I've started a five week section with uni - so I'm finding myself a little tied up with paperwork, planning, and powerpoint. In addition to that, I've been investing a lot of time in ecoexpo... trying to get the website up and running. More on that another time.
Last time I talked about basketball... Here's the photo of the guys I was playing with, down on the local court. I didn't go this Sunday, I used excuse number 18.
I've been asked a few times if I've eaten anything weird yet. Given that "wo bu chi hun de" (literally, i don't eat meat) then, no, not really. However, for your viewing pleasure, I've captured a few of the local delicacies in the following photos. I'm sure they'd all taste like yummy.
Seahorses, beetles, snakes, grubs.
big flying thingies. Locusts?
Mmmm, yummy. Scorpions.
Mmmm, yummy. More scorpions.
Personally, I've avoided such delicacies. My diet has consisted of school food, which isn't terribly exciting most of the time. Unless they make bing - these great bready pancakes with spring onions... they're so good. I cook for myself when I can be bothered, but, to be fair, it's cheaper to eat out. By the time I buy a decent selection of vegetables, I can stop in at the local restaurant on the way home from school and have a much better feed, for less money, and not have to do any dishes! I wonder if they do takeaway?
I was asked again for a photo of my bike... but, um, yeah. I haven't taken one yet because I'm lazy, and it's really not that attractive. Maybe I can think of a really creative photo to take. I'll ponder that one. In the meantime, imagine me on a little silver girl's bike, pedaling like there is no tomorrow to sit in behind the rickshaws. This morning I got to school in three minutes! I hate to think what might happen if the bike collapses on me at those speeds. Ah well. I wonder if cycling in Beijing is considered an extreme sport and thus not covered by travel insurance?
Enroute to school, we pass by a works site. The other day we noticed the men in yellow helmets were setting to work there, building away happily. The following series of photos shows their progress. Now, I know the notion of watching men build a wall is akin to watching paint dry to most people. But seriously, this is impressive stuff. The first photo I took on my way home from school one night, noticing how much progress they'd made that day.
The next morning, I rode past and noticed that overnight, thousands of bricks had arrived and been unloaded and stacked.
I could hardly contain the anticipation (can one contain anticipation? how about excited anticipation? I wonder.) of what I'd find later in the day when I returned! I was rather pleased when I found the following view.
The following day, I returned especially, because, despite it being Saturday, I needed to know what was happening. Behold - the Great Wall of Beiyuan!
I read somewhere that on one section of the Great Wall, there were over a million people building at the same time. That seems to be the done thing here - employ a massive crew to get a job done as fast as possible, then move onto the next one. It certainly makes a change from home, where I believe Queen St in AKL is to be ripped up for a month (or was that months, plural?).
This week, in Glen's English class, we're learning about direction and placement. On Monday, we started with left, right, up, and down. On Tuesday we introduced on, under, and over. Beside and behind are still to come. I'm working on a new powerpoint children's book using these words, but i'm far too fussy when it comes to doing the drawings...
Speaking of placement, I located our apartment and such on google earth - if you're interested, send me an email and I'll send you the little locater file. Admittedly, this may well be more exciting for me than for anyone else.
I'm all setup on skype now too - so if you want to chitchat sometime, flick me through your details in an email and I can arrange something with you. Skype is cool, like a fox. Foxes are cool.
I've been making french toast in the mornings, with this great bread, called bimbo - it has red bean paste swirled through it, so it's very tasty. but I'm getting a little tired of the process - it's a little too much to deal with in the mornings, every morning. Today I'm going to investigate making my own muesli - because I've only seen it for sale in one place here, and it was so expensive, I wanted to cry. I'll keep you updated on that... (I didn't ACTUALLY want to cry, by the way - just to clarify that.)
Blogger, bicycle, and basketball. | March 18 2007, 23:44 Ok, so to use blogger now, I had to upgrade to their fancy new version. The catch? It thinks that it is a clever version. It detects that I am in China... It puts all of the headings and links in Chinese characters. Is there an option to convert it back to English?! no. Charming. So forgive me if I delete my entire journal, or, I hate to think what else.
