence, and cross the parking lot to the little alley in the back, you'll find yourself in a completely different world. This is a world populated by small dirty children gleefully eating food on a stick and shirtless men with dark leathery skin, incomprehensibly thick accents, and few teeth. The street is full of fruit stalls and vendors selling all manner of delicious street food. At night, it seems that the entire population comes out to congregate, chatting and relaxing together in the smell of roasting lamb. The sides of the street are lined with crowded little convenience stores and sketchy little restaurants, and if you walk down a bit, right before the slightly larger convenience store across from the print shop, you'll find one particular restaurant with a few dirty plastic tables outside. It looks sketchy, but you'll find that the food is not only harmless, but in fact amazingly delicious.
I would know, because this is the street where I live.
It is quintessentially China, and I am, to my knowledge, the one and only white person who lives there or even goes there at all, even though it's within spitting distance of the University and its many foreign students. Consequently, when I walk down my street, people tend to look at me as if I had two heads. When I ride my bike, they look at me as if I had two heads, tentacles, and a grapefruit for a nose. Who knew those wacky foreigners were even able to ride bicycles?
I've been spending a lot of time in my new digs since the rest of CIEE left, mainly because the last weekend so thoroughly exhausted me that I've been spending a lot of time in recovery. My new apartment is highly satisfactory, especially the GLITTERY BLUE SINK, which is without question the awesomest feature of the place. I'm also really excited to have a kitchen and a washing machine, although neither of them is blue and glittery. My apartment is further spiffed up with the light-up speakers handed down to me by Paul when he left, which are being put to excellent use in fueling my personal singalongs and dance parties, and which I plan to pass on to the new CIEE summer students when I leave. Share the love!
It took me a little while to get the hang of certain things...opening the confusing lock on my door, knowing where to put the trash when I want to take it out, remembering to turn on the hot water before I go to take a shower...but I'm living quite comfortably now. My roomie is in the states renewing her U.S. Permanent Residence Card, so I've grown dangerously accustomed to my solitary lifestyle of constant singing, silly dancing, and loudly talking to myself. I might have to tone some things down when she gets back.
I would know, because this is the street where I live.
It is quintessentially China, and I am, to my knowledge, the one and only white person who lives there or even goes there at all, even though it's within spitting distance of the University and its many foreign students. Consequently, when I walk down my street, people tend to look at me as if I had two heads. When I ride my bike, they look at me as if I had two heads, tentacles, and a grapefruit for a nose. Who knew those wacky foreigners were even able to ride bicycles?
I've been spending a lot of time in my new digs since the rest of CIEE left, mainly because the last weekend so thoroughly exhausted me that I've been spending a lot of time in recovery. My new apartment is highly satisfactory, especially the GLITTERY BLUE SINK, which is without question the awesomest feature of the place. I'm also really excited to have a kitchen and a washing machine, although neither of them is blue and glittery. My apartment is further spiffed up with the light-up speakers handed down to me by Paul when he left, which are being put to excellent use in fueling my personal singalongs and dance parties, and which I plan to pass on to the new CIEE summer students when I leave. Share the love!
It took me a little while to get the hang of certain things...opening the confusing lock on my door, knowing where to put the trash when I want to take it out, remembering to turn on the hot water before I go to take a shower...but I'm living quite comfortably now. My roomie is in the states renewing her U.S. Permanent Residence Card, so I've grown dangerously accustomed to my solitary lifestyle of constant singing, silly dancing, and loudly talking to myself. I might have to tone some things down when she gets back.
Monday, June 11, 2007
The Last Weekend
On Wednesday it was Jin's last night before she had to leave, so we all went out together to TGI Friday's and then afterwards there was this foreign student band playing at D-22 that Jacqui wanted to go to but when I got there they were done playing so we just walked home and got ice cream.
Thursday after class I went shopping on a fairly successful mission to buy things with silly English on them. It was a zillion degrees, and I ate like 3 ice cream cones over the course of the afternoon. Ice cream is like nature's air conditioning! Ahaha don't be surprised if I've gained weight this semester.
