IT'S SNOOOOWIIIINGGGG! So Felix told me it was going to snow this weekend and I didn't believe him because it's too frikkin early BUT it happened! Last night was Halloween and most of my friends went to the Art District for the Halloween in one of the old factory buildings. Instead of going because I was too lazy to go that far and it was like Y120 to get in but I helped them do their makeup! Yeen and I decided we were going to hang in Li's room with her bottle of vodka which she's been trying to get rid of for a month. lol. We were there for about an hour before Tim decided to come with his friends. We ended up sitting in the conference centre in the dark drinking and chatting for about an hour before Li suggested we all go clubbing. I was ready to sleep by then! :P Anyways they wouldn't take no for an answer so we all made our way to the south gate of uni. There we stood around for eating street food. It's so random that after about 10, all these trolleys just set up on the side of the street and everyone just stands around eating skewers. YUM! Then we all got into 2 taxis and set off for Bling which is about 25mins away. hmmm..none of us had costumes. But that's ok, we were going casual. Clubbing in a tee,jeans and sneakers is probably the most comfortable I've ever been!!! No preparation, no makeup, no sore feet, no worries, just daaaaance! :) It was heaps of fun! Heaps of people were dressed up there, heaps of guys dressed up as girls, heaps of skanky chinese chicks. :) I think one of things I find most entertaining about going clubbing is watching all the foreigners pick-up the local chinese. Chinese girls are sooo naive, ok maybe not all of them but the ones I see are, they just think every foreign guy is like their ticket out of here, that all of them are like rich, successful and what they've been waiting for their entire life. At the same time, foreign guys are SO cocky. What sums this up nicely is a classmate of mine, he was like, the best pick-up line for Chinese girls are "I'm a Canadian." T___T It's really interesting seeing what the guys do and really interesting seeing what the girls do. There are alot of like old, balding, nerdy looking dudes who go up to all the young girls to try and get their number. It's quite hilarious. Then you'll see some chinese girl grinding against one of them. *shudders*.

So we're at Bling dancing and at about 4am, Li points out that it's snowing outside. So all of us run out in our tees and run around in the snow for awhile. It was sooo coool...snowflakes falling on my head...! That's a first time for me. I was sooo happy. weeeeee. I swear the security must've thought we were all insane. My excuse is well, this would never happen back at home! :P I went skiing in yr11 and it was fake snow! :P We went back in for awhile but then we all got hungry and decided to head off to Maccas. Some things don't change even when you're in another country lol (Btw, no one calls it Maccas here, no one understood me for the longest time, they all call it McDees..random). While walking out to the main road, we had a SNOW FIGHT! OMG...so funnnnnnn and so cold but it was worth it. I LOVE SNOW! :P I'm pretty sure I lost feeling in my both hands. Then when we got back into the taxi and it was really warm, my hands had that burning feeling as they're warming up. Scaryyy!

I got up today at 2pm...o dear. Ran to the window and saw my uni covered in snow. weeeeeeeee. It's soo pretty, could see people building snowmen and having snow fights! Dug out like my thickest turtleneck and wandered outside to take it all in. ahhh...it was so nice. Went out for my breakfast/lunch/dinner and turned into a human icicle. Note to self, buy a hat, earmuffs, boots and gloves tomorrow! Maybe a waterproof down jacket at the same time. :P Then I'm all set for the Beijing Winter!

On Friday night, I had hotpot at this place recommended by my Listening teacher with a few of my classmates. It was pretty good. We had to wait an hour to get in, at first that sounded really painful. But they had this waiting area with seats and they served you soy milk, fruit, peanuts, haw flakes, popcorn, prawn crackers and all these random snacks while you were waiting. You could also play cards! I taught them how to play Big2, I thought everyone knew how to play. Guilio got really full and he was ready to leave without actually eating dinner. When we finally got a seat, it was because Felix went up to the staff and said "Can you find us a table? The foreigners getting angry *points to Guilio who's happily eating his popcorn* and he wants to leave!" A second later, we were whisked off to our table. Interesting tactic. :P

On Saturday I went to the Military Museum in the morning which was interesting. I was quite surprised it was free considering you have to pay for absolutely everything here and in touristy spots, they charge you per attraction in additional to a general admission fee. Then we headed over to 前门where I had this crepe ice-cream thingy and 点心 at this restaurant with terrible service. We walked over the Tiananmen and saw the flag being lowered and then the whole place lit up which was nice.

