I'm not exactly sure where I left off from in my last post. I'll start with a week ago today. It was my friend Christina's birthday. So a group of us went to Houhai to celebrate. We found a small bar called Huxley's. Their slogan was "Shut up Just drink", which we all found amusing. While out, I met some of the other foreign students that other TBC people have been making friends with. I ended up talking to a kid named David for most of my time out. He's been to China a few times before and is pretty excited to be back. Before midnight, I left with Kathleen, Lorie and one other girl because we all had things to do in the morning.
Wednesday morning I met with my tutor and then had lunch with her. I really enjoy our tutor sessions and I feel that they're really helping. The rest of Wednesday was uneventful. Then Thursday rolled around and nearly all of TBC went out to Cinco de Drinko at Saddle Cantina. Adriene, Michaela and I were buddies for the night and after one margerita at Saddle, we decided to bounce because it was too crowded. We stopped in at Smugglers to chill out for a bit then went over to Butterfly to dance and get french fries. Butterfly was nearly deserted so we had a lot of fun. There were a few locals in there too and about two or three of the boys were good dancers and we had a lot of fun watching them. One came over to dance with us, but he wasn't one of the talented ones and I'm pretty sure it's because he was just drunk.
Up until this point it had been a pretty fantastic night, but then we climbed into a cab and our driver turned around to tell us all that we were very pretty. At first it was funny, but we then became very concerned that he kept staring with this goofy, eerie grin on his face at whoever happened to be talking. We became even more alarmed when we no longer were able to recognize where we were and he began to have a conversation with someone on his cell phone (this was after he tried to sneak taking a picture on his phone). Luckily, Michaela eventually saw something familiar and we pulled over nearly immediately. We all got out of the car (cabbie included) and bid an awkward farewell. As he pulled away I had to resist every fiber in my body to avoid breaking out into a run. After venting and comparing notes, we figured out that we had his license number and we all wanted to do whatever possible to report him.
Friday was a relaxed night in for me: I watched two Chinese movies and then went to bed. Saturday Michaela, Adriene and I went shopping near Tien'anmen Square. I ended up getting two Pashmina scarves and some smaller bags plus a couple other knic-knacs. We then explored the area for a while longer then headed back to campus. After dropping off our new treasures, we went to dinner and then I spent another quiet night in. Sunday was spent completely on chores. I did Chinese for about five hours, occasionally interupted by breaks to hand-wash some laundry. I then met my tutor around 7:30 to practice speaking and dictations. After doing some more homework, I got to bed at the early hour of 11:30 pm.
Monday was pretty uneventful and now it's Tuesday again and a bunch of people are planning to go out tonight for Kerri's birthday. As of right now, I'm seriously considering joining them. First I have to finish posting and do some Chinese before making that a definite commitment. The rest of the week is looking pretty exciting too. Tomorrow we're going on a fieldtrip for religion and then on Friday I'm meeting my host student for lunch before going to volunteer with a Chinese student named Jackie at a local community center to teach English. And then Saturday marks two months being in China. It seems impossible that I've been here that long, or that I have so little time left. I hope I'm able to look back on this experience when it's all over and can say that I took full advantage of it. I suppose, if nothing else, I've become very good with a pair of chopsticks and my Chinese is maybe at the level of survival.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
All quiet in the eastern hemisphere
So, my appologies on it being more than a week since I last wrote. The week itself was pretty uneventful. I went to class, I did homework and that was pretty much it. Friday night though I finally went out, which was much overdue. I actually happened to just fall into plans. I had spent most of the night talking to Adrianne and Michaela and had just gotten back to the room when my roommate, Lara, invited me to go out with her and some other TBCers since I had just been saying earlier that I haven't been out in a while. We went to meet up with people who had already been out for a while so I grabbed my bottle of baijiu (the stuff that's 65% alcohol) which had about a quarter of it left and had a little bit on the way there.
Our first stop was Paddy O'Shea's, an extremely overpriced Irish pub. A few people bought drinks, but inevitably we decided to head over to Smugglers which is more bang for your buck. We ran into people outside finishing their 3 kuai beer, bought at the street vendor, so I finished off the baijiu before heading into the bar. I mingled for a while since there were quite a few TBCers and I wanted to make sure to say hi to everyone. I eventually ended up at a table with Lara, her boyfriend and his russian friends, Z (who's actual name is Zehar minus any spelling error I may have just made), Anastasia and two others whose names I didn't catch. Lara wandered away to talk to Lara and I ended up leaving with her boyfriend and the russians to find an atm and somewhere else to hang out. We drove around for a while in search of an atm (the russians had cars!!! :) yay for not having to pay for a cab) then went to a bar long enough to figure out it was too pricey and about to close in 30 minutes anyway. We stopped off at a convenience store for some snacks and a bottle of tequila then came back to TBC to hang out in Lara's boyfriend's room. It was nice. We just chilled and talked and Z made me drink more...apparently he didn't think I was drunk enough. I also tried anchovies for the first time. Not my favorite thing, but not as bad as they smell.
Quick side note - Z was friggin' tall! I'm guessing 6'5" at the least. And Anastasia was really sweet. I found it funny when she asked if I had a boyfriend and I said no. She corrected me by saying not yet. I just had to laugh because I'm not really looking, but a lot of people seem to be preoccupied about the whole significant other thing, no matter what country they're from. All in all it was a fun night except for the fact that we ran out of power in our room so trying to get ready for bed was a mite bit tricky.
