Jeg er i live!

I må undskylde de ikke eksisterende opdateringer på hvad der sker her i Kina-land, men har bare travlt med at nyde livet :D
Her kommer så et par opdateringer!

smogy fog

The school is a bit outside the center of Beijing and it's practicly been sunshine and blue skyes all the time we've been here. It's amazing how just an hours travel makes such a big difference! It's quite nice to be able to see the sky and wake up in the morning without a grey blanket hovering over the city.
If you look around you can quite clearly see in which direction the center is, just from the amount of smog covering the horizon.
Anyway woke up this morning and there's something in the air.. Can't quite figure out if it's actual fog or if it's stupid smog.. It's probably a mix of both, smogy fog! But I'm gonna pretend it's real fog and that the air is clean!
I think someone told me that being in Beijing on a bad day was like smoking 17 cigarettes? Or maybe it was more...
By the time I get home I'm sure I'll be a serious second hand smoker, just from being here..

And on to the big news! I've got classes! Wuuhuuu! I finally got classes this week and onwards. 8 hours a week, which I know isn't alot compared to the others, but it's something to do other than being on Facebook all day.
Though it's not "real" classes. It's IELTS speaking classes. IELTS = international english language testing system. IELTS is a way to test how good your english are if you're gonna study or work abroad. And my classes are just like miniversions of the actual IELTS speaking test, they're gonna take later this year. The test is shaped like an interview, so that's what I'm basicly doing, from a book that gives the topics and questions. Meaning I don't really have any preparation to do!
But classes! Weeeeee

Not doing office work on the office computer!

...
Don't have anything to do yet.. Haven't got a class yet, but Boris(my boss/supervisor) assures me that I'll get one soon. He just can't tell me when soon is

Am going to go see if I can get internet in my room at 3, when the internet guy gets back. We should be able to get it, since they told us it was free and someplaces wireless, we just had to sign up. When we got here we thought we would have to pay for it, so it's quite nice that we don't have to after all!

The others, who are here too, are teaching right now. Their first lesson! Am waiting excitedly to hear how it went, 'cause it didn't go that well for N+K apparently this morning. Haven't spoken to them yet, as they're in another school(still on the same campus though). The students was very naughty and acted up the whole lesson it seems. Crossing my fingers that my students won't be like that.

Hopefully them starting late is a sign that they actually want to be here? Heh, they've prob been forced by their parents in reality...

Education seems to be very important here in China, and the students seem to spend all day studying. They have class for most of the day and then they've got a huge pile of homework to finish too. I can understand why we've been warned not to be surprised if the students said sleeping was one of their hobbies!

But I can understand why education is important, you need an education to get anywhere in life it seems these days, and with 1.3 billion other people trying to get succes, the competition is hard!

So far all the chinese we've met have been real friendly, and just wants to talk to us. Some of the others have even been offered shoes and things in return for english lessons at the Silk market! Which for me just shows how much the chinese wants to be a part of the international world. Though it's a shame that it's seems they're aiming more for copying western life than developing their own. I think some of the cultural things gets lost in the consumer focused westernization, but then again, I am a westerner who have all the things they want.

The school

I'm now at my new school, the one I'll be staying at for the next 4-5 months!
I haven't got internet in my appartement yet , 'cause the IT department doesn't open before monday. I do have one in the office though, and it's the one I'm using now.
The school is an international school, it looks like a stereotypical amerikan/australian school (I'll post pictures as soon as I can!) and all the courses are in English.
This means that to go here you have to have a certain level of English, which is what we're here for. We'll be teaching the students before they go to the highschool/university here, so they can actually take the courses and understand them. This probably means that the students are quite good!
We're not going to be teaching them much grammar and stuff thank god, instead we'll be having speaking lessons with them, focused on pronunciation and getting the students to practice speaking English.

I don't have any classes yet, which is a bit odd, and I'm going to have to talk to Solaro(manager for the TTC course) to find out if this affects my teaching certificate..
The reason why I don't have any classes yet, is that the school apparently takes on new students all the time, meaning there will be another class for me to teach in a months time! So far I've got no idea what I'll be doing in the mean time though.. I have to be in the office from 8.30-17.30, maybe they'll have something for me to do, and maybe I'm just gonna sit here and read a book, I don't know yet.