Thursday night (I think this was Thursday night; my memories are really muddled) I went out to dinner with Jacqui and Pei and Casey and we went for Xinjiang food, which was pretty tasty. The best part was when I was taking a big drink of water and out of nowhere I sneezed this MONSTROUS sneeze and I covered my mouth with my hand but it still didn't prevent me from kind of spraying Casey and Pei and it was so funny (that might sound mean but seriously it was pretty hilarious) and I was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe or swallow or talk I just had to laugh because it was soooo out of nowhere plus Jacqui was laughing (of course she was laughing, she didn't get sprayed) and when Jacqui laughs I can't help laughing too. Later that night we went to Pepper, which is kind of a chilling and chatting place, but if you're my CIEE friends then after a while you get tired of chilling and start dancing around everywhere and
making the fuwuyuan bemused and slightly uncomfortable, because what do you do with a horde of silly dancing people? Pepper has the best fuwuyuan; they're really friendly and adorable. Hen hao!
On Friday I don't even know what I did during the day...some packing, maybe? My schedule has been so weird recently that I'm all jumbled up. The only thing I can recall is that for dinner we went to Korean barbecue. Our table ordered a whole pig and a whole cow, and that was only like half of it. It's a really meat-heavy kind of food, but it's pretty fun because you grill it yourself on a griddle over this pit of hot coals that's set into the table. Mmmm. After dinner, we all went out to Studio 54, which is a club that was previously owned by Sue-Li's uncle, so her uncle has guanxi (read back a few posts if you forgot what that means) with the current owner, which allowed Sue-Li to pull some strings to arrange a special party for CIEE and co. A whole bunch of CIEE students and friends went, and for 100 kuai we could have all sorts of unlimited beverages, and we could bring our own music if we wanted to listen to something special and it was a pretty nice deal. We danced and played and drank and played and danced until around 2 am, when the unlimited-drinks-for-CIEE deal ended and we all went back to Pepper to hang out with our favorite fuwuyuan. They are the best! The one fuwuyuan Sky who is my particular pal was trying to teach me how to do that thing where you open a fan all in one swoop by flicking your wrist, and at first I kept getting it wrong and just throwing the fan at the floor by accident but then I learned how to do it right and now I use it to impress all my friends, hen hao!
We were at Pepper until really late, and then Eva and I decided we were hungry for sandwiches so when everyone else went home around 5:30 am we went to Lush (the American restaurant that's conveniently open 24/7) for like another hour and we ran into other CIEE students there and me and Eva and Sue-Li were there until like 6:30 or so and then we finally got a cab home but I didn't go to sleep because my roommate was leaving the next morning at 11 so I stayed up and talked to her and then went to sleep for like an hour and a half before waking up to help her with her luggage and send her off. I gave Quynh a little present as she was leaving and she was like you little jerk you know how huge my luggage is already! Mahahaha I'm sneaky like that. For reasons I don't recall, I didn't go to sleep after Quynh left either. I think I packed? I think the sleep deprivation has been affecting my memory. The remaining people on my hall all went out together for dim sum in the afternoon, which was delicious. The best part ever was when we ordered chicken feet and it was Vanessa's first time trying them and she would take a teeny little nibble and then make little whimpering noises and in the end she ate like 3 molecules of it and was like okay someone else can have the rest. If you've never had chicken feet before, they're not bad or anything, but they don't really have any meat on them. You just kind of eat the skin and then spit out the bones. It's a silly food.
Saturday afternoon I took a much-needed nap, and in the evening we went out to a super-fancy restaurant where the menu was all, like, lobster and truffle ravioli in a red pesto sauce and such. We got amazing gourmet food and a bottle of champagne because it was everybody's last night and it still only ran everybody $20-something American, on average. China rules. During dinner, the electricity went out for no reason, and it was kind of cool because the light was just from the candles on all the tables, and everybody was kind of confused, but we pretended like the lights were out on purpose and started singing Happy Birthday (you know like when they turn out the lights to sing Happy Birthday so you can see the candles on the cake), not that it was anybody's birthday, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. The waiters wished John a Happy Birthday on the way out, so I guess we were credible. Then we went and got mango ice cream! It was fabulous.
Saturday night was a lot more chill, because everyone was really tired and still had to finish packing and we just wanted to hang out with each other. We spent a while exchanging pictures from the semester and watching videos that we had taken back in the beginning. Jacqui, Pei, Richard, and I filmed our own little video that night - it was a commercial for skin whitening cream and it turned out kind of awesome. I'll see if I can post it on YouTube later. Pei played the part of the Chinese girl who is sad about her yellow skin, Richard played Pei's husband, Jacqui played a dermatologist, I played post-skin-whitener Pei, and a tube of sweetened condensed milk played the skin whitening cream. I was the only person who didn't end up getting condensed milk smeared on my face at any point, haha! Sleep deprivation will make you do these kinds of things.
