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.