The appartement is ok, it's got some flaws that they're working on fixing, but overall it's actually a quite nice apparement. I'm sharing with my roommate, M, from UIBE (where the training took place).
In the appartement there's an ok big livingroom, with standard stuff like sofa, tv and shelves. There's also a small table and chairs for eating. Beside the livingroom is a small hallway with doors to the bathroom(flooded all the time, they're working on it) and two bedrooms. One of the bedrooms are bigger than the other, and it has more light too, that's my bedroom. But M and I have agreed to switch after about 2 months, so she can have it too.
There's a small kitchen, so we can cook if we get tired of the canteen food

The school and the appartement is fine, but I would have liked to go to a chinese school, so I could get a bit more of the "real" chinese experience, and not so much of the "fake" western one(exaggerating a bit). As an international school, they've got a lot of foreign teachers and I would've loved to live in a more chinese area, but I'm sure this is gonna be great too!

For some reason this school has got 3 terms, which means that the first term finishes on the 3rd june, then there's a short break before second term begins again. But since our contract ends on the 30th of june, we'll only be here for two weeks of the second term, and there's no reason for us to be teaching then. So we won't be teaching from the 3rd of june. We might have to work a few days more to finish up reports and stuff, but it seems that we basicly finish from the 3rd of june..

Nu sner det nu sner det

It's snowing! I love love love love love it!
Woke up this morning and saw it was snowing, it's so brilliant XD

Rain

It's raining today! Weeeee
It started out as just a few drops every few min when we came back from teaching(I'll tell you more about that later when I have the time) and turning into normal rain for a few hours and now it's back to dripping again. But it's raining!
Apparently is hasn't rained for more than 4 months here in Beijing. The air has been so dry, that everyone has been running of to buy lotion and lip balms all the time. Just being out for a few hours a day dries up your skin in no time. And when we first got here my hair was electric all the time.
I didn't really notice how much I've missed the rain until it actually rained, it's so nice!
You can feel the moisture in the air and it's so nice and cool on your skin.. really really good. There's big puddles on the streets though and got splashed by a car, but it's raining so I don't really mind.
I'll take some wet and dry pictures if it's still raining tomorrow of our campus.

New years eve the chinese way - sun 25th jan

Earlier on the day we had been given a card with the address where the new years party would be held, so we could show it to the taxi. He still brought us to the wrong place so we couldn’t follow the map..
For the bar name we had just been told that it would say Heineken on the outside. And the place we were dropped of did have Heineken on the outside, but when we went inside there were no people there, no one we knew anyway. So we tried the next door and the next door, 3 bars with Heineken on top of, still not the right place. We met some of the earlier participants though who called Hannah for us so we could get directions. Finally we did find it.
It was a bar just big enough to hold us all without us feeling like there was too much/little space to move around on. And there was free drinks until 1, but they ran out around 12 something. But it was great, and we had a lot of fun. Just sitting and talking to people and having fun with the Chinese karaoke!
At 12 we went outside for the fireworks and it was brilliant! They just went nuts, BAM! BUM! All the time, almost enough to make you deaf, apparently the Chinese likes it when it makes a lot of noise.. And it just kept going, that was the oddest part, it made it so intense. It went on and on and on with the same amount of lights and noise as at 12. In Denmark you go out, fire of a few things for 15 min and then you go back in again. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to find new years eve fireworks as special anymore. The Chinese way just knocks you of your feet! In the end it was like a fog had settle over the area because of all the smoke from the fireworks! It was insane but incredibly fascinating and intense.
Afterwards we went to a bar next door, but we were tired and didn’t really stay for long. It had been a long but eventfull day. And it wasn’t even a problem to get a taxi as some people had claimed, we just went 20 m down the road and voila a taxi! It was fun and I slept very good that night despite all the fireworks still going of.

Pictures coming later!

Confucian temple - sun 25th jan

Confucian temple is very pretty and peaceful. Lots of old stone-figures, -tablets and trees stand magesticly in grand open courtyards with buildings lining the sides. All the buildings are made of wood and beatifully painted in vivid colours.
The building open for the public has been made into museums, with expositions about Confucious, the time he lived in and his ideas/ideals. I didn't read all the signs, just random ones, 'cause I prefer to go around and just get a feeling of the place and how it must have been like to live there then. But what I did read was very interesting, and it's definitedly worth going into the buildings, even when it's freezing cold and you just want to find somewhere warm. 'Cause it gives you a lot of background info and you get to learn about one of the most important(I think..) thinkers in China, if not the world.
I got lost from the group I was going with at one point, took a turn or something they didn't, and ended up going around on my own. Got a bit nervous when they started closing the doors and locking the gates, 'cause I really don't want to spend the night there. Walked a bit faster and kept a close eye on the other people there, so if they started leaving I would too. But I managed to see everything there, I think, it's a bit confusing finding your way when you don't have a map, but I managed. I even found the others again!
And as A said, if I got locked in I could've just found a guard and asked him to let me out. There's guards everywhere all the time.
For dinner we didn't really feel like going out, 'cause we weren't really hungry enough. So ended up playing cards and eating cookies/bread&peanutbutter! Mums!