 
*Waiting for hot pot. yummmm!

*Our aprons at Hot Pot! Great idea! :P

*This is 前门. I think. :P *My icecream crepe thingy with Oreo icecream! YUM!

*Tiananmen all lit up at night. First time I've seen it like that!

*Felix and Guilio are all ready for their Halloween party! 

*The moment we ran out of the club and it began snowing!!! Yes we are all in tees! I love it! :P

*Mucking around. 2nd photo is me going spastic because I'm that excited. 

*The view from outside my window when I got up. It's not that heavy but i's niceeee!

*The library..with the 2 snowmen. keke. *View from the lift area, I love snow covered treetops! :P 

 

Last Friday we had a group singing activity! Everyone was really hesitant to get into it at first because the chinese songs were really weird but it was nice. Everyone got into it at the end! The teachers were teaching us to sing and they all had great voices! The teachers put pingyin on the lyrics and they were explaining what the songs meant line by line. I think it's kinda nice that Chinese songs have meaning unlike their English counterparts. My least favourite song was this Mongolian folk song and it literally sounds like that horrible screech i'm used to my mum listening to. It was called 敖包相会. We also sung 北京欢迎你, the overplayed song for the Olympics. I actually quite like it, I don't really remember hearing it otherwise.

Friday night I went with 屯bar with the Aussie girl Cherie and a few of her friends for Ladies Night. Free entry for chicks and free cocktails 9-12. The Aussie guy and his classmates as well as Antonella joined us later on. The cocktails were rather...dodgy. I guess you can't really expect much if they are free right. It was quite fun. I saw some Italian girls from my class there and they were absolutely wild. They were dancing on stage with the DJ and then I saw one of them violently making out with some guy, I thought she was about to eat him.

Saturday I tutored my Chinese baby in the morning. Still trying to find a reason to get rid of them. He is driving me insane...I don't think I'm a very good teacher either. arghhh. Then I went with some people to the Beijing Zoo clothing market to show them around and it was sooo crowded. For dinner, I met up with Guilio and Laura and went to this restaurant near our school to splurge on Beijing Duck. yummmmm...love that stuff. To be honest, I actually think Sydney restaurants do it better which is saying something. hmmm..but it was still good. I was actually hoping for a nice night in, I was really full and the thought of getting into bed was niceee. I got a call on my way home and everyone was heading out to Vics or Mix to club. T___T Needless to say I went along and had a blast. It felt just like clubbing in Sydney without the girls(miss you guys), less sleazy and better drinks! I tried a flame drink for the first time. I've never seen it before. It was like a shot and they light it up and hand you a straw. Then you dunk the straw in and suck it up. It was cool! The toilets were absolutely awesome. You went in and this woman hands you toilet paper and then holds the door shut for you (as there are no locks) then you come out and they open the tap and then hand you a paper towel after. That's service for you! I guess it also keeps the toilet clean, so there wasn't like puke everywhere. :P We had Maccas afterwards at like 5am, ahhhh just like Sydney. Nothing like greasy food while you're sobering up. The music in the club was waaaayyyy too loud, i went home and my ears were ringing. Twas abit scary!

I slept 3hrs and then woke up to meet Guilio and Grace to go to '798 - The Art District'. It's a place full of hundreds of little galleries as well as cafes. I loved it! It was soo nice to just wander through them all. I didn't quite get to all the places and I was there for about 5hrs. There's this British guy in my class who used to work in one of the exhibition galleries there organising events and explaining art to foreigners and it came up in conversation today that we went and really had no idea where we were going or what we were looking at (some of the time), he said he can organise for someone to give us a tour. weeeeee. I think we will definitely be going again! :P Guilio has it in his head that somehow after I hung out with the Aussies, I sound more Australian? He was imitating me throughout the day. Impossible!

