October 1 - November 9, 2010

October 1 - 31

Like I mentioned earlier, I arrived back in Wenzhou from Hong Kong on the 1st of October. I was so tired that I pretty much lazed around for the first two days of the National Holiday. The National Holiday is held from October 1st to the 7th. It is a holiday to celebrate the founding of the People's Republic of China beginning October 1, 1949.

I managed to get a bit of traveling in. I’ve been to Beijing; the great wall, Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the hero’s monument, and a famous Peking duck restaurant. The great wall is pretty “great” the spot I went to was very touristy though and was packed with people. Whenever I looked at pictures of it I always thought “hmm it’s a wall that runs through the country” but once I got there it was different. Yes the section of the wall that snakes through the hills still looks like the pictures and is relatively the same sensation, but when you see the wall itself and go climbing on it it’s way different. It must have been tough to live and work on that thing. The towers have four small windows that create wind tunnels; in the summer the draft might feel nice, but I can only guess how cold it would get in the winters. Some of the sections of wall are so steep that my muscles were tired after only a few minutes of climbing.

Tiananmen Square was interesting to see, but really only because I got to put a picture to what I learned about. It’s a big square with the government building on one side, Chairman Mao’s memorial building on another and the Forbidden City across from that. The hero’s monument is right in front of Chairman Mao’s memorial building.

Forbidden City was truly amazing! It’s huge and to see only a small portion of the palaces was cool; we took 4 hours to walk through only some of what’s available to the public. It would take days to go through the entire place! The only thing is it wasn’t very pretty; there are a few gardens here and there but it’s all more built for functionality than looks.

The Peking duck was SO delicious. I loved most of the food we ate in Beijing; they have the most delicious snack foods! My favorite was the pancakes. They’re fried breads essentially with bits of veggie and meat in them.

Next I went to Hong Kong to visit for a couple days and to renew my visa. I wasn’t really impressed; it just looks like a very big, crowded city, not to mention all the people pushing you to go see the things they have for sale. The one thing that surprised me was at night time it seemed like you were walking around during the day because there were so many lights and bright signs everywhere.

My family came to visit in October. It was so nice to see them again and it made me miss them more this time around than when I first left. We just stayed around Wenzhou area though because all of us were on budgets. It was still nice though and I think I managed to get the majority of everything that they all needed or wanted. We went to a small village called Yong Jia; where we celebrated our birthday with fireworks and two boxes of giant beers. I had a wonderful time.

November 1 - 9

As far as November goes, I have been a hermit trying to restore my energy levels.

The Forbidden City

The Forbidden City.
The Forbidden City

The Forbidden City. OOOOOOOOO AAAAAAAAAA

One of the many palaces inside the Forbidden City.

Large stone carving.

The Great Wall

The Great Wall.

Me at the Great Wall.

The Great Wall

Me at The Great Wall

The Great Wall

Too tired to climb back down, so we took a mini roller coaster.

Food

Peking duck.

Peking duck.

Dumplings.

BBQ :)

September 16-30, 2010

September 16 - 30

The tail end of September was mostly traveling. What a refreshing change.

The 19th to the 23rd I went to Beijing for the Mid Autumn Festival; this is like our Thanksgiving day; it's a holiday meant to be shared with family. I was supposed to go with some girls from work but they had to cancel last minute; luckily for me Jing decided he wanted to go with me so my trip wasn't wasted. The day we took off from Wenzhou there was a typhoon so our plane sat for about an hour while we waited for the proper time to take off. When we arrived in Beijing we dropped our bags off at the hotel and met up with some friends for dinner. I tried a traditional Beijing noodle dish…. It was gross. Cold noodles with cucumber sliced on top of it and a brown salty sauce you added to the noodles; blech! The fish and the BBQ lamb were delicious though. First thing the next day we went to the Forbidden City. We walked around for 4 hours and still didn't cover much of it; I'm hoping to go back again to see it. That evening we met up with other friends to eat dinner and go to a pub; that particular dinner was the best of the whole trip. We had steamed veggies, a Beijing style shrimp, a beef soup, fried rice, a yummy salad, and there was one other thing, but I can't remember what it was; it was some kind of meat… anyway. The next day was dedicated to the great wall….this section of the wall was PACKED with tourists; it was very steep in some sections and had little escape exits along the inside of the wall. As far as the wall goes it's very big, way different to see in person than in pictures and I think, is definitely worth a stop. I was tired by the time we hiked a while and was scared to walk back; luckily for us though we found a roller coaster type thing that will take you back down the wall…right into the tourist souvenir stands. It was a great day that ended at a famous Peking duck restaurant. I take back what I said before about the food before being the best; this restaurant was by far the best food…as it should have been with it's prices ha ha ha. Our last day we did a bit of shopping before heading back to Wenzhou. It was a great trip and I hope I get to go back soon.