Lama temple - sunday

After church we went home to eat lunch in a restaurant near campus. The food was surprisingly good, not expensive and not cheap, but really good. We just ordered too much.. I think the baked/fried shrimp was the best food I've had here yet!

We had planned to go to the Lama Temple with 2 other girls, but lunch took a bit longer than expected and we ended up going without them. At the busstop a bunch of the swedes joined us. Line 62 has a stop directly beside the Lama temple, but we couldn't really see which one it was. Luckily the ticket lady in the bus understood what we asked of her, and let us know when it was our stop.

However, when we got there it turned out that the temple was closed! We didn't really think about the fact that for the chinese it's Spring Festival, which starts on New years eve, and last for about a week I think, thus a lot of shops/tourist places would be closed.

The entrance to the temple wasn't immediately obvious and we had to ask another european(he looked like one anyway) for directions. He was also the one to tell us it was closed, but he pointed out that the Confucian temple was nearby(across the street) and that it might be open.

Instead of just going back, we figured we might as well find out if it was open.

Church

Sunday was new years eve and we had the day off. Got up at 9 and went for a run, wuhuu! I did it! Was supposed to run with A, but forgot to set the alarm right, so she ran without me, but it was ok actually. I had on enough clothes that it didn’t feel cold, and I just ran around campus for a while.

At 10 I went to church with A, J and R.
BICF = Beijing International Christian Fellowship. A had looked it up on the internet and found an English speaking church to go to the day before. So we went there. A big modern church with space for 1000 people I think. And there was a lot of people there, was a bit surprised by that. Just like actually going to church isn’t like I’ve imagined it. There was this great band playing, they took the lead in the songs we sang, modern church songs, and were very good at it.

I might not be the biggest believer in God, but going to church is great. You can actually sense people belief in God it’s so strong/concentrated. It’s quite amazing standing among so many people focused on the same thing, believing in the same thing. If it’s like that going to church every time, I might do it more often!
I almost fell asleep during the actual sermon, but I blame it on the not sleeping enough! And J admitted almost doing the same.
After the sermon we slipped out during the closing song and took a taxi back to campus.

First day of school

Saturday was our first day of school.
Our main teacher is going to be Ian, who’s originally from Ireland, but have lived here in China for the last 4 years, teaching english. Our secondary teacher is going to be Margaret, who’s an Australian. She's here with her husband, Peter, also teaching English. I think they’ve been here for the last 3 years? They're all very nice and good teachers, am looking forward to the next 3-4 weeks!

In the afternoon I went to pizza-hut with A og K, yes I know pizzahut! And while I’m in China, bad of me. And expensive! Western food in China is neither the best or the cheapest. I’m not even sure it was good, I just felt like having western food, and I think I only thought It was good because it was western food.
Later a couple of us went to a few bars, 3 bars in totalt I think? The atmosfere and the music is quite different from bar to bar, so is the price on beer/drinks. The most common thing is beers at 10 yuan (which is roughly 10 DKR or 1 pound). Drinks are a bit more expensive around 30-40 yuan. But you have to haggle about the price, which is a bit odd in the beginning. It seems that you haggle about the prices for just about anything..

Welcome dinner

Friday night was the welcome dinner. Which was held at a nearby restaurant.

We had an entire floor to ourselves, and were seated at round tables with a big glas "plate" in the middle that could turn. That way the food can stand in the middle of the table and you just turn the glass part to get to the dish you want, loved it! The food was great too, esp the broccoli!

After eating, a couple of us left to find a bar that A had seen when she went walking, but it was closed, so we decided to go to the coffee shop on campus instead. However we met several of the other TTC's on the way back and Sunny and I decided to go to the bar-district with them.

The bar district is (as far as I know) really just one big street lined with nothing but bars. Most of the bars have a live band, but the music is kinda different, and takes some getting used to.

The first bar we tried looked to be ok, and we even ordered a beer/coke. But just a few minutes in they decided to turn up the volume on the band at it became impossible to hear each other speak, so we left to find another place.

