Still alive.

Hey everyone,

Yup I'm still alive! I haven't visited my blog in a long time. I'm now back in Toronto and my school terms in Beijing have ended. I had a great time and will definately treat Beijing like my second home. My Chinese is still a bit rough to listen to but I think it's passable. It was definately tough for me to learn so many new words each day...if you don't use it, you forget it so quickly. I am already noticing that being away from China, I am starting to forget words I didn't use often. A bit frustrating. The experience was great though and I'll never regret my decision to quit my job and do this. If you are wondering how I can stand China, please live there for a few months with an open mind before you judge it. Remember, China is a growing country but is still considered third world in most parts. A lot of them have a tough life there and are trying to earn enough money to survive.

Anyways, now it's time for me to get back in to the working world. I've decided I want to try to find a job in Beijing. I'll let you know how it goes.....

Bye!

Time flies

Hey everyone,

I'm still in Beijing and I'll be studying for 1 more school term here. Time really flies and I really feel bad for not blogging anything. I'll be leaving soon to see a friend off. He will be returning to his home country. I guess one of the bad things staying here for so long is that so many people come and go in your life. Some you may see again and others you won't. I'm not too sad though. I'm a believer that if you are good friends, you are destined to meet again or you will put in the effort to see each other again. I'm just happy to have the experience to meet so many people from around the world. I've learnt so much here and I'll never regret quitting my job to do this.

As for what I've been up to, school has been out for a month so I travelled off to Hong Kong, Kunming, Dali, and LiJiang. I was also lucky to experience what Chinese New Year was like here in Beijing. I also finally visited the Ming Tombs (yawn) and Badaling Great Wall (the last of the 3 major tourist sites to see the Great Wall). I will definately try to post some pictures of all the places I've been to the last term...but who knows when that will be.... ;-)

Well gotta run....

Days of frustration...

Well, the last couple of days have been quite frustating. I'm currently looking for a 1 bedroom apartment so I called up an agent to help me find a place. The first day, she was 40 mins late. Since I was just happy to be back in Beijing, I had no problems with that. I assumed that she just got stuck in traffic. She told me to meet at my school's entrance but she went to the wrong school. Fine, no problem...she just got confused. The schools were right beside each other so there's a chance of confusion...even though the name of the school is on the front gate. So I went to see 3 apartments and they were ok...nothing spectacular. I had 2 weeks so I definately want to see more apartments before I choose...why rush right? Later at night I had to grab a taxi back to my cousin's place and I asked the driver, "Do you know where this place is?" and of course he says "yes". So we are driving on the highway and he definately is headed in the right direction and he does get off an exit which seems close to the place. I then ask "You sure you know where it is? It's on [name of road]". He says "yes I know". Then I tell him "well the road in right in front of us!!" He goes "uh yeah, you have to turn up ahead".....anyways, we end up weaving in and out of housing blocks until he finally stops to ask for directions!!! Why tell me you know if you don't!!! Drives me crazy!!

Anyways, the next day, I have to meet my agent but I only have about an hour to look before I have to meet a friend. The agent tells me to meet at 3:30pm in front of the gate. I rush and show up right at 3:30 but by 4pm, she's still nowhere to be seen and NO PHONE CALL. By 4:10, I call her and ask her where she is. She says "I'll be there in 5 mins". By 4:30, I couldn't wait anymore so I left....I had to meet my friend now. Just after 4:35, the agent's friend calls me and says "I'm in front of the building, where are you?". I'm like #$%^&! First, you are over an hour late, second you are not at the place we are suppose to meet and third, why is her friend here and not my agent???? I told her friend that I'm not coming..I waited over an hour. The funny thing is, my agent doesn't even try to reach me right away to apologize! Maybe like 4 hours later, she tries to call me but by then, I'm just ignoring her calls. I was just so angry. Later on in the evening, I decided to meet another agent to help me. This guy was on time and was very nice. Only problem is, he spoke absolutely no English so it was very tough communicating. A lot of time we smiled and laughed at each other since we couldn't get our points across. While we were walking towards the place we were going to see, the owner calls and tells my agent that he has to leave because something came up. We just walked about 20 mins and we were almost at the building when he called. So I didn't see any apartments!! This agent apologized profusely. He even lent me his umbrella when it started to rain. It was definately a total day of frustration and I definately wasn't looking forward to taking the taxi home. The driver of the first taxi I jumped into told me he didn't know where I was going...Thank god! I'm glad he actually told me. I got out and went to another taxi. I was so happy too because this guy was very friendly...he was teaching me how to say things, we were joking around and it was a such peaceful ride! It was a great ending to a horrible day.

Well I guess there's always tomorrow right?

Arrived.