Today, I purchased a bicycle... of sorts. I had to negotiate (well, actually, Mark, our Chinese friend from upstairs, did the negotiating) but, I ended up with a delightful bicycle for 99yuan, a little under NZ$20. I had to take it directly to the cycle repair man on the corner, despite it being a brand new bicycle. He tweaked it a little, and sold me a lock. All up, it cost one dollar. China is ace.
Following the Bicycle buying experience, I went with Mark to play some basketball down at the local court. Every Sunday, a group of around fifteen guys gathers to play some social bball. They're very good. I'm not. In fact, I think, during the hour or more I was there, I got the ball in the hoop about twice. Clearly it was cold, I was tired, the wind was weird, I'm in China and that means the physics of bball are all different, and probably written in Chinese... *ahem*. But anyway - I played for a while, then decided I wanted to ride my bicycle again, so I went home.
Due to the popularity of the last photopost, I've put another one up. I'll try to write a little more about what the pictures are of though. The last post ended close to home - so we'll start off from there...
Yesterday I decided I'd go to the 25th floor of our building to see what I could see, really only expecting to see another mountain, to see another mountain, to see another mountain. This is the view looking South from our building, towards the centre of Beijing. Keep in mind that we're about 30km out from the centre. If you squished Beijing into Christchurch, where I'm living is equivalent to a few hundred metres East of The Palms mall. The view you see here continues for the 30km into the centre... block upon block upon block of apartments.
Lo and behold - I did see a mountain! Far off in the distance is a set of mountains upon which is built the great wall. Most people visit it at a place called Badaling, though I've heard about a 19km stretch near a place called Simatai... supposedly it's pretty flash and makes for a good day's hiking. Anyway - This view is basically looking North from our building, where you can see more apartment buildings, just like our one. How fun.
This is the gate to our complex. We have little guards. They're very serious all of the time, and everyone treats them pretty bad - but we discovered that we can make them smile and look happier about life if we say hello to them. We like making the little guards happy; they have a crap job. They're all really young, and we're wondering if they do this in preparation for military service or something. Maybe they just didn't do particularly well at school. Oh well.
This is the gate to another complex. In the background is the strange chimney thing that has a mystery function. In the foreground there is one of the funny market ladies. They sell junky kiddy stuff to the primary school kids who live in the area. Sometimes we see adults shopping there too, but I can't quite figure out what they buy. Maybe they just stop for a chat. They like chatting here in China.
This is a road. I'd like to say it's a major road, but I don't really know; we're off the map. It's not far from our building. Items of interest include the many many bicycles, lined up in storage for the day, while the owners have bussed to work. The blue cart is one used by the street-cleaner ladies. To the left of that you can see a sweet potato vendor.
The same sort of thing, from a different perspective.
I decided this lady's name was Sally. She is selling sweet potatoes. Each potato weighs about half a kilo, is roasted, and sort of smoked, until it's really super tender, then put on top and kept warm. They're asking a hefty 2yuan for each one - that's about 40c; China is so cheap that it has a way of making you feel a little guilty each time you buy something.
It's hard to go hungry around here; food is everywhere. This guy has sticks of fruit, dipped in toffee. The red ones are Haws, the pink are strawberries, and the orange ones are madarins. They do Kiwi, orange, and pineapple as well. They're usually about 4yuan. (Do the math, that's two sweet potatoes... or 80c.)