The rest of Sunday was spent catching up on sleeep! This morning Antonella and I woke up at 7.50am, somehow we had both managed to snooze through our alarm. By some miracle I made it to class 5mins late! Love living this close. :P

In class today, we were learning the word "毛病" which means 'problem' but I always thought it didn't have a good ring to it. So the teacher asked one of the Italian girls, "如果你电视有问题，你这么跟师傅说?" - If your TV had a problem, what would you say to the TV fixing dude. She goes "我有...毛病!" - I have problem (with myself). Anyways Grace and I just started pissing ourselves laughing at our desks...and trying to be subtle about it because it was so slack. I know it was really mean but I think when you use it in a person context, you're saying there's something like wrong with the person, like mentally? I don't know how to explain it.  >__<

Next weekend is Halloween, apparently it's quite big here with the foreigners. Quite excited to be celebrated my first Halloween. Haven't quite decided if I'm going to have a costume. lol

*that's our class singing! *It was K style with the TV...hehehe. I think that song we sung must've been from awhile ago. XD The song was called 朋友。

*Grace and Suswati really getting into it! :P

*Antonella and I at Tun Bar with our free cocktails. *Aussie, Aussie, Belgian!

*Flame drinkssss...but you can't see the flame here.:(


*798 goodness. Couldn't take photos in most galleries but I love the picture on the top left! *Guilio and I mucking around the "art" - ie rusting old steel tube. hehehe.

*Enough said. XD mm..yum?

Take it easy!

Last friday we met some of the Chinese students and we had to ask them questions to get to know them. It started off with a performance from each class. The other International class sang 光良-童话. We made Suswati from our class play John Lennon - Imagine on the guitar. The chinese classes had a rep each singing a song with their lyrics on their mobiles. They were really good. Speaking with the Chinese partner was soooo hard. T___T Suswati and me shared a girl, she's 18 and she studies Chinese literature(i think). There were alot of words we didn't understand so we had to get her to explain alot. :( Then she asked me what kinda of work I'm in. I had the world's hardest time explaining physiotherapy because I don't think it's very common in the Eastern world. She had no idea what I was on about. She was very polite about it though. :P

On Saturday, i went to see Tiananmen and the Forbidden City. It was rather overwhelming and abit surreal. First time there and the place looked like so much grander in real life. I'd only ever seen the place in photos. To think that that place has soo much history behind it. It was amazing! It took a couple of hours to walk through the place, taking random photos. The whole place has been restored recently for China's 60th birthday so it looked great. It was clean, I think they repainted the details on the building roofs and stuff.

Saturday night I met up with the Aussie guy and an Aussie girl for drinks! omgggg...i miss Australia. I miss not having to explain myself! I miss hearing "no worries". We went to Touch9 which is this Korean bar with food and then Lush Bar which is co-owned by an Aussie and has awesome cocktails and I didn't get home till like 2am and by then, I was freezing my ass off as I walked home. The weather has been a little crazy in the last couple of days. Winter is coming and the thickest thing I had was a hoodie. I have no idea what I was thinking when I was packing my suitcase here. I brought way too little. It did give me more of a reason to shop like a mad woman yesterday. The Aussie guy and I were talking about how we don't have enough clothes for this weather so we went to the clothing market thingy about 15minutes from our uni. I actually like the stuff there because it's all different, it's not too expensive and it actually fits me. Unlike the Beijing Zoo clothing market. I'd have to slice off my shoulders, one set of ribs and hips before I fit into anything in there. T_T Depressing! I'm still pretty crap at bargaining. I feel sorry for them when I have to cut their price too much even though I know they're probably still making a huge profit. So I bought this thick winter jacket and she told me $540 and I was like...WTH. So I said "$200" and she was like "WTH - no way, get out of here!" so then i felt bad so I offered her like "$250" and she pretty much took it straight away. Anyways I figured that if they accept your offer too quickly, it's way too cheap(obvious to some people, not to me >_<). Whenever I got with my friends and they bargain, we always walk a good 10m before getting called back to buy the item. So as the afternoon wore on, we got better (we think). lol. I'm glad I managed to buy 2 jackets because at the beginning I couldn't find anything and we were convinced we were both going to freeze to death because we refused to dress asian. lol. Asian stuff is just ....too hectic. O.O

We've just discovered that the place we eat at for lunch has dumpings! 50 for Y22 (~A$3.50) so we've been having that everyday. I could eat dumplings forever. So no more rice. Last 2 days we just had dumplings, fried pork, deep fried mantou with condensed milk and fried eggs & tomato. So good! haiiii...

This afternoon I made myself sit down and fill out my preferences for hospitals next year. It's due in about 2 weeks but I've been putting it off for like a month. *sigh* It really made me not want to come home. I'm not ready to face the working world yet or the real world. Scary stuff. Is this anxiety normal? I hate growing up sometimes!

*The Chinese girl we met in our meeting the local student session! *Guilio, Grace and I at Japanese! So good!