I stayed up basically all night Saturday night as well because I didn't want to miss any hanging out with everybody, since they were all leaving Sunday morning. I only slept for one hour, from 5:30-6:30, and during that time Pei and Julie left! Boo. Fortunately they're just going to Hong Kong for a couple days and then coming back to Beijing some more. Hen hao!
CIEE had a bus leaving for the airport at 10:20 Sunday morning, so basically everybody left then or before then. An hour or two before the bus was leaving, Vanessa couldn't find her passport, and she was freaking out but we both prayed that it would turn up, and I was calling the last places where she had remembered taking it but they weren't answering and it wasn't turning up anywhere around her room but finally she found it in some random bag of papers that was packed away in her luggage and it was such a relief. People left soooo much stuff behind in the end, it was ridiculous. Paul gave me his speakers, which made me pretty happy because they're so much better than my tinny little computer speakers, so I'll have 20 days of good-quality music listening then I'll probably pass them on to some CIEE summer students or something. Share the love!
So Sunday morning half past ten the last of CIEE got on the bus and left for the airport, leaving just me and Matt, who accidentally booked a flight for Monday, and Richard, who isn't CIEE. We got a little lunch together and then I moved out too. Richard and I just took my stuff to my new apartment on foot (in retrospect maybe I should have gotten a taxi but I don't know how to approach my apartment by car because the walking route isn't driveable) and he went off to do homework and I was all by myself unpacking because my roomie was in Xi'an for the weekend.
Sunday night I was supposed to go out to dinner with Jon from my Kouyu class and other Kouyu classmates Saki and Maki and Saki's roommate because it was Jon's last night in Beijing, but it was Matt's last night too so him and Richard came along and Jon's friends came too but his friends wanted to eat somewhere far away but Matt had to be back on campus before too late to see his Chinese friend one last time so I wanted to eat close by and by the time Jon and his friends arrived we had already been waiting for a table at a Japanese restaurant and one had just freed up, but then they got angry and didn't want to eat Japanese and Jon and Saki and I just all wanted to eat together and be happy but there was no way to make everybody happy so I just ate at the Japanese place with Richard and Matt and everybody else went to the other place and I just went to meet up with them afterwards. We hung out by their restaurant for a little bit and then went once again to Pepper, where the fuwuyuan all greeted me like an old friend since I've been there like every night recently and I showed them my improved fan-opening skills and they were impressed and Sky showed us how to do a little magic trick with straws and it was a nice time but when it came time to leave and say goodbye to Jon, Saki started to cry a little, and today in Kouyu class we were talking about our weekends like we do every Monday and when it got to the part where Saki was telling about Jon leaving she started to cry again and I had managed to hold it together during all of the weekend's goodbyes but when Saki started crying in Kouyu it all just hit me that everyone was gone and I lost it too. I've met so many amazing people this semester and I just wish I had more time with them...I know we all live in the same country but America is so big and we're all so far apart and we'll never all be together again. Bu hao :( At least Pei and Julie and Kim and Casey are coming back to Beijing after they travel for a couple days, so I won't be totally CIEE-less for the rest of my time here...
Thursday after class I went shopping on a fairly successful mission to buy things with silly English on them. It was a zillion degrees, and I ate like 3 ice cream cones over the course of the afternoon. Ice cream is like nature's air conditioning! Ahaha don't be surprised if I've gained weight this semester.
Thursday night (I think this was Thursday night; my memories are really muddled) I went out to dinner with Jacqui and Pei and Casey and we went for Xinjiang food, which was pretty tasty. The best part was when I was taking a big drink of water and out of nowhere I sneezed this MONSTROUS sneeze and I covered my mouth with my hand but it still didn't prevent me from kind of spraying Casey and Pei and it was so funny (that might sound mean but seriously it was pretty hilarious) and I was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe or swallow or talk I just had to laugh because it was soooo out of nowhere plus Jacqui was laughing (of course she was laughing, she didn't get sprayed) and when Jacqui laughs I can't help laughing too. Later that night we went to Pepper, which is kind of a chilling and chatting place, but if you're my CIEE friends then after a while you get tired of chilling and start dancing around everywhere and
making the fuwuyuan bemused and slightly uncomfortable, because what do you do with a horde of silly dancing people? Pepper has the best fuwuyuan; they're really friendly and adorable. Hen hao!
