別の外人

Last two weeks have been weirdly busy, despite doing very little indeed, I do apologise. Well I have done something every day, but usually that something has turned out to be hanging out with Jo, eating youzi and watching British comedies. That little reminder of home is really helping :) Thinking about my daily routine, most days have been spent either in Jing'an with Jo or here with Jo, woo :D

Everyone is still struggling a little atm with missing home, especially with Christmas approaching, and lots of people are talking about going home for the week we get off for Christmas. On the other hand, my plans are to go to Beijing to stay with Rosie, Bonny and Egle and see Jess lots :D Which should be really fun if it works out. Can't wait to see Jess, I wish she had come to Shanghai, as it seems that she's a bit left out there in Beijing; her 'crowd' as she put it are spread all over East Asia but come February when Laura arrives and we go visit her, it'll be a bit more like the old crowd reunited :) Been looking at a lot of old photos as well recently, well I say old, as in pre-China photos. Watched the epic video of Becca with the pepper grinder haha as well as the amazing one of Laura dancing and stealing my phone... haha.

Currently got a picture of the White Horse at Cherhill (pronounced Cherrill) set as my background, love it :) It is such a gorgeous view, and brings back memories of my Dad with disastrous kites, my brother climbing the obelisk or threatening to run down the ridge at full speed across the White Horse. Ah memories... Also watched Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, loved how it was filmed in Lacock, was literally bouncing up and down on my bed in my excitement 'ahhhh me and Jess stood there... ahhhhh me and Laura went to the pub just down that road' :D Made up for the fact that loads of people met up in London WITHOUT ME which is most sad... looking at their pics on Facebook made me quite jealous.

So, events here in China... Connie and Jo are still in training for the half marathon which takes place on Sunday, good luck to them :D It's blooming nasty trying to train now, we've had some rather epic torrential rain and it has definitely gotten cold now. On the plus side I discovered (after spending a while with Jo's aircon before getting it to become 'warm') that mine also acts as a heater :D I have also now officially shut my curtains to keep in the heat. Have written a long itinerary (or in Westcountry itiner-rary) of my planned travels of the next few months. I need to book Cambodia flights THIS WEEK AGHHHHH

We went to Suzhou, it's about an hour away by train, it was pretty but empty. Actually properly empty... we went to the temple of mystery, and ordinarily I love temples, I love the sense of spirituality, of peace and tranquility, the same as I get in old churches in Britain to be fair, but yet in this one, there was nothing. It gave me quite a feeling of unease, as if something quite horrible had taken place. I know that the temple is all reconstructed in the design of the original temple that stood on that spot pre-Revolution but there should have been something left of the original in terms of atmosphere, but no, not one thing. The other thing is that I have decided that I really don't understand Taoism: Shintoism has bowing and clapping yes, but I don't know, it feels right? At Nikkou it felt how it should. But here people properly kowtow to these hundreds of statues, and I hope the reason it felt weird was just because it was all artificial. We also got horrifically lost somewhere in the vicinity of a main road and Suzhou University down a backstreet, and found some more fake pagoda things. Least we didn't get ripped off by rickshaw people... unlike some people mentioning no names Abi : It would have been nicer were it not RIDICULOUSLY cold, with epic amounts of rain, and were I not suffering from some horrific cramps. We had to walk from one side of the city to the other, which took about an hour and a half, in the cold windy rain. Fun times.

The builders are still faffing round but fingers crossed they are at last DONE, PROPERLY DONE HUZZAH. They came round at 6am this morning (which isn't even funny), rang the doorbell at 7am which made me distinctly unimpressed. It said on the board downstairs the water would be back on by 7.30pm, but I checked at 8pm and not only was there still no water, but also a massive space where the final pipe was supposed to be. Which even to my unmechanically minded brain didn't quite make sense... Went and rang the landlord, had a whinge at him, located some plumbers (called them 'shui gongzuo ren' haha) and had a whinge at them, result being... WATER FINALLY HALLELUJAH. I'm getting quite irritated by everything constantly being under repair. I swear the whole of China is under repair.

Some things give me hope though, such as a 25p corn on the cob, all hot from being freshly cooked in the skin, yum yum yum eating it while wrapped in a big coat, walking down a Shanghai street :D Getting on a bus and understanding when the stops are announced in Chinese. Going for food at a nice restaurant with my language exchange partner and her roommate, even if they did insist on ordering nasty tofu dish. Curling up in bed and sleeping for 12 hours, as I did on Friday night. Yay :D

Last night (Saturday 21st November) went to a flat party for a classmate's surprise birthday party, which was really nice as there were loads of our classmates there who are mostly Japanese and Korean, so it was necessary to speak for the most part in Chinese. I can feel myself very very very gradually improving (as my exam results also would seem to indicate, yay 62%, 60%, 80% :D) at speaking Chinese... who knows, maybe by the time I get back to the UK I might be able to hold down a proper conversation ahaha.

Have to do a group presentation tomorrow in class, well it's more a dialogue, our version of a job interview. It might go ok, who knows, but me and Nerys (and Abi before church) spent the day writing it and writing it out, so fingers crossed that our grammar is up to scratch. Have spent a lot of time also buying lots of random cute stuff while Jo bought the best thing I have literally EVER seen. Discovered the joy of Nutella hot chocolate too, purchased from a foreign supermarket in Jing'an metro station. Need to buy an advent candle and go to the post office tomorrow to collect a parcel, and also have to buy some last stuff to send to England as part of my 'Secret Santa' so watch out, Bath people :D Hopefully this impending cold will hold off long enough to let me do everything I need to do... also need to speak to Laura soon, has been too long. Miss you all xxx