*Us drinking flavoured soju. I love that stuff! Note the bottles!
 
* In front of Tiananmen. *Tim and Felix trying to join the Chinese tour group, following the flag. XD

*We <3 China. (kindof) lol.

*One of the many gates in the Forbidden city.

*My "margarita" at Lush Bar. I refuse to believe it's a proper margarita because it's not in a margarita glass. It was a plastic pearl milk tea cup with a fat straw and salt around the plastic rim. Random.Still good though. Like a big alcoholic slushee! :P

I met an Australian in the cafeteria today!! I was quite excited! The cafeteria is full of 4 people table placed together. There was this guy sitting next to him and from what I could hear of his conversation, I thought he was Australian but i didn't say anything. Almost at the end of lunch, he like turns to me and goes "excuse me, I don't mean to be nosy but is that an Australian accent?" and I'm like "yeeee...I was wondering the same about yours!". He's from Melbourne, taken a year off work to travel and he's already done South East Asia. He's pretty much the first Aussie I've met and it was soooo nice hearing an accent from home. I've had enough of European and American accents. haha. We were talking about how we get bagged out for saying certain things. Like the Canadian guys laughed at me because I said 'mozzie' in reference to a mosquito. He said to his friends that he was 'going to hit the sack' and his friends were like 'you're going to hit what?! a sack?'. HAHAHA.

My blogs these days aren't really complete with a toilet anecdote. If you guys get sick of them, just say so. Well my toilet started to look blocked up yesterday, the water was receding really slowly.....like really slowly. We didn't even put anything down there! We knew it was going to block up sooner or later. Shortly after I get home this afternoon, there's a knock at the door and it was .....the PLUNGER MAN!  I didn't call him, Antonella didn't call him. That was so nice of them to come fix it. Saves me the embarrassment of telling them myself. We didn't even have to wait for it to block before telling them. Nick said it's probably their weekly visit because there always seems to be something wrong with my toilet. -_-" I'm not the only one with toilet issues. Guilio said that he was in his room studying on his bed one night. He suddenly heard this gurgling sound coming from his bathroom. So he got up to have a look and when he got to his bathroom door, he said there was a "horrible stink" XD and lo and behold in his toilet was some crap. His toilet had actually regurgitated.....waste. WTH. His story made me laugh like all lesson long. The point of my story, IT'S NOT JUST MY TOILET. :P

Tomorrow afternoon we are going to get to know some Chinese students and we have some questionnaires to ask them about their work and study lifestyle. Each class also has to perform something. We all volunteered this girl to play the guitar and sing. lol. It sounds a little bit corny but hey..should be good! Maybe I'll even get to speak some Chinese. XD lol.

Going to the Great Wall was sooo much fun. The weather was great, it was sunny, the skies were BLUE, it was quite warm and after climbing all those stairs to get to the top, it was very warm. It was a really nice walk too...well once you were at the top that is. I'm still a little sick from last time, I'm coughing like a mad woman the whole way up. T_T The teacher must've thought I was really unfit and a longtime smoker or something. >_< We cam-whored like crazy - asian style. Even the Chinese were taking photos of us! :P We caught the cable car back down because it was too hectic to walk down. Then i bought a "I <3 Beijing" tshirt for Y10, you can't get it that cheap in the city. We pissed about 10 shopowners off trying to buy those panda hats which i heart muchly!!! Y14 each was the lowest we could get it. weeeeeee. :P

*That's us on the schoolbus! The Japanese students at the back. *That's us being asian on the wall.

*That's us at one of the fortress looking thingys. *Group shot on the wall. Love the background! The place is soo beautiful!

*One of the millions of stairs we went up to get up the hill! They're actually resting. hehe.

*That's us in the cable car -it's pretty high up! That's how far we walked!
*I love the panda shotttt, we should've bought them before we went up and put all our I love Beijing t-shirts and panda hats with a backdrop of the Great Wall!

*Lunch from Mon. That dish closest to us with the meat in the middle and random stuff on the outside is my new favourite dish!!! It is sooooo good! I need to find that in Oz. lol.