Going back up the street towards the beginning were we came from, we found a nice little café/bar. The Berry Cafe I think it was called. A tiny room, just a little bigger than my bedroom at home. But the atmosfere was good, and the music great (Tracy Chapman) and recognisable! XD

We spent a couple of hours there just talking, having fun and drinking.

First couple of days part 2

Went to bed early to try and catch up to my missing sleep.
Breakfast was weird. A kind of rise porridge thingy, am not having that again that's for sure! XD

The tour around campus was freezing! It's minus degrees most days and the wind bites like ice and mkes it feel much colder than it actually is. I think it was -7 but it felt like -17 -.- My hands and feet are like are ridiculously cold after a few minutes outside, despite my big winter boots and gloves. But it was really nice seeing everything before we actually had to go there. Makes it much easier to find later.
The doors to the canteen doesn't really close, they're open and then there's a think curtain in front of it = freezing. So we don't take our jackets of from the minute we go outside till we're back at the appartement XD

Lunch and dinner was better, it's a bit hit and miss like for the quality and taste of the food. Somethings is good and somethings aren't, and you won't know until you try it.

Plane, arrival + first couple of days part 1

Getting to the airport in Denmark, was actually quite easy, and though the train was late (as expected) we still had plenty of time in the airport. My aunt I was there to say goodbye to me too, since she lives in CPH it was easy for her, and really nice!

Both my parents went along to say goodbye, which I was very glad for, I'm missing them terribly already, so it was nice to have those few hours more, and not having to go there on my own. I had to say goodbye to my brother a few days before, 'cause he's in boarding-school and had to go there on sunday. I miss you too blue hair! Smølf :P

Just as we were getting off the train we met one of the other Danes going here. We had arranged to meet in the airport after check-in, but as we waited and dragged out the time, a bunch of the others came too, so we were almost all there before check-in. We couldn't get seats near each other though, but we figured that it wouldn't matter much. The two hours to Vienna we could survive, and for Beijing, we should sleep as much as we could to try and avoid jet-lag. We ended up sitting in clumps of two or three, as close to each other as the free seats would allow us.

Flying was horrible. Not the flight itself or the food, but because there wasn't enough space. I couldn't sit in a comfortable position, and weren't able to stretch even just a little to sleep. So I only got like 4 hours of sleep. The food wasn't bad, there just wasn't enough of it, more food! XD
The young woman I was sitting beside was really nice, though she didn't speak much English, we made do with hand signs and mimicking when needed.
But as usual somebody had to be annoying, and the two young men behind us were. The one behind me couldn't sit still (prob had too little space too) and they spoke really loudly to each other. I managed to sleep a little but not much.

Arriving in the airport was amazing, a gigantic newly built airport (for the olympics most likely). We had to take the subway to the exit and our luggage. We actually didn't have to wait all that long for the luggage, but I missed it the first time it came around. Finding the exit wasn't hard. Neither was getting through security, one of the others had to wait for a long time while the attendant checked his passport and arrival card, but we all got through without problems in the end.

After we got our luggage, we went to the meeting point (near Starbucks in terminal 3 were we came out). One of the project coordinators stood there with a sign and took us to the others waiting in a nearby caffe(starbucks again I think). We had to wait around for 30-45 min I think. 'Cause we weren't the last flight they were picking up at that time.
In the end we were a mixed group from Denmark, England, Sweden and Norway piling into a bus with our luggage. Again tiny seats, I could just sit there, but A who's taller than me had troubles, and one of the english guys couldn't even sit down, he had to wait for everybody to sit first and then put his legs out in the middle space.

Driving through Beijing was a bit weird. I think it's clear it's winter, 'cause everything is grey. And you can see it's a big city, but I didn't think there were enourmous amount of people walking around, though that might be because it's the winter holidays and we're not quite in centrum.

Arriving at the University (UIBE) we had to give in our passports, so they can renew or visas. We were giving a bundle of keys and cards and a bag with misc. in it. And left to our own devices for the rest of the day, so we could unpack, get over jet-lag, explore the city etc.
I'm on the 5th floor, so I'm very happy I didn't bring more than 20 kg XD

There was a short campus tour but that got postponed to the next day 'cause we had to eat.

Chinese restrictions

So, this is actually the second blog I've made for my China trip... The first one i made on livejournal I can't access. I think it might have something to do with the censur of the chinese government?
Anyway I'm making this one to make up for it. And when I get home I'll transfer the things I wrote on the livejournal one to this one =)