Two noobs in China

What's Crackin?

2009-01-25T18:35:00.002+08:00

Time to celebrate Chinese New Year in style.

(Mental note:- check to make sure travel insurance is still valid)

Pauly

Sup?

2009-01-14T15:41:00.027+08:00

Hey Noobs!

Today I’m going to do a big ol’ blog update for the more vocal members of our audience who have been requesting one for so long. I thought that perhaps, as we are moving ever so near to our intended departure date, you, the readers would no longer be interested in our everyday going ons. But I guess I was mistaken. A slap on the wrist for me!

So as it has been so long since the last update I’m going to have to sort through our digital photo album to job my memory on what has happened and what you have missed.

White Christmas

As many of you probably know by now, Caitlin and I were able to see snow for the first time EVER this Christmas. It snowed semi-heavily (I don’t know how to categorize the heaviness of snow as my sample size of ONE snow day is far too small to make any applicable or credible categorisations regarding snowfall volume) the Sunday before Christmas in Jinan. It was great to wake up in a well heated apartment and to see snow falling outside through our bedroom window. I have been told that this snow fall was only mild and tame but, to us, it looked like a blizzard spawned from bowels of Antarctica. Ok, maybe not that much, but it was certainly RAD! We went outside and played in the snow for a bit then walked out to the road and it was completely snow-ified. The cars were driving slow and with caution (for once) and I was able to do tremendous slides along the icy footpath with my gripless (some would say soulless) shoes.

Here are some photos to help you visualise what we got up to on that awesome day of days:

Dragon breath cannot be caught on film. It can only be experienced. Lesson learned.

Christmas eve – We went to a rad party at the foreign students building at Caitlin’s University and Santa was there!!!! Students from all different countries made dishes from their home lands and we had a glorious feast of Belgian pancakes, Italian pasta, American KFC, Russian salads, Mongolian something-or-rathers, and Australian Vegemite and cheese sandwiches! (That was me!). Caitlin also made a big vege salad and a big fruit salad but the sandwiches were the real show stoppers I think. We found out that Koreans really seem to enjoy vegemite as those things disappeared super fast. They were eating them with chopsticks. I laughed inside..and on the outside as well. Caitlin might tell you a bit more about this night as it is a blog post on its own.

Ok so, as I teach out in the mountains, it snowed MUCH heavier (as I am told and from what I can gather through my own keen observational skills) than in Jinan city. The snow lasted all week and by Christmas time, the school still had a thin layer of snowful joy lying around the area. Also, as it turned out, Christmas day was to be my last day of EXAMINATING my students and therefore would be my last day at the school. So Caitlin came to school to help me polish off the last 30 or so exams and we went out to a long ad-hoc Christmas lunch with some of my students who also happen to be our good friends now.

We went out to lunch at the student run teachers restaurant where the food is ABSOLUTLY DELICIOUS! I’ve probably eaten some of my favourite food in China in that restaurant and some of the dishes there will likely be the only Chinese food I miss when I am back in Australia! The food is, made and served by hospitality students and is also run by hospitality students and man, they really nail it. So we had a big feast, exchanged gifts and drank heaps of beer. The two boys (Frank and Lemon) and I decided to PK each other which basically means ‘versus’. Meaning, for the whole day, each person could not have more or less beer than the other two people. In China, you drink beer out of these small glasses in order to facilitate multiple toasting and skulling. It’s amazing how quickly you go through a tallie (pronounced taul-e) when drinking from these little devil glasses on a merry occasion such as Christmas!

So we smashed it at lunch time and then the students/workers had to attend class at about 3pm so we shuffle out of there and headed down to the student market to continue the festivities. It is also worth mentioning that these students (Emma ane Zoey were the other students, plus Jack and Nancy came later) have never really celebrated Christmas before so they were so happy and eternally grateful to us for letting them celebrate it with us. So yeh, we went to the market, kept eating, drinking, gumbai’ing (skulling after toasting), playing guitar, singing and generally putting the ‘Jesus Christ!’ back into Jesus Christmas.

Here are some photos of that mess:

New Years

We went to Beijing to celebrate New Years in style with our good friends Katie and Arne. We took an 8.5 hr sleeper train from Jinan at 12:30am on the 30th of December and arrived at Beijing on the morning of New Years Eve. We found our way to our awesome hostel (courtesy of Arne and Katie’s previous Beijing travel experience) and pretty much all fell asleep for a few hours (It’s hard to sleep on a hard sleeper!). The bar/restaurant at the hotel is really great and served good western food, has free wifi and when you buy breakfast in the morning, they give you a free beer ticket for the afternoon (YES SIR, THANKYOU SIR!). The hostel was also super close to Tiananmen square and other places of the like (I’m not much into sightseeing as you may or may not have gathered from this blog so far!). Caitlin and I are headed back to Beijing soon for 5 days or so, so we decided that the New Year’s trip would not so much be about sightseeing and more about relaxing and shopping etc.

So we chilled most of the day then went out to a bar called ‘Shooters’ which was PACKED. The place serves up hundreds of different shots and cocktails like a shot restaurant type thing. The menu was maaaaaasive. We had heaps of shots, did the countdown thing and had a very messy night over all. Caitlin and both lost our guts at different points in the evening! I’m gonna get in trouble for that sentence but I don’t even care! Freedom of speech man! Welcome to the blogosphere bitches! No, seriously…I’m sorry for all of that. That was a little too liberal for all of us I think.

So any way yeh, we just hung out, went to awesome restaurants, met up with other friends and had a good time in the ‘Jing. Caitlin also bought and awesome Ipod touch so she’s been addicted to that ever since. We bought a bunch of apps (monopoly included!!! Ok…I bought that…its super awesome). One app is called fring and allows Caity to use skype on the ipod touch, so I called my folks from the hostel bar (remember…free wifi…nice). It worked well. Glorious thing technology, ain’t it! Ok after re-reading this paragraph it sounds like I'M addidcted to the Ipod Touch...but i swear...she is too! She makes all sorts of to-do lists with it and stuff. Plus...you can listen to music on it too aparantly.

Other Stuff

Ok, well since then, stuff has happened but probably not too noteworthy. At one stage three repairmen finally came to fix our leaking bathroom (they had come three times before, looked at it and proclaimed…yes, it is leaking, it needs to be fixed). Apparently it had been flooding the apartment below us for 2 weeks or so! Anyway, they came an hour earlier than they said they were gonna come on a Saturday (9:00am) so we hadn’t showered or anything yet. So they came in, smashed up the bathroom and, as is Chinese tradition, dropped everything at 12:00 for lunch for 2 hours. So we were stuck in our apartment until they came back at 2 on the dot and fixed up the spurting, hissing, steaming pile of wreckage that was our bathroom (We had to stay home cuz we hadn’t showered and we didn’t know when they would come back, we had to let them in). But man, I will miss the two hour lunch break when I get back to Australia. And I will miss only having to do 18-20 hrs of work a week whilst living like a KING!

9:00am - Shiiiiit son!

Lunchtime 12:00 - 2:00 - WTF?

Finished - 3:30pm - and a bang up job I might add!

Caitlin is doing her final exams at the moment so she should be all finished by Friday. That’ll be rad. I’ve been a bit of a couch rat for the last week or so as she’s been studying all day and all my students have gone back to their respective towns/cities/villages.

Also, as Katie and Arne have gone off to Thailand for their holidays, I might be taking over Katie's Jinan job of helping promote this wine company in Jinan. Apparantly, all I’ll have to do is, be white, speak English and be able to drink alcohol at their conferences. I think it is a prestige thing of having a foreigner in your company or something. I hear it pays quite well so I’m excited. How often do you get paid to go and drink with a bunch of businessmen (Robbie, you can probably answer this one).

So how are all of you guys and gals doing????

Here are our plans for the remainder of our trip…

We will stay in Jinan until the 30th of Jan (we are celebrating Chinese new year with a friend of mine from Jinan on Australia day).

Then we will stay in Beijing until the 5th (We will do the obligatory Great Wall trip and all that other junk)

Then we will head to Hong Kong by either plane or a combination of plane and train and leave from Hong Kong airport to the land of sunburnt planes on the 7th at 9:30pm. Will make a transfer in Sydney and should be home by the 8th around lunchtime methinks (Then, in this summer weather of yours, I will become a sunburnt plain).

Robbie…Matto…start that teaser campaign…Sunday touch must return. I need the exercise!!!!!

Also you two, download Peggle Deluxe. It is awesomely addictive. It's like...snood addictive...but better. You can get it off bit torrent/mininova etc. I paid for it though. Look for a mac version or run it through Windows you Mac noobs ;)

Ok that’s all for now.

I might do some blog posts when we get some free wifi in Beijing. Hopefully Caitlin will post a blog about her school experiences before we leave Jinan aswell. Oh and maybe we’ll tell you how Chinese New Year goes too. Until then!

Cyaz

Pauly

P.s So long Haydos. There is no such thing as goodbye...only see ya later!