It's been like a week since I've blogged. Haven't been able to get onto Xanga. grrrr. Went to Xian last week for 3 days with Laura and Guilio. Xian was....interesting. The Terracotta Army and the Ming Wall were definitely worth seeing. The train ride was awesome, it was 3 bunk beds in 6 bed cabins. 11hrs didn't even seem long because we just slept. It was actually really clean and comfy. Something I don't expect from Chinese public transport. haha. The other 3 men who shared out cabin thingy snored really loudly. One of them even poked me awake at like 3am to tell me my ipod dropped onto the floor which was nice of him but i was sleeping so well. >_<

The tour was really crap, crap enough for me to say I'll never join another Chinese tour....ever again. When we got to Xian train station at 5am in the morning, someone was meant to pick up us. No one was there and the phone number they gave me to contact was switched off. We couldn't exactly call the travel agent at 5am in the morning and we just had no idea where to go. In fact most of the tour we had no idea what was going on. So there the 3 of us were standing at the station and all these homeless people coming up to us for money or trying to sell us Xian maps. They were so creepy and I was pretty scared. About 45mins later, I got text msg in Chinese in my phone which i couldn't read...so i just called the number anyway. Someone came to get us, we ended up waiting in the lounge area for a few hours before going off on the tour bus. Xian is a city with alot of historical significance and I couldn't understand everything the tour guide was saying so I don't think i could appreciate the places fully. Some of the places we went to were like the Qin Emperor burial place which was like a mountain, remains of the imperial baths, this other mountain where some fight took place and heaps of touristy places. There was this place where they created a miniature Xian city and like a sequence of models showing how the Terracotta Army were made. I don't know, there wasn't much to see there?

The Terracotta Army and the Ming Wall made the whole trip worth it. The Terracotta Army were in 3 pits and there was sooo many people there. It was quite amazing that these were made like more than 2000years ago, they're all made individually and differently and still preserved. The farmer who discovered it in 1975 while digging a well sits in the souvenir store. So if you buy a book or postcards or whatever, you can get him to sign it and take a picture with him. All for a small fee of course. Damn they really know how to exploit their attractions and make money! The Ming Wall was pretty amazing too. It was a really foggy morning in Xian which made the whole place look really misty and mysterious. You can also rent a bike to ride around the Ming Wall, takes about 2hrs and it looked so fun. We were going to do it that afternoon but it started pouring!

The toilets in Xian are definitely worth a mention. My normal frequency of peeing was definitely reduced. Seeing a public toilet made me suddenly feel like not going anymore. Your nose was a great guide to where the nearest toilet would be - could smell one from about 100m before you reached it. :P Best part of it all, they had no doors. That's right, what kindof toilet has NO DOOR! T_T I did have to go once with no door. There I was in the queue and you could see everyone's head as they squatted. I went in, did my thing and as I got up to pull my pants up, the next lady in queue is like edging forward to stand in front of my cubicle. Dude, i haven't pulled my pants up yet!!! T_T

The food that we got there was... interesting. We had the same food for breakfast and lunch which consisted of spicy cucumber, spicy brown noodle thingys, spicy tofu and some other random spicy stuff. For breakfast, I even got some tobacco milk. Tasted like water, a little bit of milk powder and ash. Twas great! :P Thank goodness for Maccas and KFC which we had for dinner!

Guilio and Laura made the trip fun! I'm guessing they were just as frustrated as I was at the disorganisation of the tour. We were just being really sarcastic the whole time and the best part was no one could understand us! Heaps of people just stared at them and gave us dirties when we spoke English. I even managed to learn abit of Italian and the Italian alphabet. I can't really do the tongue rolling though, I just sound retarded. I'm really glad I went with them!

 
*This was the train ride! Loved our beds!

 
*This is Pit1 at the Terracotta Army. It was hugeeeee!

*They're looking very impressed with their food. That was my "breakfast", couldn't really stomach most of it.

*The Ming Wall.

The school took our class to the Great Wall yesterday! It was really fun! I can't believe I was standing on the Great Wall! We went to Mutianyu where there was a million and 5 steps to get to the top. Our teacher was just laughing at us. We were so unfit. Everytime we thought we had reached the top, there were another 10 flights of stairs. It felt so good to get to the top though. I'll put up photos tomorrow. I stupidly forgot to charge my camera battery which meant I didn't take that many photos. :(

Our teacher wants to teach us to sing Chinese songs. He's taking requests. I'm going to say Guang Liang - Tong Hua and probably some random Jay Chou song. haha. I think it's going to be hilarious. Our teacher is kinda middle age-ish and fuddy duddy. I cannot see him singing pop music. XD Most likely we'll end up singing like the national anthem or something. lol.