Saturday was uneventful. I did laundry, went to the bank to get some more money and payed for the power. I also even started on my homework. You may remember that this was the day that Kathleen and I were supposed to hang out with Lily, our new Chinese friend, but she called having to cancel because she was sick. I went to lunch with Adrianne and pretty much just lounged around. In the evening I borrowed my roommate's copy of Gossip Girl Season one and ended up watching it until nearly three in the morning.
Sunday brought an early morning. I was up at 7:30 a.m. to get ready for meeting at 8 to go to the great wall. We didn't actually leave until 8:30 a.m. because punctuality is not of high value to some people. The pièce de résistance, we got lost while being pursued by a man who was obviously trying to scam us. After much complaining, frustration and attempting to figure out a new plan of action, we gave up. I decided just to come back to campus because I had quite a bit of homework and a few of the others decided to go to the Forbidden City. I did homework, took a nap, met with my tutor, watched a documentary then finished Gossip Girl (I think I'm addicted now!), going to bed around 3:30 a.m.
Getting up today was rough for obvious reasons. I stopped off at the stadium store before class to grab some Coke, hoping for a caffenine boost. Class was good, as always, despite the quiz AND dictation that we had. I really really like my chinese class because A) I enjoy Chen laoshi B) the dynamic in our class is really good and C) I think I just like learning languages in general. I'll be sad if and when the classes get rearranged (technically both intensive classes are too big so they are making a third one and some of us will be moved to the other class) because whether or not I stay in the class, it'll be different. After class I had lunch with Tiffany, Matt and Martina. I hadn't actually gotten to really talk to Tiffany or Matt in a while so it made me happy. Then I went to the library to get some homework done, came back to the room to do more homework, checked e-mail, did more homework, napped, finished off most of my homework, went to eat then talked to mom. Now I'm here and after this, I'll be going upstairs to talk to Adrianne and finalize stuff for faxing about class selection. I don't have a whole lot planned for the week because school work is keeping me busy, but if that changes, naturally you'll get to read about it later. Until then!
Our first stop was Paddy O'Shea's, an extremely overpriced Irish pub. A few people bought drinks, but inevitably we decided to head over to Smugglers which is more bang for your buck. We ran into people outside finishing their 3 kuai beer, bought at the street vendor, so I finished off the baijiu before heading into the bar. I mingled for a while since there were quite a few TBCers and I wanted to make sure to say hi to everyone. I eventually ended up at a table with Lara, her boyfriend and his russian friends, Z (who's actual name is Zehar minus any spelling error I may have just made), Anastasia and two others whose names I didn't catch. Lara wandered away to talk to Lara and I ended up leaving with her boyfriend and the russians to find an atm and somewhere else to hang out. We drove around for a while in search of an atm (the russians had cars!!! :) yay for not having to pay for a cab) then went to a bar long enough to figure out it was too pricey and about to close in 30 minutes anyway. We stopped off at a convenience store for some snacks and a bottle of tequila then came back to TBC to hang out in Lara's boyfriend's room. It was nice. We just chilled and talked and Z made me drink more...apparently he didn't think I was drunk enough. I also tried anchovies for the first time. Not my favorite thing, but not as bad as they smell.
Quick side note - Z was friggin' tall! I'm guessing 6'5" at the least. And Anastasia was really sweet. I found it funny when she asked if I had a boyfriend and I said no. She corrected me by saying not yet. I just had to laugh because I'm not really looking, but a lot of people seem to be preoccupied about the whole significant other thing, no matter what country they're from. All in all it was a fun night except for the fact that we ran out of power in our room so trying to get ready for bed was a mite bit tricky.
Saturday was uneventful. I did laundry, went to the bank to get some more money and payed for the power. I also even started on my homework. You may remember that this was the day that Kathleen and I were supposed to hang out with Lily, our new Chinese friend, but she called having to cancel because she was sick. I went to lunch with Adrianne and pretty much just lounged around. In the evening I borrowed my roommate's copy of Gossip Girl Season one and ended up watching it until nearly three in the morning.
Sunday brought an early morning. I was up at 7:30 a.m. to get ready for meeting at 8 to go to the great wall. We didn't actually leave until 8:30 a.m. because punctuality is not of high value to some people. The pièce de résistance, we got lost while being pursued by a man who was obviously trying to scam us. After much complaining, frustration and attempting to figure out a new plan of action, we gave up. I decided just to come back to campus because I had quite a bit of homework and a few of the others decided to go to the Forbidden City. I did homework, took a nap, met with my tutor, watched a documentary then finished Gossip Girl (I think I'm addicted now!), going to bed around 3:30 a.m.
Getting up today was rough for obvious reasons. I stopped off at the stadium store before class to grab some Coke, hoping for a caffenine boost. Class was good, as always, despite the quiz AND dictation that we had. I really really like my chinese class because A) I enjoy Chen laoshi B) the dynamic in our class is really good and C) I think I just like learning languages in general. I'll be sad if and when the classes get rearranged (technically both intensive classes are too big so they are making a third one and some of us will be moved to the other class) because whether or not I stay in the class, it'll be different. After class I had lunch with Tiffany, Matt and Martina. I hadn't actually gotten to really talk to Tiffany or Matt in a while so it made me happy. Then I went to the library to get some homework done, came back to the room to do more homework, checked e-mail, did more homework, napped, finished off most of my homework, went to eat then talked to mom. Now I'm here and after this, I'll be going upstairs to talk to Adrianne and finalize stuff for faxing about class selection. I don't have a whole lot planned for the week because school work is keeping me busy, but if that changes, naturally you'll get to read about it later. Until then!
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