The next travel was to Hong Kong to have my visa extended. I left on the 29th via plane, which was a relief because originally they wanted to drive to Shen Zhen; which is a really long drive. Either way; we got there in one piece and I found out it was Effie's first flight so I was excited for her. It took two nights for my visa to come through but unfortunately I am on a tourist visa for now. I will have to go back to Hong Kong in a month to do this all over again. It's really not so terrible though; it means I get another small vacation in a month. I didn't do too much there as it was mostly a business trip but I did buy some clothes and delicious snacks; they're like mini beef jerky. I got back into Wenzhou on the 1st of October completely exhausted.

Beijing Airport Rail Station.


National hero mountain.

Me in front of the Bird's Nest.


Bird Nest. Where the Summer Olympics were held.

An old steet with lots of very cool shops.

Tianamen Square.

Pirate Scavenger Hunt Continued

Where do these sails go?

We sailed the seven Seas.

This, is our friend.

There is a duck on my head.
There be treasure!

Pirate Scavenger Hunt

Taking a break.

Sword fight.

Our Captain playing Chinese chess.

Look, an old tower!

Doing a bird dance in front of KFC.

September 1-15, 2010

September 1 - 15

To start September off I went in for a visit to the doctors. My stomach was not feeling well and I wanted to make sure I didn't have any parasite or anything. After registering in one building, going back and forth between a few other buildings and spending about 4 hours there I was exhausted; and all just to be told I had nothing wrong with me, it might just be the food. :-S ha ha ha. I am happy to know I'm not dying though.^_^

I had my first go at making tortillas the other day. They were a little thick but turned out ok. I was very impressed for a first attempt. As a matter of fact, I will be trying again tonight.

I bought a learning tool for myself the other day; it's a pen meant for kids. The pen is programmed to read certain books and the books have pin ying and Chinese characters in it so as I read along I can start to recognize which character is which. I looked into a program at the university that teaches basic Chinese, but it's almost $1000 CND for one semester and conflicts with my schedule. I'm very sad about that. I was under the impression that the university had enough courses that they could work around your schedule, but it seems I was mistaken. With that said I've asked my Chinese Teacher, Jessie if she would be up to the task of doing two lessons a week with me; I'm still waiting for a response. She puts tons of work into her lessons so I can appreciate her decision if she says no; it would still be nice to have more lessons though. I did try to google "I want to take a beginner Chinese course in Wenzhou, China" and was pretty blown away when I saw this:

… you might be wondering why I was blown away; let me tell you: I'm the first web page on that list after the advertisements. ^_^ Julia's China Blog is mine! Ha ha ha ha. I think it's so cool to see it there.

I have two new private lessons that started this month. A lady named Zhen Li Dan who will have two lessons a week with me, and a group of four kids who have one lesson a week with me; and if they continue to behave the way they are now, I will be refusing to continue lessons with them. I'm not even kidding; these kids are CRAZY! They barely listen to me and I now have to make the lessons VERY simple for them (even though I know they can do the harder stuff) they just don't want to work at it. Even if the parents try to pay me more I will not teach their kids if they keep this behavior up. It's just not worth it. The lady; on a lighter note, seems great! I've only had one lesson with her so far but she is very eager to learn English.