P.p.s SCREW BLOGGER! It keeps automatically reformatting my post without paragraph breaks after I publish it! Trust me...it was much more beautiful and clear befor it was published! Screw blogger to hell I says!

Last class before exams!

2008-12-11T21:32:00.005+08:00

Hey,

I told you I'd be double posting today didn't I! But I guess, seeing as these posts are in reverse chronological order, this won't mean too much to you at all. Just know this...there is another post below. However, if you are diligent enough to scroll down the page everytime you come to this blog to see if you have missed anything and read all new posts in chronological order, you will know EXACTLY what I'm talking about! Right on!

Ok, so this week was my last week of proper classes before exams, so I decided to just have fun. In all my lessons we just practiced conversational english (talked a bunch of crap!), played English and Chinese songs on the guitar (sung a bunch of crap!) and did some revision for the exam in the form of a game of Jeopardy (played a bunch of crappy games!). But this week has been really fun and I think the students have really enjoyed it. Also, because this will be the last week I will have full classes (exams are split into two weeks and the classes are split into two halves), I took the opportunity to take some photos and videos which I would like to share with you!

Ok so, mainly I just took photos and videos of my most advanced class because today was the only day I brought the camera. Don't judge me...or my disorganised manner!

It's beginning to look a little bit, sorta similar to, kinda like Christmas!

2008-12-11T21:02:00.009+08:00

Hey n00blets,

As you can see we are getting into the Christmas spirit over here and the presents are starting to really pile up (hehe). The wine is from the father of one of my students and a good mate of mine too (Frank). The KFC is leftover from tonight for Caitlin as she loves popcorn chicken and she is still studying for her exam tomorrow. The cookies are cookies. The feathery thing is a cool...no...AWESOME hackey sack thing we bought in the street. Heaps of people play with these in the street and it is not uncommon to see 40-50-60 year old men AND WOMEN pulling off some crazy round house kick passes and 'jesters' (for those of you who remember California Games...). They are cool because they are more forgiving than normal hackey sacks as they float a little longer in the air. Then we have the centerpiece...Caitlin's birthday present and care package have finally arrived from Australia (They were sent in August!). There was huge kerfuffle with the post office and the parcel had been sitting in the wrong post office for a couple of months. Chinese postal n00bs.

Anyway, there are a few more gifts to come yet but all in all, things are looking good. You'd be surprised how Christmassy things are getting over here...the Chinese love the concept of Christmas even they do not celebrate to the full extent that we do. All the shops are decorated Christmassy, restaurant workers wear Santa hats and Christmas CD's are being played on repeat everywhere...some CD's only have one song tho so that can get a little annoying. Anyway, I have to do a different post on another subject now so I'll say bye for now!

Pauly

Oh and P.S - It hasn't snowed yet but it is on the verge I tellz ya! Hopefully we will have a white (or smog soaked brown snow) Christmas. Here are a few pictures of what Jinan is looking like at the moment to give you a feel for the weather and scenery we are seeing every day.

LOL! - Yeh great, a beautiful German church in Jinan...but if you look closer at the guy on the motorbike you'll see he is cruising around with a huge pressurized gas cylinder at his feet...noob!

Oy!

2008-12-08T11:36:00.004+08:00

Hey everyone,

Time for another blog update. Man these things are few and far between these days eh? Oh well, not much longer here now. Caitlin will prolly do a better blog update than me as I don't really have any photos or anything truly interesting to blog about today. But she went to an orphanage yesterday and played with the kids all day so I'm sure she'll post about that.

I know we only have about 6 or 7 people visiting this blog but I really want you to look into signing this petition regarding the Rudd government's proposed Internet filtering plan.

It really is a stupid, ineffective, and uneducated plan where they want to impose MANDATORY filters at the ISP level (Internet service provider level). So instead of installing a stand alone filter on your computer they want to filter your data before it gets to your house. This has been proven to not only be ineffective in filtering the bad stuff they don't want people looking at, it can also slow down national Internet speeds by UPTO 87%!!!!! It's so ridiculous that the government can expect that they can implement this infrastructure that TOTALLY contradicts their campaign promise of implementing a world class broadband network in Australia. Really, the Internet filtering plan will leave our Internet crippled and, furthermore, will give the government the opportunity to filter whatever they want. This is catastrophic in today's information economy. I can tell you from living in China where similar filters are in place, that we definitely DO NOT want this filtering plan to go ahead. Even if you have super broadband your Internet speeds are crippled.

The only thing that still works fast is p2p sharing, but this is absurd because p2p sharing accounts for nearly 60% of high Internet traffic and is also the number one vehicle of child pornography and other nasty things. So this filtering plan will not stop anything...except for the development of Australia's broadband infrastructure and, furthermore, it will throw Australia further down the ladder in average global Internet speeds and infrastructure. This is something that we as a nation cannot afford. The digital divide between Australia and the rest of the first world countries is about to expand exponentially and I believe it is out duty to try and stop this obscene attack on the freedom of our information. I still like the Rudd government, but I do think that this may be one of the biggest mistakes they could make.

I have embedded a petition form into this post so, if you want to, you can sign quickly and painlessly. This is not like other Internet petitions though, this campaign is run by Getup.com (an Australian based online activist website - they helped get David Hicks back to AUS). The campaign is receiving heap of press and already has close to 85,000 signatures. They will also be running a targeted online campaign soon but donations are needed (they have raised $35,000 so far i think). Sign this petition and tell your friends, the future of our Internet really depends on it.

Pauly

And presto...

2008-11-24T16:51:00.010+08:00

Hey noobs Pauly here,

^^^Look what I made^^^. In Australia, sure, you could easily whip up one of these for nice lil snack at lunch time. However, here in China, well I could woo any westerner with these babies. I would be considered a culinary maverick. Nice.

Featuring: Bread, Mayo, Tomato, Smoked Ham, cheese and a touch of pepper.

Please note: we ran out of margarine before this batch and I woulda made something with avocado but it costs AUD $10 for 2 avocados!

We have also been making some nice sandwiches with iceberg lettuce.

Hardest ingredients to find...ham and cheese.

ALSO:

Nationalities: Olivia (Australian), Claire (French), Brad (American), Katie (Canadian), Eugenia (Italian), Oko (Mongolian I'm pretty sure) and not in the photo - Arne (Belgian). Plus Caitlin and I of course, we are also Australian so we do not count. We were doubles in this collection.

We hosted a dinner party on Saturday night and it went really well. I cooked a sorta veggie tangine and Olivia (the girl on the left with short black/brown hair, she's from Sydney) cooked an awesome roasted capsicum and eggplant dish with coriander and lemon as a dressing. I also cooked a massive batch of mashed potato as a side and we had bread to dip as well. Along with a few beers and wine, a good night was had by all. All eaten and drunk to the soothing melodies of the Gin Club and the Decemberists. Nice. Finally, Olivia cooked up an awesome dessert that consisted of fried banana, ice cream, crushed wafers and a rum flavoured toffee sauce to top off the dessert with pure decadence. It was a really good night and I've been mackin' on the leftovers ever since. Nice.

Only 3 more weeks of teaching and then 2 weeks of exams and I'm done!

Catchyaz!

Pauly

Bout that time eh?

2008-11-16T13:23:00.009+08:00

Hey everyone.

Wow. It's been a long time hey? Time's starting to fly by so quickly over here. I only have 4 weeks left of teaching before I set my exams. Also, this week I have my students doing oral presentations so that should be fun. One part of the presentation is for them to write and perform a song using slang in the lyrics. I gave them my e-mail so they could send me rough drafts and, no joke, about 3/4 of them are blatantly just copied and pasted off the internet. Plagarism and piracy is such a non-issue in China. I swear, everyone downloads all their software and movies and mp3s for free (I know we do this too, but here it is just expected of everyone and no one can actually see any wrong in it). I feel like saying...."you wouldn't steal a handbag..." d ne now now ne, d now now ne, d now now ne (music from the ad..duh).

Anyway, other than that, classes are going fine. I'm running a lil dry on ideas for classes but everything usually works out ok. Now I have a good little library of lesson plans that I can use if I ever decide to come back to China or If Caitlin ever does ESL teaching in Australia.

Here are some more photos of my school and some students I dine with from time to time.

The girl next to me is Emma. She is a very funny little girl who loves learning english. She desperately wants to be Steve and my little sister haha. She is really cool.

This guy 'Frank' has really good English and is a good friend of mine now. He and Lemon along with Steve, Jenny and I have lunch together on Tuesdays and after that we play pool. tis fun.

We had Steve (the other foreign teacher at my school) and his girlfriend Jenny over to cook dumplings the other day. Jenny is Chinese so she showed us the ropes but us, being foreigners, wanted to tweak the ancient recipe a lil to see if we could make it appeal a bit more to our western tastebudes. So we made dumplings with mashed potato, cheese, chives and also bolognaise dumplings aswell. They were all quite tasty but Jenny nailed the Chinese dumplings. In the end we had hang our heads and admit defeat.

