Happy birthday Alain + Qingdao here I come again!

Again, missed out the week days, it's hard to remember to carry my camera everywhere. But I still manage to get away whenever I like really, I'm determined to enjoy my time here and not get dragged down. So in that spirit, went out to Alain's birthday on Wednesday night after teaching, met him and the crew at KTV, I really forget how much I love KTV after I haven't been for a while. Gotta learn some Chinese songs though. Ended up getting home at 2, rode my bike there sober but tired, had a great night, so nice to be able to have the independence to do that whenever I feel like. Birthdays are pretty common here as you might expect, and where there's birthdays, there's cake! Tiramisu this time, went down a treat.

Coming soon: my trip to Qingdao! Going there this Saturday, it'll be the first time I've visited since living there for 5 months in 2009, it'll be a very special trip for me. I won't have time to visit my old school, I'll do that on a different trip soon just on my own, but going there with a bunch of friends on Saturday, going to explore a few old haunts. I'm totally pumped! :)

The next day, Sunday. Went to IKEA with a friend, which was absolutely huge, dwarved the Adelaide store, 3 floors. Still enjoyed the cheap hot dogs. But it was the first time I'd been to an IKEA outside of the Adelaide one, and it got me thinking, so for the rest of the day I felt really down. I'm feeling like there are lots of highs and lows in my life, it's easy to get up, but also really easy to get down. Despite having lots of friends, I have only known them for a short while, and we'll probably all go our seperate ways at the end of this semester, at least for a while, so it's actually surprisingly easy to feel alone. But I guess that comes with the territory. Being that I don't have very much direction at all at the moment, it's very easy to worry about that direction, so I need to keep convincing myself it's the right one. But before I start sounding too emo, I've been feeling a lot better lately.

My Excellent Saturday - part 2



Last Saturday was so good it deserves two photos. Even though I was really tired, I had no choice but to go out for Hannah's birthday. Good thing it was totally worth it, we had pizza, cake, beer shots, and this place had great music, was so keen for KTV after this. Found my second wind, and kept insisting to everyone, "this is just fantastic. Seriously!" "Yeah... I know, I'm here too, haha." Amazing how I can seem like good friends with so many people after having been in Beijing for a matter of mere weeks, but it's something that I'm really treasuring. Highlight of my night: cheese! You have no idea how much I miss that stuff.

My Excellent Saturday - part 1

So, stayed out until nearly 5 at pub golf, then woke up at 8:30am to go on a trip to the Summer Palace organised by the Buddy Program of Tsinghua. Surprisingly enough I wasn't hungover at all and barely tired, in fact I had an iced coffee and was buzzing all morning telling people "the weather is so nice today!" I even took my jacket off and sat in the sun for a while, ate a sandwich and looked out over the lake. So nice. Then of course I started crashing, was pretty tired but still absolutely loving life, was just lucky enough to have one of those days where you feel really good, that might have helped cancel out the lack of sleep

The Lost Week + Pub Golf

It's already been two weeks since I updated this? My sense of time is getting warped, what with never-ending things that need to be done. Things that won't be covered in the next few posts in detail but are still very interesting:

1) It's been 20 degrees here most days this week, I've even worn just a t-shirt sometimes. Remember, it snowed last week. They say that Beijing doesn't have Spring and Autumn, there's just Winter and Summer, and it certainly seems that way to me. Loving it, though.

2) I got a job teaching English, 3 evenings a week, which has left me with even less time, but on the other hand I am earning some decent money

So that, plus study, basically occupied last week. So naturally, I was fairly keen for the weekend, and what better way to celebrate than a round of pub golf, organised by one of the language students here. Each pub is a hole, and to get par you drink what the scorecard tells you to. I got considerably below par. Above is our group photo, in front of Helen's (fast becoming the new local). Was great timing to be doing this on the same night as the Engi Pub Crawl, it let me feel a little bit of a connection to home strangely enough

Snow in Spring

Woke up this morning, went on facebook, someone posted that it snowed last night. "Pfft, no way, it's not that cold." Looks out window: WHAT. Frolicking time. Bikes and trees outside the apartment neatly laced in snow, apparently there was more but I woke up late at 10:30 so a lot of it had melted. Even worse, it was snowing heavily at midnight last night and I chose to stay in and study for the first Saturday in like forever so I missed it! I've never seen snow actually falling before. But on the bright side, I am finally not sick, and stand a chance of catching up to my study requirements (yay!). Waking up with snow outside, and being warm and comfortable inside, is a very nice feeling

Guitar!

Bought a guitar today! 450 kuai, about $80, for a new guitar, pretty decent quality too. I signed up to the guitar club with my buddy James, we're going to go to lessons on Saturday together, then practice Chinese afterwards. 'Buddy' means he got assigned to me by the buddy program of Tsinghua, he's helped me sort a few things out so far, and he's really keen on helping me learn Chinese, which is great, I always want to practice with more native speakers. Also super keen ot learn some songs in Chinese, and having something to do in my room other than study and bu around on the net. Maybe I'll upload a video of my singing one eventually :)