On Friday I don't even know what I did during the day...some packing, maybe? My schedule has been so weird recently that I'm all jumbled up. The only thing I can recall is that for dinner we went to Korean barbecue. Our table ordered a whole pig and a whole cow, and that was only like half of it. It's a really meat-heavy kind of food, but it's pretty fun because you grill it yourself on a griddle over this pit of hot coals that's set into the table. Mmmm. After dinner, we all went out to Studio 54, which is a club that was previously owned by Sue-Li's uncle, so her uncle has guanxi (read back a few posts if you forgot what that means) with the current owner, which allowed Sue-Li to pull some strings to arrange a special party for CIEE and co. A whole bunch of CIEE students and friends went, and for 100 kuai we could have all sorts of unlimited beverages, and we could bring our own music if we wanted to listen to something special and it was a pretty nice deal. We danced and played and drank and played and danced until around 2 am, when the unlimited-drinks-for-CIEE deal ended and we all went back to Pepper to hang out with our favorite fuwuyuan. They are the best! The one fuwuyuan Sky who is my particular pal was trying to teach me how to do that thing where you open a fan all in one swoop by flicking your wrist, and at first I kept getting it wrong and just throwing the fan at the floor by accident but then I learned how to do it right and now I use it to impress all my friends, hen hao!
We were at Pepper until really late, and then Eva and I decided we were hungry for sandwiches so when everyone else went home around 5:30 am we went to Lush (the American restaurant that's conveniently open 24/7) for like another hour and we ran into other CIEE students there and me and Eva and Sue-Li were there until like 6:30 or so and then we finally got a cab home but I didn't go to sleep because my roommate was leaving the next morning at 11 so I stayed up and talked to her and then went to sleep for like an hour and a half before waking up to help her with her luggage and send her off. I gave Quynh a little present as she was leaving and she was like you little jerk you know how huge my luggage is already! Mahahaha I'm sneaky like that. For reasons I don't recall, I didn't go to sleep after Quynh left either. I think I packed? I think the sleep deprivation has been affecting my memory. The remaining people on my hall all went out together for dim sum in the afternoon, which was delicious. The best part ever was when we ordered chicken feet and it was Vanessa's first time trying them and she would take a teeny little nibble and then make little whimpering noises and in the end she ate like 3 molecules of it and was like okay someone else can have the rest. If you've never had chicken feet before, they're not bad or anything, but they don't really have any meat on them. You just kind of eat the skin and then spit out the bones. It's a silly food.
Saturday afternoon I took a much-needed nap, and in the evening we went out to a super-fancy restaurant where the menu was all, like, lobster and truffle ravioli in a red pesto sauce and such. We got amazing gourmet food and a bottle of champagne because it was everybody's last night and it still only ran everybody $20-something American, on average. China rules. During dinner, the electricity went out for no reason, and it was kind of cool because the light was just from the candles on all the tables, and everybody was kind of confused, but we pretended like the lights were out on purpose and started singing Happy Birthday (you know like when they turn out the lights to sing Happy Birthday so you can see the candles on the cake), not that it was anybody's birthday, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. The waiters wished John a Happy Birthday on the way out, so I guess we were credible. Then we went and got mango ice cream! It was fabulous.
Saturday night was a lot more chill, because everyone was really tired and still had to finish packing and we just wanted to hang out with each other. We spent a while exchanging pictures from the semester and watching videos that we had taken back in the beginning. Jacqui, Pei, Richard, and I filmed our own little video that night - it was a commercial for skin whitening cream and it turned out kind of awesome. I'll see if I can post it on YouTube later. Pei played the part of the Chinese girl who is sad about her yellow skin, Richard played Pei's husband, Jacqui played a dermatologist, I played post-skin-whitener Pei, and a tube of sweetened condensed milk played the skin whitening cream. I was the only person who didn't end up getting condensed milk smeared on my face at any point, haha! Sleep deprivation will make you do these kinds of things.
I stayed up basically all night Saturday night as well because I didn't want to miss any hanging out with everybody, since they were all leaving Sunday morning. I only slept for one hour, from 5:30-6:30, and during that time Pei and Julie left! Boo. Fortunately they're just going to Hong Kong for a couple days and then coming back to Beijing some more. Hen hao!