Also, the other day a couple of students (Lemon, Monica, Cindy), Steve, Jenny, Caitlin, Arne, Kaity and I stayed at the marketplace near my school and had a great game of texas hold em. (Gambling is illegal in China but apparantly we were far enough out of town for it to be ok). We didn't really gamble anyway and we didn't let the chinese students pay as they don't have much cashola. But yeh it was great. We ended up going to this little coffee shop/bar that was pretty empty and just asked if we could buy the bottle of bacardi from the owner and asked him to keep bringing ice and coke all night. It was very cheap, maybe 140 kwai all up at the end of the night (about $30 now that the Aussie dollar has become China's bitch...) but we also took a bottle of Bai Jiu that only the boys...no...MEN were drinking. This is chinese alcohol that has a similar taste and alcohol percentage as...well nail polish remover. So the loser of any big hand had to shot etc... So yeh that was really fun. After that we hit up Lang Kwai Fang again and did the usual tequila, dancing and talking crap with foreigners etc...

Ok so, what else. I made an AWESOME veggie tangine the other day with mashed potatoes and toast. It's cold here so I wanted to make a dish that would warm us up and, as I can't make devilled sausages here, this was the next best thing. I think we'll have some peeps over and ill make a huge batch for everyone. I thinks on tuesday the low will be at -3 degrees so this might be a good day to have em over.

I've been hanging out with this american fella named brad and we have been playing guitar together, along with his Canadian friend Dave. It's awesome though because when I go over to his place (he is also a teacher but he works at Caitlin's university), he cooks awesome awesome food. He used to be a chef or a cook or something and he has just nailed chinese food for westerners. He make all vegetarian chinese food from all organic ingredients and it simply amazes me because I find it so hard to cook anything with the ingredients that are on offer. But alas, the other day he made Caitlin and I a three course meal with vegie wraps as a starter, creamy spinach soup and french bread as an entree and two indescribale mains using tofu, wood ears, colliflower, chick peas, tomatos. onions and some sauces and spices that I cannot name. It is so good to finally eat delicious chinese food that is not oily! So I wanna have him over but I'm afraid my cooking might not live up to his standard lol. If only it were Australia and I could cook up a big lamb roast or a super awesome gourmet pizza!

The heating got turned on yesterday but you can hardly tell. The heating is hust hot water being pumped through drains and heaters in the apartment. I guess it will have an accumulated heating effect over time, but at the moment, this seem dubious.

I thought I was putting on weight here in China but I weighed myself at a mates place the other day and I've lost like 8 kilos! (I came here at 83 kg and now im 75!!) This is not so great for me as I connot afford to lose to much weight, especiallyduring this winter! I think that maybe any muscle I may of had when I came here might have actually just transformed into fat lol because I really do not have much chance to do any exercise over here. I'm keen to get back into touch and maybe some more running when I get back home tho. Maybe I'll walk gizmo around the block everyday. lol.

Oh, , I'm now wearing long johns. Hooray!

Also, i finally got to try some Beijing Duck (more like Jinan Duck tho) and it was nice, but I've been told it is 1000 times better in Beijing so I'll try that in January eh? Nice.

And finally, I finish teaching on the 26th of December and we will be home on the 8th of Feb, 2009. The plane tix have been rebooked and they are locked in and paid for. See y'all then hey!

Ok, catchya all round like delicious, australian, meaty tender 'melt-in-you-mind' rissole!.... with tomato sauce, mashed potato, veggies....mmm

Pauly

long time no see!

2008-11-11T16:50:00.008+08:00

Ok, we've been slack. Paul has been busy with work and I've just finished my mid-term exams!

We've done a lot of stuff since we last posted, so I'll either do a big one or make heaps of little ones so that you can pause and rewind hehehe (and yes robbie, you can fast forward too I suppose!)

Hmm...I'll start with my trip to "千佛山" or Thousand Buddha Mountain. This is a famous landmark in Jinan and yes, I believe them when they say there's over a thousand buddhas! I thought it would be pretty easy to get to the other side of the city and so opted to go by myself. So, trying to read the bus timtables is very difficult. I can understand the chinese, but the actual layout is very confusing. (This fact came in helpful the next week when we had to discuss things that could be changed in regards to Jinan's transport system...I had a lot to say!!)

So after 5 and a half different buses (don't ask about the half..), 2 hours, and a new chinese friend...I made it to 'Thousand Buddha Mountain Bus stop'. I looked around and only saw buildings that looked just like the ones I had been passing....for 2 hours! Finally I walked up to an intersection to see if I can ask for some more directions (getting around in China can be classed as studying!!) I finally caught a glimpse of the mountain in between the buildings!

Anyway, here are some photos...

This is a statue of Chairman Mao in the Shandong Normal Uni's park. I walked through here to another bus stop with my new chinese friend.

This was the Buddha who gave me directions...

The 'there's something in my ear' Buddha...

休息 Buddha! (Resting Buddha)

One of the biggest Buddhas

This is why it's the Thousand Buddha Mountain...there are Buddha's carved everywhere!

This is the 'Cave with Ten Thousand Buddhas'...

Everywhere you look...

This hole in the wall contains........

....all of this!

It was a little (as the weather forecast says) 'hazy', and quite cold inside

Look at all the little Buddha's around this one, it was crazy!

Look at the sunshine, it was warmer outside!

I'm still not sure what the rusty locks stood for, but the big red character in the background means Buddha/Buddhism.

Still not sure what this means either...I know the red ribbons have wishes/dreams written on them, but I'm not sure what all the rocks are doing!

A view of our Jinan!

Look closely...

Someone was enjoying this a little too much! Or perhaps this was the 'guard cat'

Last of all, the view from the cable car on the way down. Of course I took the cable car for the view...I wasn't tired or anything. Can you see the big golden buddha in the background (well his head). I didn't get around to seeing it this time...I mean..it was closed..or something! ;)

Ok, that'll do for this one!

再见！

Soo...the weather's nice today!

2008-10-23T16:37:00.004+08:00

Yeah, I know that's supposed to be the topic that you talk about when you have nothing to say...and well, I haven't seen you guys for a while, so you know...

hehe, not really. The weather here is actually nice today! Over the last couple of weeks it was getting progressively worse. The last two days have been unbelievable. Literally. I wouldn't have believed it a couple of months ago.

Here are some photos I took yesterday and then today:

This is yesterday. The flowerpot on the left is the same one I'm standing in front of in the next photo.

Even the flowers are happier!!

The photo's are from my phone, so they aren't the best quality. The building you are looking at is the library at my campus. The best part of these photos is the tall building behind the library. I couldn't actually see it yesterday! Our poor, poor, lungs!

So, how's the weather in Aus? Paul was telling me they were expecting a tornado in Brisbane last week...how did that go?! I heard it's getting pretty warm too. We are waiting for the cold snap here, I think it's coming, it got quite cold today. It was still only 11C or something, so not too cold, but they are predicting a very cold winter this year. (YAY FOR SNOW!)

ok, over and out!

The Hospital!

2008-10-21T17:21:00.005+08:00

Esther in front of the emergency department...

It's ok, everything's fine!

I took my friend Esther to the hospital today as it is quicker than visiting a doctor. She had a sore throat, sore belly...you know...all the stuff you get in China! Apparently it is the change of the season that everyone gets sick!

Oh yeah, I'm supposed to tell you...this is Caitlin by the way!

Me: Not sick! :)

So, we made our way to the hospital..poor Esther hasn't even been out of bed for the last couple of days, so it was exhausting. First we ask someone who repeats very loudly all of the most emabarrasing of Esther's symptoms so that not only are we being stared at as 'waiguo ren' (foreigners) but everyone is having a little chuckle as well!! So we make our way to the appropriate window and pay 20rmb (Still not sure what it was for..). While waiting for the little red stamps to be put on the reciepts, a guy walking down the corridor hawks something up and spits it onto the floor. Yes. Inside the hospital. So, after paying at one counter, someone takes us to see the doctor. Each doctor has a desk joined to and facing another doctor, their respective patients share the bench seat that runs along the desk...

I won't blabber on too much...I'll let the pictures say their thousand words...

Esther filling out the paperwork...[note of the little red stamp in front of the doctor, this is one of many...]

In China, privacy isn't an issue! This is one of the many times we were interrupted by angry sick people demanding something from OUR doctor! Another note on privacy: when the doctor found out we went to Shanda Uni, she asked if we knew another overseas student and if we could take her results back to her...Esther: "No, we don't know who you're talking about" Dr: "Well, she's black and has long hair in plaits. Can you tell the black girl that we still have her results?" Esther: "No. That's your problem, not mine." Caitlin: *quietly chuckles in disbelief*

Say "Aah!" [yes, it was a camping torch...]

The only waiting we had to do...10 mins for the blood test results!