Man I'm tired right now. Just to illustrate that, I went out last night to a pub quiz at a bar called Lush, and after it finished at 10 I actually went home and slept. That was on one of the corners of this intersection, the main one in Wudaokou, the local drag of bars and shops. Just behind me is the subway station. At least I'm not hungover today, but I've been sick for ages, now I'm in that stage of getting better where you're not actively sick anymore, you just feel drained. My body is probably trying to tell me something. Still very much overawed about how much work I'm going to need to do to catch up to my classmates/improve my Chinese to where it needs to be. Sigh. In the meantime, I'm trying to enjoy the little things like pretty cityscapes

A taste of Beijing nightlife

Just to give you an idea of how awesome clubs in Beijing can be, and what I've been doing most weekends, this is Mix of the famous duo Vics and Mix, just across the road from the Teppanyaki restaurant. It has three dancefloors, this was the main one I think, so confusing to find your way from one to the other though. We managed to bargain to get entry for our whole group for $6 each, but inside a bottle of water cost $5, which one of my friends actually bought, I made the perilous journey outside to get one for 50c. Needless to say, I didn't buy any actual drinks, but I didn't feel like it at the meal. Going out in Wudaokou has made me get used to extremely cheap/free drinks anyway. The nightlife there, near Tsinghua, is pretty good too. I've been taking full advantage so far :P

PS. I'm not the biggest fan of this song, but the drop is amazing.



'Teppanyaki' is Japanese for 'kick ass'



I really wasn't focusing on making the best use of my camera this night, because I was busy eating as much as physically possible. I actually felt quite ill the next day as a result, but I'd still say it was worth it. They cook the food right in front of you on that stove, using spatulas like wands, it's pretty impressive. All you can eat, anything you want on the menu, and all you can drink sake, beer, wine etc. My highlight would be scallops, fried in the shell with a garlic and butter sauce. Pretty expensive (at about $30) but I've been looking forward to this for 3 years since I was here last, and even though I didn't know it, I booked the exact same restaurant!

Silk Market

Ok, so now I think things are back in order. Hard to put time aside to update this blog, so I'm kind of doing it in large chunks, but it's still getting done. I don't have any classes on Thursday, and for some reason I decided to go out on Wednesday night, so although I was planning to study that wasn't happening while I was hungover and sick (this is what I mean by 'still adjusting to study requirements'). So instead I went shopping in the Silk Market with some friends to do something "productive". 5 floors of mainly clothes, shoes and pearls. A few of my friends got tailor-made suits for around $100, I might give that a go if and when I need a suit. I got a pair of shoes, a jade necklace, some pearl necklaces, a wristband and a t-shirt for about $90, so I was pretty happy.

798 Art District

One of many street sculptures in the 798 Art District, these were actually the highlight of the whole area. It's an ex-industrial area that now has a bunch of galleries instead. It actually feels like a lot of other things in China: they needed a world-class art district, so they've kind of just shoved a whole lot of art into one place and hoped that it works, which it doesn't really, when combined with the fact that so many places here are still being built, and are just not presentable in a world-class way. But I think even that says something about China, they want to develop in every way possible but are still clearly finding their feet. That said, there was some great stuff here. I actually went here the day after KTV (but felt fine!)

My room!

It's about time I let you all see where I'm actually living, I actually need to spend more time here studying and sleeping, even after 3 weeks of classes I'm still adjusting to how to divide my time most effectively/smartly. You may be able to see above that I've put post-it notes up around my room to try and encourage me to learn new vocab, makes me seem like an excellent student I know but not there yet. I'm on the third floor, with not too bad a view, I mostly just see the other apartment block across from mine, they're 11 stories tall, and for the foreign students there are 6 buildings, we have seperate accomodation to local students, which is actually kind of annoying, I'd love to have a Chinese roommate. But I'm enjoying the privacy of my own room and my independence. I've made it pretty homey, feels like a good sanctuary.

Taoliyuan canteen, the second-largest canteen on campus, of which there are about 14 I think. Your standard meal here will cost about $1, and are surprisingly not terrible. I eat most of my meals with other people, there's always someone to catch up with or classmates to go with, since we're all going to be eating at the same places anyway

KTV



First KTV session, surely many more to come. As seems to be happening these days, someone said "apparently there's some people going to KTV tonight, let's go too" and in that way, about 60 people came to this massive room, so there weren't many drinks to go round but I was too busy singing myself, although I did go out afterwards and got 5 free drinks cards from Wu club, they play great music there too actually. Highlight of the night: singing "Already Gone" Kelly Clarkson

Remember how I met Gerard, the Sino-European investor who's father was a Kuomintang ambassador? He invited me and Hannah out to dinner at his socialite friend's house, Elisabeth Doudinot de la Bossiere, a French lady who has lived in Beijing for 20 years and still doesn't speak any Chinese. There were about 8 of us and Hannah and I were the only non-French speakers, which was a little awkward. But we did get to spend the evening with the above gorgeous French girls (ignoring the strange expression on Stephanie's face), and got to drink Spanish wine, I never thought I'd have so many chances to drink red wine in China

Just because surprising Manwei at midnight wasn't enough, and because everyone loves a good banquet, we went upstairs at one of the canteens that actually has nice food that you pay more than $1.50 for. Meals like this where you share the various dishes are the best, so social and lively, and others invariably get full before I do, I ate far more than was natural this night. I didn't drink much though, so far I've almost exclusively been able to drink free alcohol, thanks to the deals at bars around here and being bought drinks, but that's a double edged sword. I'm actually sick right now so I need to rest up, easier said than done though :P