CIEE had a bus leaving for the airport at 10:20 Sunday morning, so basically everybody left then or before then. An hour or two before the bus was leaving, Vanessa couldn't find her passport, and she was freaking out but we both prayed that it would turn up, and I was calling the last places where she had remembered taking it but they weren't answering and it wasn't turning up anywhere around her room but finally she found it in some random bag of papers that was packed away in her luggage and it was such a relief. People left soooo much stuff behind in the end, it was ridiculous. Paul gave me his speakers, which made me pretty happy because they're so much better than my tinny little computer speakers, so I'll have 20 days of good-quality music listening then I'll probably pass them on to some CIEE summer students or something. Share the love!
So Sunday morning half past ten the last of CIEE got on the bus and left for the airport, leaving just me and Matt, who accidentally booked a flight for Monday, and Richard, who isn't CIEE. We got a little lunch together and then I moved out too. Richard and I just took my stuff to my new apartment on foot (in retrospect maybe I should have gotten a taxi but I don't know how to approach my apartment by car because the walking route isn't driveable) and he went off to do homework and I was all by myself unpacking because my roomie was in Xi'an for the weekend.
Sunday night I was supposed to go out to dinner with Jon from my Kouyu class and other Kouyu classmates Saki and Maki and Saki's roommate because it was Jon's last night in Beijing, but it was Matt's last night too so him and Richard came along and Jon's friends came too but his friends wanted to eat somewhere far away but Matt had to be back on campus before too late to see his Chinese friend one last time so I wanted to eat close by and by the time Jon and his friends arrived we had already been waiting for a table at a Japanese restaurant and one had just freed up, but then they got angry and didn't want to eat Japanese and Jon and Saki and I just all wanted to eat together and be happy but there was no way to make everybody happy so I just ate at the Japanese place with Richard and Matt and everybody else went to the other place and I just went to meet up with them afterwards. We hung out by their restaurant for a little bit and then went once again to Pepper, where the fuwuyuan all greeted me like an old friend since I've been there like every night recently and I showed them my improved fan-opening skills and they were impressed and Sky showed us how to do a little magic trick with straws and it was a nice time but when it came time to leave and say goodbye to Jon, Saki started to cry a little, and today in Kouyu class we were talking about our weekends like we do every Monday and when it got to the part where Saki was telling about Jon leaving she started to cry again and I had managed to hold it together during all of the weekend's goodbyes but when Saki started crying in Kouyu it all just hit me that everyone was gone and I lost it too. I've met so many amazing people this semester and I just wish I had more time with them...I know we all live in the same country but America is so big and we're all so far apart and we'll never all be together again. Bu hao :( At least Pei and Julie and Kim and Casey are coming back to Beijing after they travel for a couple days, so I won't be totally CIEE-less for the rest of my time here...
Some things
I wrote down some things a couple days ago to post when I had the internet back, and now I do, so here they are:
"I haven’t had internet for all of June, and it makes my life so different. No blogging, can’t check my precious precious email, can’t check the weather online, etc. I love the internet. I’m not entirely sure what I do with the time I would otherwise spend online, but I think a great deal of it is spent napping. Also doing crossword puzzles. And homework!
So, what have I done in June worth noting? I went and volunteered at the migrant school again, which was great, as always. We learned about “o” and “u” sounds, and the past progressive tense. With the kids we had two groups, one who made paper airplanes and had a contest to see what kind of airplane flew the farthest, and one who made paper butterflies by painting one half and then folding and unfolding it to make symmetrical designs. I made a paper airplane and a butterfly myself, and it was highly educational.
Last Friday I went shopping at the Silk Market and bought tons of awesome stuff. I got myself (get ready for it) ...shiny gold sneakers! They are sooooo sweet. I also spent like an hour just chatting with the girl I bought the sneakers from and the other salespeople in that area. It even got me a good price later when I bought a suitcase from the girl across the aisle. Most people in my program brought one or two big suitcases for the semester, and I had only brought one little one, but I’ve gotten enough stuff this semester to warrant another suitcase, so I figured I’d get a big one because they’re dirt cheap. My new suitcase is nearly twice the size of my old one, and is a Samsonite (or at least a really good fake), and cost $12 American. You’ve gotta love China.
Also this past Sunday, I went out for pizza with my Kouyu class because my program is ending soon so they had a farewell party (although I’m still sticking around so it’s a little weird). Everybody got me presents, which I was totally surprised by. Asians are a lot bigger on giving presents for every occasion, though, and my class is half Japanese/Korean people. My teacher gave me a vase and flowers that are both made from cow bone – the hollowed-out bone is the vase, and the flowers are carved from bone. My roommate thinks it’s kind of gross, but I think it’s pretty cool. It smells a little cowish though, but whatever.