In the midst of these photos, we have been to the cashier twice and then back to the doctor, then to the blood test, and then wait, and then back to the doctor, and then back to pay for the drugs and then to the next window to get the prescription to take to the third window up, and then get the drugs from this window, and then back to the doctor for her to stamp everything with her red stamp. In the end I think it cost 226rmb over 3 trips to the cashier. Hopefully it all comes back on insurance...coz that is why we pay it!

These are just some of the windows that we visited!

For all of those pharmacists out there...how good are your working conditions? Although there are so many people in here, they probably don't have to do too much!

It's ok Esther...just one more window...just one more little red stamp...ok, ok, make that two...

Yes...the doctor is on her mobile...

Apparently getting an IV drip is the cure for everything. This is a baby with a drip, and grandma is holding it up for him. [ps..can you see the baby's nappy?!] About the drip too, we were wary enough of the blood test (which turned out to be a prick on the finger and squeeze enough blood out), so when the doctor told Esther she needed a drip this is what happened: Caitlin: "She really needs a drip?" Dr: "Yes, very important" Caitlin: "Why? What is it for?" Dr: "For fever" Esther: "If I take the medicine, won't I be ok?" Dr: "Yes" Caitlin and Esther: "Then does she really need the IV?" Dr: : "ok...maybe not..." hehehehe There were people hooked up to IV's everywhere in the waiting room...

Other differences I noticed:

*Man spat in the corridor

*Woman sitting next to a bin shuffles over slightly when a nurse directs vomiting patient to bin. Nurse slaps patient on the back...

* While Esther was waiting for the blood test results, we were directed to some chairs...one of which had a used cotton bud (to stop the bleeding) and all of them had bloodstains on them.

We stood.

*China loves uniforms. I think we could count a minimum of 3 different coloured nurse uniforms, 2 different ones for the doctors, and 2 different guard uniforms!

*The ambulances and emergency vehicles have to compete for parking space in the public carpark!

Other than all of that however, it was a very interesting and a quite quick visit! I know it's not uncommon to have to wait for hours in an Aussie emergency waiting room! We got straight in here.

I think, apart from being exhausted, Esther had lots of fun as I snapped photos of everything and told jokes (coz I'm so awesome at telling jokes!)

ok, ta ta for now! xoxoxox

This is the result: 2 boxes of antibiotics, one bottle of something for a tummy ache, one stip of tablets for headache and fever, and one book of everything - in chinese! This makes one happy Esther! :)

Last Saturday...

2008-10-16T16:08:00.010+08:00

Hey Everybody,

I know there are some of you who out there for a dying for another tasty morsel of delicious noob blogging so I've decided to feed your hunger for uninspired non-literary ramblings about our time in China. Down boy/girl!

Ok so I'll tell you what we did last Saturday night...

Caitlin went to a party with a bunch of her foreign friends and I went to KTV with another teacher from my school and some of our students. Much fun was had by all. The girls had to be back at the school by 10:30 as this is their curfew!!! (Yes even on the weekend! These are 20 - 21 year year olds by the way...imagine trying to enforce rule that in Australia...well I guess they did at Grace College...but they are religious so...)

So yeh, KTV is like karaoke where you pay for a room for a couple of hours and they have a P.A system hooked up to a computer jukebox and a projector and you sing karaoke with your friends. It's weird because I thought the whole point of karaoke was to get drunk and sing in front of people you don't know, but these kids were stone sober and taking it very seriously haha. Although Lemon (my student) came with us and he was drinking. After the girls caught a cab home (at 10:00!) we went out to two bars that were pretty dead and then ended up back at the place Caitlin and I went to a couple of weeks ago (Lan Kwai Fong). Once again, Tequila was had by all and I met Caitlin there too. We had some chats with everyone and got home around 3:30am ish...

My mate Lemon belting out some random Chinese song...

Me belting out some super random English song

Maggie and Renee

Steve and I....as you can see from all the bottles, I have become slightly rosy cheeked...

The sign says it all...although it should read "Cheap Tequila will mess you up big time"

Hello Kitty Lemon

Caity and Cainty - Cainty is famous for her words "Let's Drunk!"...nice

The next morning is what was rad - WE COOKED A FRY UP! Nice, it is so good to eat a sweet awesome fry up...twas hard to find the ham but we got some and treated ourselves to a belly full of greasy western breakfast. I like eggs now too by the way.

Mmmmm...so bad but sooooo good.

So that's about all that's happened this week/last week. I have been working hard and enjoying it and I have also been playing pool with a couple of my students and with Steve at lunch times. Oh and I've also learnt a couple new dishes that I can order so I don't have to keep getting tung su litchi or hong shou tiairzi (sweet and sour pork or braised eggplant). Nice.

Caitlin has been studying like crazy...I'm glad I'm not studying anymore. I'm loving my 4 day work weeks (during which I am encouraged to drink beer and play pool). I haven't actually been drinking as much beer as this blog may lead you to believe by the way, its just that whenever I blog I talk about the times when beer has been drunk because that's when I'm having the most fun/relaxing usually. Don't worry I'm not turning into an alcoholic.......or am I???? Nope, just having a very good holiday!

Ok so here are some candid photos I took of Caitlin studying...because she is literally studying ALL THE TIME!!!! Which is good for her but boring for me lol!

See Caitlin's rad little laptop/study table...it's so awesome! Great for those gen y kids out there who read the news news through a wifi internet connection before they go to bed etc...I'm gonna get one too and I'll get a laptop so Caity and I can do Gen Y reading in bed before we go to sleep....novels are for suckers!

And here are some more photos of my school!

The View - It is so much clearer, crisper and fresher out at my school than it is in Jinan. I can see blue sky everyday which is a real treat!

This is awesometown - They have outdoor ping pong tables at the school. they are always packed at lunchtime. You have to play the breeze though...it requires a new element of skill that I am trying to master. Once you get it though, the swing is amazing!

Steve and a student (Emma) have a friendly game...but most of the girls are as good as the boys so it's a bit harder than what you might expect.

Ok, that will be all for now, if you have any questions post them in the comments and I'll try to answer them....next week hahahaha!

Pauly

Let's go back to the....past....

2008-10-10T18:34:00.006+08:00

I finally updated my Qufu post....and it posted under the original date - in September! So you have to go and find it if you want to read about the fantastic adventures I had!! :)

PS: You can use this to travel back to September....just think about the date...close your eyes...and click:

My Students...

2008-10-09T14:31:00.007+08:00

Hey all,

Just thought you might like to see a photo of one of my classes. This is my Thursday class of advanced english learners. They are a really great bunch of students.

Unfortunately these are very bad photos. I realised I didn't have the camera set up properly. I'll have to take some more next week, or maybe tomorrow. The fella with the red jacket on and the messed up blurry face is named Ba Yuen but his English name is Lemon. He is one of my mates and we drink beer and eat Shou Cou every Tuesday before I speak at his English Club (he is the president of english club - and there are over 200 members who attend each week!). Cindy is the girl up the front with the striped jacket and next to her is Monica, they both have very good English and Cindy has a crazy imagination (which is quite rare in many chinese students).

Here if you can read my horrible blackboard writing, I am trying to teach them how to differentiate English sounds from Chinese sounds ('Hang' in the chinese vocabulary is pronounced Hung and men is pronounced Mn). So this was a fun lesson getting them to say words like sink and think, hung, hand, sung, sang, sing, sin, win, wine etc...So yeh, now most of them can pronounce these words properly (with a thick Australian accent to boot!). I 'sink' they enjoyed it very much haha. Thanks to the guys from elt edge for the sweet lesson plan (our American friends we met in Qingdao). I'll try to repay the favour a.s.a.p!

O.k, I promise better pictures later on, but now, I am le tired... so I will have a nap.

Pauly

Our mini holiday

2008-10-05T18:20:00.018+08:00

Hey everyone, Pauly here...

We arrived home from our little mini holiday in Qingdao yesterday. We had a really great week in the little seaside city and would love to go back there if we ever get another chance.

We stayed at this placed called the YHA Old Observatory and was absolutely fan-bloody-tastic. I highly recommend it to anyone planning to visit the area. It is run by a Chinese family but the guy in charge (AJ) went to high school in the Sunshine Coast and did his university in Boston so his English was really good. His best attribute though (other than being super friendly and a great fella all round) was that he knew what westerners wanted even if the westerners didn't know what they wanted. After being in China for a while, you forget about a lot of little things that you miss and, at this hostel, they had everything from equal sugar and masterfoods tomato sauce to western toilets and great showers, western music/tv/films, soft beds and AMAZING home made pizzas!

But the absolute best thing about this hostel was, by far, the mamahuhu lounge. The hostel is a refurbished observatory as the name suggests and on the top floor there was this great dining/lounging/drinking area that had a fantastically awesome view of Qingdao. It had a basic western restaurant (with great food like real grilled cheese sandwiches and fries, currys, aforementioned home made pizzas, proper steak and chicken burgers with fries etc), a bunch of tables and big lounge chairs, a pool table, great lighting and a tv/dvd projector that projected onto the side of the actual observatory. Another cool thing was that, not only was the bar open until the wee hours of the night, but also the western food wasn't ridiculously priced as it usually is in China.