On Saturday I went to Zhongguancun with Selina. (Selina works for the company that is organising everything for us here. She's ace.) Zhongguancun is a famous market specialising in electrical goods. This photo is on the second floor of five, getting slightly less busy as you ascend. Over the road, there is another building of five floors. Each floor is epic in size - at a guess I'd say 500mx300m. Above those five floors is another five, consisting of more specialty shops with better products. It was here, on the tenth floor, that I spent almost three hours bargaining for a Nikon D80 camera. I bought it in the end, saving about a thousand off of the NZ price. I also bought a printer, and assorted other bits. It's utter madness inside, as you can gauge from the picture. You get asked every few steps if you want to buy something, with salespeople grabbing your arm and trying to lure you in with their "low" prices and broken english. We had a fantastic time there, despite getting stuffed around over a circular polarising filter that was scratched. We went for lunch at a really nice Japanese restaurant. We had a starter of Yellowfin Tuna ngiri, then a huge bowl of seafood noodle soup, and a plate of lots-of-chilli vegetables. It cost me $12 for the both of us. China is ace.
This is outside Zhongguancun - Despite how glitzy it looks inside, it's the same old China outside... boxes of stuff delivered by cycle, rickshaw, and dodgy old vans with doors that don't really close very well.
And the last thing I expected to see...? NZ Natural.
Ok, so, we're having internet issues. I'm here at school, just thought I'd throw a few photos up... because I haven't got a lot of time to write an entry. I'll try to get something typed up to post tomorrow... For the meantime - enjoy the pictures...
This is my desk, in my room.
And this is my bed. ooooo, it's about as soft as a... rock.
This is looking out my window the other night.
This is also looking out my window, but on sunday. They LOVE their fireworks.
The morning after. It looked like this... everywhere. Literally, everywhere.
This is the Kindergarten I'm working in.
And this is Zhong Yi - (Middle One). My other class is Zhong Er (Middle Two).
Driving in from the airport, it all seemed a little surreal; surely we're not in china... are we? even now, twenty four hours in, we laugh about being stuck in china town, unable to find a way out into western civilisation...
At first glance, this could be any other city. The difference lies in all the little oddities lingering on the side of the road. Obervations of today include: Old folks sitting around on little stools, playing cards. Countless workers down under the footpath, hauling cables along underground tunnels to more workers further along, their rhythmic chanting echoing out onto the streets. Grim-faced people roasting sweet potatoes in forty-four gallon drums mounted on the back of bicycles (which incidentally, taste amazing... (the potatoes, not the bikes). Scaffolding, constructed from wooden logs and wire, towering high above the footpath. Cars weaving their way through the cycle lanes, tooting their horns at one another, at bikes, and stray pedestrians. Nine million faces turning to look at us, their faces lighting up and grinning at being greeted with "Ni Hao!"
Our appartment is in Beijing - about 30km North of the centre. We live in a suburb called Bei Yuan - North Garden. Though, there isn't a lot in the way of garden. I suspect it's the small patch of grass outside my window, complete with a temple. I'll get some pictures up before long... It is a three bedroom apartment, with lounge, dining, kitchen, bathroom, and two almost balconies. One of the rooms resembles a shoebox, so the girls are sharing the largest room and using the box as their office.
We are all teaching at Donald Kindergarten, about fifteen minutes walk from the apartment. It is an American style Kindergarten, with a strong emphasis on English. I've not taught four year olds before, so I have a lot to learn. I'll write more about the teaching once I've actually done some. The kids are incredibly friendly. Today I spent an hour or so with each of my two classes. The children love speaking the English they know - so continually ask me what my name is, and ask me how i am. In one class, I had a child give me a jar of seeds and ask me what it was. I told him the English, then another kid asked, holding up a different jar. Within a minute, I had almost every child shoving little glass jars of assorted chinese herbs in my face, pulling my top, and speaking furiously fast mandarin. Good times.
Today's adventure included a trip to the local hospital for what I thought was a fairly standard physical. The girls, though, were horrified at how invasive their one was... It's great to be a guy in China. Seriously, I get treated VERY differently to the girls... almost every question is directed at me. "What is your name? What is her name?" hahaha, love it. Also while at the hospital, we witnessed a man solving road-rage issues... using a baseball bat. Then a security guard comes running over to bash him with a wooden chair... quality entertainment. Tomorrow we're off to Tianan'men Square. We decided we needed to go see some things before we start any study. The adventure continues...
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