The only un-fun thing about that night was when I randomly got all these crazy welts on my torso...out of nowhere, I was all swollen and splotchy and kind of freaking out and worried I was having some kind of allergic reaction, and it went away after I took a cool shower but the next day it came back and I was all trying to figure out how to get medical care and whether I should go to a hospital and what is covered by my insurance in China but then I didn’t get anymore weird welts so I guess there’s nothing to worry about? Silly times.
The other main thing in my recent life is that I’m moving...my program’s housing only lasts until the 10th, but I’m staying until the 30th, so I found a classmate of a classmate whose roommate moved out but they had already signed a lease for a year so they were looking to sublet for any possible length of time, so on Tuesday I went to check the place out. It’s really close to campus (esp. since I have a bike) and it’s the same rent as my on-campus housing but like 10 times nicer. It’s a beautiful apartment (with a kitchen!!! feichang hao!) and the girl who lives there is really chill. Her name is Christiane and she’s from Brussels! And the apartment has wireless internet so my life can be normal again. And my bathroom sink is (seriously) made of blue glitter. I’ll take a picture sometime, because it is amazing.
6/7-
Today on the bus I saw a man who looked exACTly like Mr. Meo; offering further proof that Katie Meo is Asian. That's right."
"I haven’t had internet for all of June, and it makes my life so different. No blogging, can’t check my precious precious email, can’t check the weather online, etc. I love the internet. I’m not entirely sure what I do with the time I would otherwise spend online, but I think a great deal of it is spent napping. Also doing crossword puzzles. And homework!
So, what have I done in June worth noting? I went and volunteered at the migrant school again, which was great, as always. We learned about “o” and “u” sounds, and the past progressive tense. With the kids we had two groups, one who made paper airplanes and had a contest to see what kind of airplane flew the farthest, and one who made paper butterflies by painting one half and then folding and unfolding it to make symmetrical designs. I made a paper airplane and a butterfly myself, and it was highly educational.
Last Friday I went shopping at the Silk Market and bought tons of awesome stuff. I got myself (get ready for it) ...shiny gold sneakers! They are sooooo sweet. I also spent like an hour just chatting with the girl I bought the sneakers from and the other salespeople in that area. It even got me a good price later when I bought a suitcase from the girl across the aisle. Most people in my program brought one or two big suitcases for the semester, and I had only brought one little one, but I’ve gotten enough stuff this semester to warrant another suitcase, so I figured I’d get a big one because they’re dirt cheap. My new suitcase is nearly twice the size of my old one, and is a Samsonite (or at least a really good fake), and cost $12 American. You’ve gotta love China.
Also this past Sunday, I went out for pizza with my Kouyu class because my program is ending soon so they had a farewell party (although I’m still sticking around so it’s a little weird). Everybody got me presents, which I was totally surprised by. Asians are a lot bigger on giving presents for every occasion, though, and my class is half Japanese/Korean people. My teacher gave me a vase and flowers that are both made from cow bone – the hollowed-out bone is the vase, and the flowers are carved from bone. My roommate thinks it’s kind of gross, but I think it’s pretty cool. It smells a little cowish though, but whatever.
The only un-fun thing about that night was when I randomly got all these crazy welts on my torso...out of nowhere, I was all swollen and splotchy and kind of freaking out and worried I was having some kind of allergic reaction, and it went away after I took a cool shower but the next day it came back and I was all trying to figure out how to get medical care and whether I should go to a hospital and what is covered by my insurance in China but then I didn’t get anymore weird welts so I guess there’s nothing to worry about? Silly times.
The other main thing in my recent life is that I’m moving...my program’s housing only lasts until the 10th, but I’m staying until the 30th, so I found a classmate of a classmate whose roommate moved out but they had already signed a lease for a year so they were looking to sublet for any possible length of time, so on Tuesday I went to check the place out. It’s really close to campus (esp. since I have a bike) and it’s the same rent as my on-campus housing but like 10 times nicer. It’s a beautiful apartment (with a kitchen!!! feichang hao!) and the girl who lives there is really chill. Her name is Christiane and she’s from Brussels! And the apartment has wireless internet so my life can be normal again. And my bathroom sink is (seriously) made of blue glitter. I’ll take a picture sometime, because it is amazing.
6/7-
Today on the bus I saw a man who looked exACTly like Mr. Meo; offering further proof that Katie Meo is Asian. That's right."
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