It was great hanging out up there for a western breakfast, going into town during the day and then coming home and chatting with the friends we made at the hostel and drinking Qingdao beer fresh from the Qingdao brewery.

A special shout out goes out to Snow, Evie, Tim, Bobby and Mike, some awesome American teachers + 1 awesome Chinese girl we hung out with most of the time we were in Qingdao. (Sorry, I just realised we didn't get any photos of you guys and gals!)

EDIT: I found a photo of the group on Snow's facebook. Thankyou web 2.0 and social networking!

The bar also provided a communal acoustic guitar for those late night drinking sessions ;)

When we arrived at the hostel, like the stupid westerners we are, we just assumed we could book a room when we arrived....the day before one of the biggest national holidays of the year in China. So, lo and behold, there were no rooms available at the inn. Luckily, after talking to AJ for a little bit and declining the offer to book a room in a "sauna" down the road, we asked if we could hire one of their tents (they have tents for hire in the summer). He insisted that it would be to cold and said we could sleep a tiny little room that was soon to be refurbished into a massage room. They set up a nice bed for us in there and everything. After that first night, we were able to book the next 3 nights in a perfect little private room with a shower and western toilet, espn and air conditioning. This was much better than what our friends got as they had a few to a room and had to shower in the basement showers....if i remember correctly.

So yeh we went to annual Qingdao beer festival and ate some great meat kebabs (shou cou i think its called), met a dead deer and drank a bunch of beer.

Caitlin and I also did a tour of the Qingdao beer factory.....and then drank a bunch of beer.

LoL - the nutritional values of tsingtao beer. Nice

Every night we would come home and relax upstairs...and attempt to drink a bunch more beer. It was awesometown.

So yeah, if you ever come to China, i definitely recommend the old observatory and Qingdao. Less smog, nice weather, great people, good times.

Oh and the website is soooo much better than any other Chinese accommodation website we have seen so far. We found out that the reason for this is because there is French-Canadian who has been living at the hostel for about a year now who is super talented at web design and Internet promotion. We also met this fellow as his bedroom is linked with the massage room so he got a huge fright when he woke up in the morning to go to the toilet as he has to go through our room first (we were passed out stone cold after the beer festival!). Nice.

So, if you want a taste of our little adventure I suggest u pop down to your local liquor store and pick up a couple of tsingtao/qingdao tallies and imagine yourself in this little piece of paradise.

OK well that is about all for now. I've added a skype button to the site and am automatically sending out e-mails to like 10 email addresses I could remember whenever a new post goes up, k? K.

Argh. have to start teaching again for 12 weeks straight now. Stupid teaching. lol. See yaz.

Pauly

Updates

2008-09-29T12:59:00.002+08:00

Hey,

Just letting you know I added a Weather gadget showing the temp in Jinan down the bottom of the blog. Also added a few other little bits and pieces to the blog including jinan time, hit counter and a followers thing (u should sign up as a follower of this blog so we can see who is reading).

We are on holidays now so we are gonna try and hit up Qingdao (Beijing was booked out and way too busy, we'll check it out later on).

Ok Catchyaz later.

Pauly

Winter? Already???

2008-09-24T20:35:00.006+08:00

Hey, Pauly here, just a quick update.

Two days ago it was Autumn. Yesterday, without any warning, it became Winter. It was crazy. The seasons in China, (and Jinan more specifically) are so distinct. Very different to Australia.

I walked outside in my normal t-shirt and shorts (with trusty mexico belt we all know and love) and everyone was wearing jackets and jumpers and trousers. Then the cool breeze pierced my flimsy clothing. It was so weird cuz everyone was saying to me all day, "why aren't you wearing a jumper" and "aren't you cold???" and I'm like, well I wore clothes like this yesterday, how was I to know the temperature would drop like 5 or 6 degrees to a steady new temperature overnight. I dunno, i think it's gonna keep dropping till dec-jan when the average temp is about -6 to -8. So anyways, i went out bought some trendy new winter clothes today (Robbie, you will be impressed with my new style). Maybe we will post some pics when its gets a little colder. These are super warm clothes so they may not yet be applicable for the current weather, a hoodie should be ok for now. No, these new clothes are for tackling the real cold days ahead. I just got them before the price jumps (apparantly up to 5 x the cost they are now). That's the Goldston in me, always thinking bout things like that. Nice.

So the weather now is pretty much on par with what it was like when we left Australia...the end of our winter. So yeh, our winter clothes we brought with us are holding strong for now. Although our Canadian friends were shocked to hear that we were actually wearing our Australian winter clothes lol.

Ok then, catch up with you in another post someday eh?

Oh and don't worry, we've stopped eating or drinking milk products made in China. Dodged a bullet there eh? Not really though.

Pauly

p.s we do read all of your comments and appreciate them greatly, but we don't always reply cuz we are lazy and we usually read them in our e-mail inboxes and not on the blog. But keep em coming, if you have facebook we'll try to reply there or if u are family, we'll talk to ya on skype or sumthing. BTW, here are the shows we're watching every week (cuz Chinese tv is sooo bad):

Leeching:

Heroes

Sarah Connor Chronicles

Entourage

Eureka

House

How I Met Your Mother

and we just got:

30 Rock Season 1

MAD MEN season 1

Pushing Daisys Season 1

Streaming: NRL finals (and hopefully the world cup but doubtful)

Have already watched Firefly and Serenity too, v good, we recommend!

K, Zaijian!!!

P.P.S here is an awesome painting I found on Digg.com that I want to get blown up and framed when I go back to Australia. So good....

Big Weekend.

2008-09-22T14:33:00.010+08:00

Hey all,

I'm drinking too much beer in China.

Sorry for the late post again. The hassel of plugging the camera in and trying to remember what has happened over the last week sometimes outweighs the benefits of having a fresh blog post...but once I do get around to it, it is oh so rewarding.

Yeh so, we had a really big weekend this weekend past. We went out to this bar called lang gui fang which is a notorious foreigner spot and we smashed it. We went with a huge bunch of foreign students from Caitlin's uni and didnt get home till 6 am (after having a noodles at an all night taiwanese place). Had a really good time but man, i felt it the next day. Lucky I had the rugby league to soothe my pain....(only to be left emotionally battered and bruised in what was to be the last 10 seconds of the Broncos season......people don't forgets Simms, people dont forget.)

Aaaaanyway, for some reason I was drinking tequila with some american guy and beering it up on the dance floor. It was a messy night. Caitlin had fun too, i think.

I met this dude who is going to give me like 20 lesson plans. I had a guitar jam with him earlier in the night and he wants me to come and and play with his acoustic guitar trio who all sing and apparantly do some harmonies too so that should be fun. He then tried to convince me to come to some mountain and do martial arts every week. I wasn't so sure about that though.

We didnt take too many pictures and the videos Caitlin took of me trying to speak drunken Chinese are just plain wrong. I would have put them up except:

1) I swear at the end of the good one and;

2) what if i want to go for prime minister one day? These videos would ruin me.

OK so ill just put up some photos of some of our friends, the place where we spent the mid autumn festival and a picture of Caitlin....

The restaurant...

My friend Arne....

The restaurant again.... You could ride in the pedal powered boats like at natureworld (who will be the first to say "nature world isn't open any more!" I wonder....)

Me and some of the other foriegn students...

Caitlin telling a terrible terrible joke....

Ok, that is all for now. I think Caitlin wants to blog about her trip to Qufu, the home of Confucious, later on....mmm

See ya!

Pauly

OH! and p.s, I have like 10 days off next week because it is the national day holiday (Yeh that's right, in China, they get 5 days off for their version of Australia day, but considering the weekends and the fact i dont work on mondays, it adds up to 10 for me, (a s m t w h f a s m).

So kt and I are gonna try and get to Beijing for a couple o days and see what all the fuss is about.

Also, and this is what im super super excited about, we've decided that at the end of our semesters and before we come home (around jan 20thish) we are gonna go to Japan for two weeks or so before we go to Australia via Hong Kong. Nice. Im very much looking forward to this as Japan is the home of:

1 - average internet speeds of around 70 - 100mbs per second

2 - Sony (Tv's, playstation, and all sorts of other rad electronics)

3 - Japanimation and naruto (nice ill buy some cosplay stuff maybe lol, maybe a manga or two for funs sake)

4 - rad food

5 - rad gaming and arcade scene

6 -trendy clothes and trendy people

7 and a bunch of other cool stuff.

So Im v excited about this decision. We'll have to fly over korea to get there but thatll be ok....wont it?? lol

Ok catchyaz later

Pauly

Mid Autumn Festival

2008-09-13T16:17:00.008+08:00

Mag...num????

Hey all,

This weekend is the mid-autumn festival (a long weekend for everyone in China). They celebrate the middle of Autumn and the fact that we will see the brightest full moon of the year next week. Everyone goes home to see family and they all eat moon cakes (a weird sweet cake that are only eaten once a year at the mid-autumn festival). So yeh, it is a long weekend and it was rideiculous trying to get home from work on friday as all of the students who live at the school were catching the same bus as me.