Hey all! I arrived in Beijing yesterday. When I arrived at the airport, while I was crossing the street to go to my cousin's car, a taxi was coming pretty fast so I decided to stop to let him go. So he goes through but at the last second, he decides to change lanes. In the process, he hits my luggage and keeps going. What a welcome. ;-) Anyways, I'm glad to be back again.

I'm surprised I could access my blog. It appears that China isn't blocking blogspot.com anymore. Maybe this will motivate me to write more often.

I began hunting for an apartment today. My agent doesn't speak much English so it was a bit tough to communicate since my Mandarin is still at beginner level. I'm still planning to see quite a few places before I choose one but it's obvious my agents wants me to grab one quickly....oh well, should be fun to drive her crazy.

Bye!

Back To Beijing

Well time flies quite fast. Tomorrow I'll be returning to Beijing. I won't make any promises this time about keeping you up to date on my adventures but I will try to post something every now and then.

Bye!

Who's that?

I'm going to take a break from Beijing stories and talk about who I saw. Yesterday, I decided to act like a tourist in Toronto so I can see the city with a different perspective. I have lived here all my life (except for the time in Beijing of course) so it was quite fun to actually learn about some of the places that I would normally walk by without ever giving any thoughts of their importance. Anyways, as I was walking down Front St. near the Metro Convention Centre, I saw a small group of people standing around some cars. I was very curious as to what was going on so I took a peak and saw a few guys in black suits jumping into a set of 3 black luxury cars (just like the movies). Then everyone starts waving to the car in the middle as it began to move except I still have no idea who was in there. I'm thinking that it must be the mayor of the city since there weren't too many spectators. As the car drove by me, I decided to walk right up and take a look through the windows (hey I'm a tourist!). In the front seat, I see 2 bodyguards (secret service?) in suits. The back window was tinted so had to get even closer to take a look. To my surprise it was .... Hillary Clinton! I was shocked. I just saw the US ex-president's wife...and I walked right up to the window too so I her face was like a foot from me...and she was waving ;-) So I'm going to tell everyone now that Mrs. Clinton was waving at me.....at me!! Who da man?? Moi.

Anyways, I had no idea she was in Toronto so I decided to do a quick search in the Toronto Star newspaper. If you care what she wanted to say, here's the article: Emergency Commuincations Still Flawed.

Unfortunately, I had no pictures of Hillary (yes I'm on first name basis since she waved at me) because my camera battery died like 10 minutes before the encounter. Ah well. Maybe next time I drop by the Clinton's home, I'll get a photo with Bill and Hill.

Wang Fu Jing (王府井)

While I was in Beijing, I visited Wang Fu Jing, which is a very famous area in Beijing for shopping. It's basically a "walking street" so no cars are allowed to drive in that area (except for tourist shuttles). When I arrived there, I couldn't believe the amount of people there. I guess if you are from an Asian country, you may be used to seeing this type of population density. Coming from Toronto, however, I usually only see crowds like that during rush hour, concerts, or sporting events. I wish I was here for the May 1st Chinese holiday...I can't imagine what it would have been like then! Wang Fu Jing has many shopping malls there. All the younger teens/students seemed to be in fashion. In one of the pictures I posted, you can see a picture of a girl in some kind of "frilly" dress (I think there's a real name for this type of fashion). I've heard that this fashion is popular in Asian countries but don't quote me on that. It reminded me of the Japanese movie "Kamikaze Girls" where the lead character really liked wearing these old style dresses. I thought it was quite interesting to see someone actually wearing one out in public. Anyways, if you love shopping, this is the place to be...clothes are not cheap here but that's because all the brand name clothing are found here - no fakes. Tourists think that Chinese people go to fake clothing markets to get cheap clothes all the time but it is sooo not true. I talked to a few locals and they all say they usually don't buy clothes at those markets because they are not high quality. Sometimes it feels like those fake markets are filled with only tourists. Wang Fu Jing is also famous for the wondeful food stalls there. They have the regular snacks/dumpling stands but as you can see in some of the pictures, they also have a few exotic ones for the brave souls. I couldn't believe the size of the grasshoppers on the sticks!! It was pretty gross in my eyes since some of the insects were still moving. Once you decide you really want to try one, the vendor would cook those babies right there so it's nice and fresh in your mouth. The shocker for me was seeing the live sea horse and starfish on sticks! I mean, do people really eat those things?? I guess they must sell well or else all these vendors would go out of business. While I was there, I didn't see many people buying them though. I did catch one girl eating a starfish. I guess the truth is that you can pretty much eat anything...our minds are just trained to say what we think is ok to eat...I mean is eating shrimps, octopus, seaweed any better? I think we are all just used to it. Hmm? Maybe grasshoppers are very tasty! I will be back to Beijing in a few weeks...maybe I'll give those babies a try...or maybe not....I'll stick with duck....mmmm...duck...