The weather is starting to cool down a bit now; today for example it only got to 32 degrees instead of the usual 38. The nights are the perfect temperature most of the time. I think I may have even adapted to the heat better than I anticipated because there was one night that I even got chilly and it must have only been 25 or so. Just the other day I had my first real typhoon experience…safely from my apartment… it was POURING; it looked like someone took a huge bucket of water and just dumped it out over Wenzhou. I tried to take a few pictures to show but I don't know how well they worked out. It rained solid like that for an hour, then nothing, then an hour later it was dry ground again. It was kind of eerie. As for the storm itself it wasn't anything too special; a bit more wind than normal storms and lightning and thunder almost every 30 seconds or so; overall it just seemed like a regular storm with LOTS of rain.

I participated in a Pirate Scavenger Hunt this month. It was a ton of fun! We had a huge list of things to do and with every task we had to wear mustaches and the captain had to wear an eye patch. I'll add some pictures so you can see a few of them. Needless to say, by the end of the day I had a duck on my head.

Enjoy the pictures!

View from my bedroom on a normal day.

View from my bedroom while raining during typhoon.

Water emptying from a pipe.

Close up of pipe.

August 16-31, 2010

August 16 - 31
So the tail end of August has pretty much been the same old same old. A few new things though; I bought a yogurt maker and have been learning how to make yogurt. I have had one success and one failure my third try will be today. I've also started making my own soy milk. I bought a blender and it came with this neat attachment that holds the pulp in the middle and lets the juices strain through when you pour it. I've made many delicious drinks with my blender ^_^ Watermelon juice is my favorite so far.


The summer is still hot. The heat seems to come from every direction. I'll be walking along and think it's very warm only to find I've walked through a heat pocket. The buildings are all made of concrete which I have learned hold heat very well. When you're walking beside them you can feel the temperature rise and almost see heat waves coming from the sides of them. People here even have summer umbrellas; which I thought was funny at first but have realized now that it actually makes a huge difference when you use one. I've also seen scooter-drivers wearing shirts backwards to protect their clothes from getting dirty, but my favorite are the dummy sleeves. Same concept as dummy mittens (the mittens attached to each other with string) but just the sleeves of an old mans dress shirt attached with string. There have been many dishes introduced to me that help "cool your body down"; fruit, types of bean porridge, this weird brown herbal Jello type stuff that actually tastes ok. One in particular that was introduced to me was a clear dish that had stringy things in it. It tasted ok, but reminded me of snot because of the texture….insert shudder here… only after I finished it was I informed that it was bird spit. :-P oh but it's good for you, it's good for your chest and throat! Blech no thanks, never again! Gross, no wonder it reminded me of snot!

Our school was doing it's final performances for the parents the other day. This is where the kids dress up, makeup is loaded onto their faces (boys and girls) and sparkles drench their hair. They all look very cute if only a little strange. During the performance I was shocked to see a foreign kid among the group of Chinese kids; I pointed him out to Phoenix and was then corrected that this kid was not foreign in fact he was an albino kid. It was crazy! He looked just like a westerner; blond hair, white skin. Very interesting.

My Chinese is still improving slowly. I heard about this program at the university that has a beginner Chinese class and they will work around your schedule. So now I am just waiting for my September schedule from my school so I can see if I've got time to squeeze these lessons in. The only problem is that the school is about an hour by bus from my house. So I'll really have to get as many classes together as possible so I don't have to do so many of those trips.

It's looking more and more like I will be staying another year. My master plan is ahead of schedule which means I might not have to sign on with another school next year; I can do more private lessons and more travelling. ^_^ speaking of travelling; I'm very excited for Mom, Nea and John to come in October, the celebrations are going to be wonderful!

I'm looking forward to September.

Roadside Scenery

Lightning Storm and Misc

Beginning....
Middle....

Peak!

Interesting truck.

Interesting sign.