Shit. I accidently deleted half my post. Drat.

Ok so anyway, my boss hosted a massive lunch on Friday for all of the foreign teachers and the other chinese teachers in my department...it was delicious. After the lunch he gave us all two big boxes of moon cakes for the holiday so that was nice of him.

This is an example of a mooncake. There are heaps of different flavours though, none of which I am able to name.

I played guitar for my students on friday to fill some time at the end of the lessons. I looked up and saw like 15 people filming me with their camera phones. It was weird. They all seemed to enjoy the western music however, even though they couldn't understand what I was saying/singing...

Caitlin bought us a badmington set as heaps of people play badmington at night time. It should be good under this crazy full moon. In China, everyone comes out at night. As people all live in these little apartments and dorms, everyone comes out at night and talk, dance, play badmington or hackey sack, eat, drink, listen to music or buy stuff from the side of the street etc. I can liken the atmosphere to club nights at swimming club, except without all the swimming. It's warm and friendly. I can only speculate that, if this is what is like every night of the week, then Sunday night's celebrations are going to be awesome town.

Here is a lil video of what a normal weeknight is like across the road from out apartment building:

Anyway, Caitlin starts uni next week so we'll see how that goes eh?

Oh yeh, and here are some photos of our awesome cooking so far with our limited western grocery resources.

Nice.

Pauly

LOL P.S -Caitlin sleeps with one eye open. ;)

曲阜　Qufu (pronounced: Chew-foo)

2008-09-10T10:08:00.012+08:00

Knocking on Confucious' door...

Hey all,

Here is the long awaited blog about my trip to Qufu! I haven't gotten around to posting it because I have been too busy to sit in front of the computer!! I've been a good girl and have been studying hard! I've just been bumped up into a higher level now too, which means not only does my reading class have twice as many new words as the last one...I now have to take a writing class too. I haven't been to it yet, but it sounds pretty interesting. It's about the break down of individual characters etc. Chinese history is woven into each of the characters and what they're made up of...once you know the break down, it makes it easier to remember too. I'll tell you all about that stuff another time though! This blog is going to be long enough as it is!! :)

This is mostly a post that I wrote just after I got back...I'll do a little editing to make it more up to date, but I'll leave most of it... [also note, this all took place before the semester started..]

We (some of the other students and I...Paul was working!) decided to go on a day trip..and so left early the next day...in peak hour of course! Trying to organise 13 people who don't really know each other (or the city) was difficult to say the least! After debating whether it was worth trying to find 4 taxi's to take us all to the long distance bus station...we caught the bus...

This is the packed bus...it took about 30mins to get to the station! And they just kept letting people on!!

Once we got to the station, it was a 2 hour bus to Qufu. This one wasn't as crowded however, and it had air-con. Most of us weren't used to being up before the sun is in the middle of the sky, so we all had a nap!

Some scenery on the way...we chose a nice day! A little smoggy, but we've seen a lot worse!

They've just harvested the corn...and they leave it to dry on the road!! In other areas, it's on roofs or actually on the road leading off the highway in a checker pattern...people just drive around it.

Entrance to 孔庙和孔府 (Confucious' Mansions and Temple). Look at the old twisted Pines!

Finally, we arrived at Qufu. The first thing we did was find a toilet. I think it's always a sign in China that if you have to pay for it....DON'T USE IT!!!!! As you can imagine, almost all of the girls needed to go, so we all paid our cash (it was only 0.5rmb, but still..) and lined up. These were definitely the worst toilets I have seen so far...in my whole life. It was a trough that ran about 30 cms deep under 4 stalls, with no running water (everything just sat there in the trench) and the doors on the front of the stalls were not only too short (anyone walking past could see you trying to pull up your pants..) but they also just swung open. Once you were behind these swinging doors...there were no partitions between the stalls! It was a little off putting! Extremely dirty! Perhaps the man collecting money was a scam...these hadn't been cleaned or looked after for a very long time!!

Ok so, after toilets, and then some lunch, we had to decide what we'd all do next. After another long debate (note to self: don't travel in a big group!) we split up and bought tickets only to the places we wanted to go. Qufu is divided into 3 parts (well the touristy bit is): Confucious Forest, Confucious Mansions and Confucious Temple. I decided that I'd save some cash and only see the forest and the mansions.

This is the Bell Tower which is on the was from the Forest to the Mansions. The 3 facing the camera are (r-l) Florie and Francois (they're both French) and Anna (she's German).

First I went to the Confucious Mansions. When Confucious was around, he was relatively poor and did not become famous until after he died. His descendents were lucky...and lived like kings. They had the most amazing aristocratic lodgings in all of China! The Mansions have some 450 halls, rooms, buildings, and side passages - needless to say I didn't get to see them all!! The Kong family's (Conficious' real name was 孔子 Kongzi - family name Kong) mansions and surrounding area was even an autonomous state at one stage!! They had powers of taxation and execution! They ended up building a wall around the mansions (and later the forest too)...of course it was to keep those pesky rabbits out. Those who lived in the city were all servants etc of the family. In case they decided to rebel...the Kong family built a nifty hideout they called the "Tower of Refuge"! It has an iron-clad ceiling on the ground floor and a staircase that could be yanked up into the inside and lots of room for food etc so they could stay there till it calmed down outside!!

Here's some pics of what I saw:

One of the many passages through buildings.

The big character here means 'longevity'. It was a gift from the Qing empress Cixi. (The Kong family were so well known that they received gifts from the emperors etc!

While everyone is watching something...I'm taking photo's of the ceiling! It's so beautiful though! They don't make 'em like this any more...now we're lucky to get a ceiling at all! Sometimes it's just pipes!

A bit of creative photography...I am a noob in China.

A handwritten series of Confucian analects

It's the little things....

After wandering around the mansions for a while, I started towards the Forest. The street between the Mansions/Temple and the Forest, is lined with vendors. After a while in China you get used to ignoring them and always looking indifferent, which helps to get a good bargain! In the end I bought a large silk scroll painting of bamboo with some Confucian writings (...that I can't read coz they're in calligraphy - but it looks beautiful!). I also bought some slip on 'inside-the-house' shoes that are made entirely from some sort of reed/bamboo, a poster of Chairman Mao when he's about 20something, and lots of other little trinket things that tourists love! I like tourist shopping!! :) I'm a sucker!

Now the forest! It's the largest artificial park and best preserved cemetary in China. The Kong family have been buried here for over 2000 years. Pretty cool huh! You can even see the writing change from 'seal' script, to traditional characters, and now to simplified (Mao simplified the writing when he was in charge...to make it accessible to the workers, farmers, etc). I was wandering around with Arne, who learnt only traditional characters in both Belgium and Taiwan before coming to Jinan. He helped translate a little of what we saw.

A tomb in the Forest!

Arne and I

A view of some of the tombs.

The tranquil scenery!

Some of this one is in seal script!

The guards....

This little guy left his own mark! (Note to Dad: I was showing Arne how to look for the little things when we found him!! teehee)

After the forest, we all met up and waited for the bus. The driver had said that the last bus left at 6.30pm so we waited for 40 somthing mins...and no one came. We called the number that the driver had given us and were informed that the last bus was already back in Jinan (remember...it's a 2 hour trip!) So we jumped in the pedicabs and they took us to the nearest bus station...and we eventually got home! It wasn't so bad though...the pedicabs were one of the best things during the whole trip!!! The guy starts pedalling and then we get onto the highway and he switches to electicity and we zoom along! It was awesome!

Liz and Tegan in the pedicab.

We also rode in one of these too (just for the fun of it!!) We took it from the Mansions to the Forest...it's a whole 20min walk!

Ok...that's all from me for now...an update on school will be coming really soon! I promise!

xox

Over and out.

She had a rough childhood...

2008-09-08T19:41:00.002+08:00

This is what happens when children get shipped from foster home to foster home....they have no grounding in society...they don't know who to trust...and they are just plain scared and scarred for life. So...inevitably...they rebel. Don't judge us...

I'm Back too!!

2008-09-06T16:27:00.003+08:00

This is our lunch at the Taiwanese shop across the road from our house. It's open 24 hours and it's awesome!

So! Paul has covered most of the last week...that's for all of you who have requested that Paul make some of my stories interesting!! But I've got some more anyway...so you still have to read them!! :)

I now have a chinese bank account! But still need to work out how to transfer cash via the internet as it's an international transaction. If I can do that...it will cut out the $20AUD worth of fees each time I get cash out of an ATM!! My card also has a cute mouse on it too!!

I have met the other aussie girls from UQ, Liz and Tegan - we are the only aussies on campus. They are in the same class at UQ and have both been to Taiwan too. Liz also has a friend, Arne, who she studied with in Taiwan, he's Belgian and it's pronounced Arna.

It was Liz's 25th last tues, so we went out on the town. I met them at the dorms and we went downstairs and sat out the front and waited for others. The dorm experience is amazing! (Although this part is the only part I'm sad I'm missing out on!) As we sat downstairs, there were 5 or 6 middle-eastern boys listening to traditional sounding music and smoking shisha (no mum, they weren't 'drugging' hehehe, it's just flavoured tobacco) The shisha pipe looks pretty cool though, they use hot coals at the top and 2 or 3 people can smoke from them at once. It smelled a little nicer than stinky cigarettes too!

While we were waiting I met lots of people from Germany, England, France, Iran, Tanzania, Congo...the list goes on! Most of the Germans and English are on this 3 week intense study thing. They haven't learnt any chinese before and have to classes every day and then go on tours and get taken out to lunch and banquets etc. It sounds awesome, and everyone is really lovely...but they're leaving soon!!! That sucks...most of the people I met this night are all on this trip.

(((((HEY! THIS IS PAUL! Just to let you know I am silently interjecting into Caitlin's blog and correcting some suff...but more importantly, let it be known that I am drinking rum with coke and ice and it's awesome....as am I))))))

I did learn some German though, on the drunken taxi ride home (German accent: "Oh, I have had too much party!") OK, that wasn't what I learnt!! It's (please accent awful spelling) "Liber marken" and this is the explanation I got from Michael (the German guy) "Liber Marken: to make love. Hmm...Love. I do not like it in relationships. Making...yes, this is very good." hehehe He could also speak Bavarian and so taught me something that he said is very popular at Oktoberfest: "Eine bier, Schnakseln" which means something along the lines of "a beer and then sex" lol.

There is also a shop on the lower floor of the dorms that sells everything a corner shop does, as well as burgers, noodles, dumplings, french fries etc. Every night there is someone out the front having a drink. You can buy tallies (no one else knows what we mean when we say this!!) of TsingTao for 4RMB each, I think they run out of cold ones every night! Although the Germans complain when their beer is cold!! Crazy. A whole tallie of hot beer is a little hard to drink!
As there are people sitting drinking there every night, there is a bottle man (probably homeless) who sits near them and collects the bottles to redeem them for cash. He must do pretty well compared to the others that look through bins etc round town! He gets to sit there and we all give him the bottles! He really tries to blend into the background though! He doesn't speak to anyone and keeps disappearing behind the building if there are too many people.

That's China. As I type, there are heaps of students on the oval (well patch of dirt and concrete) that are doing their 2 weeks of military training. They are all lined up and I can hear them all yelling "left, right, 1,2,3" etc. They are all the first year uni and college students. We live at the arts college part of Paul's uni. It sounds pretty cool. I'll try and get some photo's...don't know if I'll get arrested or something though!

This is one of the many ways I can get to school. It's a little motorbike-car! It only has 3 wheels! This is my mate, driver. He was lovely and tried to talk to me in my bad chinese! He did charge me a lot though!! A whole 10RMB, I usually pay 7.50 in the taxi! I think I'm supposed to work out a price with him before I get in...

It has handle bars!! It was soo slow though! And every bump (and there are many!) I hit my head on the low roof!! It kept backfiring too. It was great!!

Hey!! I also got a bike!! It's fun. Although everyone laughs at me - literally! ((((Paul again....thats normal though kt...bike or no bike HAHAHAHAH)))))) Usually they stare, and some have pointed....but this time, full buses of people were laughing at me!! It's fun though! But my bum hurts soo much!! I haven't ridden a bike for soo long! (maybe that's while they were laughing...I was a little tiny bit wobbly hehe)

Ok, I've typed a lot, and it's stream-of-conscience...

but! I'm really excited about this one...I am having complete conversations in Chinese. I am listening, speaking, reading, understanding..and even sms'ing in Chinese!!!!!!!!!!!! I bought a hairdryer yesterday and we even made jokes and I understood every single word the lady said. Even stuff like, heat settings, wattage, 'wind' settings. It's awesome! It's good that somethings happening in my brain now, I'm looking forward to class! It's all going to be in Chinese.

OK, that's all from me for now.
If you've read this far, you deserve a little present!!

(((((((THIS IS PAUL AGAIN.....ok now caitlins post is the newest but don't forget that I had two new post below this so comment on mine and not hers! She always steals the glory by typing a massive post after mine and making everyone forget what I blogged about...bitch. lol just joking. P.s its our 6 year anniversary today :), KT's Dad messaged us to remind us....we forgot again....oh well...bu bye))))))))) (RUM)

ok, I think you'll have to click on this image to make it bigger. Read the english writing at the top. This is bathroom cleaner that I bought the other day...It's hilarious. Paul refuses to use it!!!!!!

Haircut

2008-09-06T12:24:00.005+08:00

Hey,

Short blog post. I've been dreading getting a haircut here in Choi-na (China for those noobs who can't understand boganish) as i didnt know if they could do western cuts or whatever. But kt and i made an a4 poster today with some photos of me earlier in the trip and caitlin wrote something like - hi there, can u cut my hair like it is in the photos please - in chinese characters.

I went in and they nailed it. I got a full head massage and hair washed. Hair cut. Another head massage and hair wash and then they blow dried it and sorta messed it around a bit. I was impressed. I went to pay them and gave them 100 rmb (bout $18) and the laughed and gave me 90 back. (Therefore my haircut cost 10 rmb or about $1.80!) That's pretty good for the best haircut I've had in a long time.

The only downside was that all the girls in the salon just watched and giggled and stared at me the whole time I was having the haircut...it was a little awkward :S

P.s you probably think it looks like I havn't even had a haircut. This is because we didn't take any photos of me with scraggily long hair. It was pretty crap. LoL. Zaijian!

I'm Back

2008-09-06T07:47:00.008+08:00

Hey Noobleys,

Sorry about the lack of updates lately, the teaching timetable has been pretty taxing so far. Not that I have to do many hours (only 18 per week), but writing 2 hour lesson plans for three different levels of english is taking its toll on me and my psycosis! Also, although I only have to work tuesday to friday, I have to travel 40 minutes to school via the teachers bus and 1.45 hrs home via public transport (1 bus and 1 taxi) so by the time I get home I'm usually pretty tiiiiiiired. Anyway, other than all of that, all is well.

It's fun teaching the chinese students, they are all around 20-21 years old and are all very excited to have me as their teacher (a young white foreigner). I did a class this week on Australia and Australian culture and I taught them some slang and informal contractions (wanna, gonna, dunno, watcha, doin', d'you, woulda, shoulda, coulda, g'day etc). The better classes really enjoyed it but some of the classes with v. poor english struggled to grasp some of the words/concepts. (By the way, for all of those thinking, what the hell is he doing teaching them improper english and slang! Most of these students are doing a 3 year business course preparing them to come and do further studies in Melbourne, so the chinese teachers assured me that teaching slang is great because they need to be able to understand the Australians when they go overseas). Yeah so that's going ok. My semester is 17 weeks and I have to set 100% of each classes assessment so that's also gonna (going to) be tough.

My School...bad photo...everyone was looking at me.

Caitlin has found a bunch of Australian and German friends at her uni who are all doing the same Chinese thingy as her. They had to do a profeciency exam yesterday to decide what level chinese they have and what classes they would be in and, although Caitlin only went ok on the written section (90 minute test completely in chinese.....screw that for a joke!), Caitlin absolutley smashed the spoken and listening part of her exam...100%. It's funny because she was stressing out so much about it and she went better than most. There were people there who hadn't learnt any chinese before so it was a very broad mix of students. She'll prolly tell you about this in much more detail but that's the gist of it.

I havn't taken too many photos lately although I should take some photos of some of my classes seeing as they all take photos/videos of me on their mobiles during our lessons.

Also, one of Caitlin's friends got a guitar for her birthday so I think I will be giving her guitar lessons every now and then. I hear she's a quick learner and already plays the cello so it shouldn't be too difficult.

Oh and one more thing! Caitlin and that same friend got asked to do modelling in a shopping center (standing next to some luxury cars) for $200 Aus per day with a personal driver all meals included for 3 days. They turned it down though....noobs.

This is Caitlin and her friend Liz. They bought chinese bicycles and promptly got laughed at by every Chinese person they rode past. One man was hunched over on the ground he was laughing so hard. But they are more shocked than anything. It is strange for them to see white foreigners in Jinan, let alone seeing them try to blend into the culture. The girls don't care though and are still riding their bikes as much as possible. Caitlin rides to Uni (let's see her do that in 2-3 months when the average daily temperature drops to around -5 degrees...she'll have to pop some chains on the wheels and about 15 layers of clothing on her back!)

That's all for now.

See ya later!

Pauly

P.s o yeh, we found a great western food import shop (called u mart) and bought blue cheese, cheddar cheese, corn chips, salsa, guacamole, cereal, hersheys fudge topping (mmmm), and some Captain Morgans Black Label RUM! nice. We had nachos for dinner last night...can life get any better? I submit that it cannot.

2008-08-29T14:44:00.002+08:00

We'll do an update soon!

I'm sick of sitting in front of the computer and am off to read under a shady tree overlooking the DaMing lake!

xoxo

Things are different here!

2008-08-29T13:58:00.003+08:00

First, I'll answer Annie's comment from a previous post. Yes the shower is extremely difficult to use! We don't have to sit on the toilet to take a shower, there is a bit of space in between it and the sink. I do have a habit of moving around though, and turning the water off with my elbow or something!! It's fun.

And, no matter how much I scrub with foul tasting chemicals, it always looks this dirty! (I don't actually eat the chemicals, they smell so bad that you can taste it for ages). That was the hard part to start off with...not feeling clean after a shower coz it was so dirty.

It takes a while to realise, but as we walked down to the rubbish bin (pictures following) we realised how lucky we are. The student dorms, unlike our apartment, are rooms that house 8-10 people. They don't have access to a kitchen and they share one bathroom per floor. I think we're pretty lucky to have what we do. I've also seen girls washing their hair outside using hoses and buckets and men in their undies having a bath with a bucket in the crowded and filthy streets. I don't know what they do in winter! I'm glad I have my own bathroom as I get stared at in the streets enough let alone showering there too!!!

This is the short walk from our apartment block to the bin or dump. There are no garbage bin days here!! These are the students dorms right next to it. I cannot explain how much this thing smells. It is everyone's rubbish from the whole school block (there are at least 2 of these student blocks and about 3 blocks of the ones that we live in, and also the school). Also remember that we can't flush toilet paper...it all ends up here too. The cats scavenge around here ripping up the bags and I don't understand how, but heaps of the rubbish ends up all along the road, instead of in the shed. I've also seen a couple of people looking for stuff in here too. There are a lot of people (some don't look homeless or anything) that look through the bins around town. Some get food out, some get out recyclable bottles etc and put them in huge dirty bags.

I have noticed our dump gets emptied fairly regularly, I'd say almost every 2nd day. It still smells, but not as bad as it could I suppose! It's really bad when it rains as the water washes heaps of stuff out...yuck.

I didn't want to get too close, as it was I was standing on eggshells and brown things!! I still can't believe that someone lives in the room that is right next to it. That would be their only window too!

This situation is normal for students who go to university. They also have at least 30 hours of school to attend a week. This does not include homework and assignments.

Some other differences:

We have to brush our teeth with bottled water!

We live and breathe in air-con.

The bread is sweet! (Paul met an aussie couple who are teaching at his uni and they have imported a bread maker...they made us a loaf and let us borrow their vegemite!)

The meat section in the shopping centres in a full-on butchery. You want chops? I'll hack it off the beast for you right now...it disturbs me. Not much of the meat is packaged like at home either. It is all sitting in the not-so-refridgerated shelves. There's everything you could imagine too...heads, hearts, intestines, feet, and while your looking at all this you're hearing the butchers hacking through bones all around you. For me, this is a nightmare. Paul says I have to get over it. I'm becoming a vegetarian!!

On a better note, the fruit and veges are really fresh and really yummy! We have to wash them all in purified water first, but we always have a lot of exotic fruit on hand! I bought a pomegranite the other day, and dragon fruit, and nashi pears and grapes and apples (with writing on them!!) YUM!

大明湖 Da Ming Lake

2008-08-23T10:34:00.003+08:00

DaMing Lake is an oasis! I didn't know what to expect after the amazing West Lake in Hangzhou. Hangzhou is the 'Tourist City' of China, so it's a little prettier than the rest of China. In Jinan, the Springs (namely, Baotu Spring), the Lake, and the Thousand Buddha Mountain are it's tourist sites. The Springs, as you saw were nice, but...I wouldn't have come to Jinan just to see them. We walked through and enjoyed the sights. I spent 5 hours at the Lake yesterday though...and I didn't even realise! It's really relaxing and beautiful. I met heaps of people too, they just came up and started talking to me! Most people can say hello and how are you, and then when they realise I can speak Chinese, they start speaking a lot...really fast! When I'm speaking to someone too, lots of others crowd around to hear me speak! When I don't pronounce something right, everyone giggles!

Here are some of the sights:

This is the little barge that you can catch to the islands in the middle.

This is how picturesque it is...This is a pavilion with lotus' on one side and the lake on the other, the smell of Jasmine in the air.

There are heaps of little red ribbons tied to the trees in this area.

They're hopes and wishes!! People buy a ribbon and write down their wish and tie it to the tree!

After walking around for hours, I went and sat outiside one of the gates to wait for a taxi. I'm sooo good looking that as I was sitting there, two guys came and asked if they could have photos with me!! I can't leave the house without Paul for protection against the papparrazi!! ;)

I ended up chatting with the guys for ages, they were from Xian and also tourists. They actually helped me with my chinese a bit. We learnt a lot, they kept saying they had 'chinese english' and I had to help them! It was a fun day!

Chop Suky

2008-08-20T18:52:00.004+08:00

*NOTE - Read Caitlin's post that appears before this one*

A little more on cat food...

I also made a great call regarding what was left over after the poor kittens met their demise and pointed out to Caitlin that I hoped we wouldn't see any Kitty litter in the trash when we take our garbage out. I got in lots of trouble for this and will proably get in lots of trouble for this post too.

When I get back to Australia I am going to remember what I've learnt in China and maybe cook up a little Peking Kitten...

Mmmm...Gizmo Burgers!

P.s: Not really Gizmo...you're awesome...and so tender....mmm

p.p.s but seriously...no

Edit:

PAUL DOUGLAS GOLDSTON! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU WOULD WRITE SUCH A THING. I'M DISAPPOINTED.

Gizmo, it's ok, you're continents away at the moment. I'll make sure that you are protected from this monster.

Just a couple of extra things...

2008-08-20T17:58:00.005+08:00

Firstly, the tea set! I know your all dying to see it!! hehehe If you aren't bored of tea yet, read on...otherwise, I'll let you know when it's over!! :)

TAA-DAA!

This set is made from the famous Yixing clay. This clay is prized for teapots as its great for developing the flavour of the tea. There are two pots, the first is the one on the stand. The leaves are placed in here and then the tea is poured, almost straight away into the pot with no handle. This one has a strainer inside and is the one that you use to pour the tea into the cups. The tea is poured into the tall cup first and then the small cup is placed on upside down on top of the big one. Then the drinker flips them around and gently removes the tall cup. This is a great party trick! The tall cup is for the aroma. Most, actually I think all, tea in China has distinct fragrances that are important. My favourite is 茉莉花茶 jasmine tea. You've never smelt jasmine tea until you come here! It's amazing.

The other things that are behind the tea pots are the utensils. They are used for measuring the tea and picking up the hot cups etc.

This is the other little present that Pauly got me! You know how you want a cup of tea, and you have a plunger or a tea pot and you have the first cup of tea and the rest is either too cold or too strong and bitter? Well this little gadget is for you! You make the tea in the top and then when it's ready, press a button on the lid and it pours into the bottom! Then you can make more tea when you're ready! The top part, with the tea leaves, also comes out completely (and doesn't leak) so you can have it waiting for you while you're drinking your perfectly brewed tea!

**Start reading here if you were skipping the tea part!!**

The second thing I wanted to say was that I miss my little kitten! OK, so you've all heard that before too! We were really happy when we realised that there are cats running all around our apartment block. They are a little mangy and feral, but they're still cats! We talk to them when they're hiding in the bushes and a couple of them meow back. There's a lady we have seen feeding them and although she's a little crazy, we try and chat to her. She only speaks Chinese, and mostly in the Shandong dialect. Last time a saw her, she was surrounded by about 15 cats and I said to her that they were cute and that Paul and I have a kitten back in Australia. To this she said "ni chi le ma?" As she was holding cat food in her hand, I thought she meant 'do you feed it'. As I walked away however, it dawned on me that 'chi' is 'to eat'. I looked it up later and it definitely does not, in any context, mean 'to feed'. This was quite an awful discovery. I told Paul it was best to leave Gizmo in Australia!!! I actually felt a little stupid as I'm always cooing over these cats...she must think I'm a crazy western girl! We just have to convince ourselves that they are chickens, not kittens, wandering round our yard...

As Paul said...this gives a whole new meaning to 'Hello Kitty'! (etc. Hello Kitty...have you seen a cleaver before???)

祝你生日快乐！ Happy Birthday to me!!

2008-08-20T17:06:00.005+08:00

So, yesterday was my birthday and it all started with brekky in bed!! Pauly even made me a cup of tea! Yummy! There were two things that we had decided to do: buy a traditional tea set (Paul's pressie) and go out to dinner at the famous "Quan ju de" Roast duck restaurant.

So we went out on the town in search of a tea set. While travelling over the last month, these tea set's were everywhere. They have the traditional tea pot(s), cups, and it all rests on a wooden tray that you can pour the water on and it's caught inside it, to empty later. This is all part of the ceremony. (Yes...I do love tea!) We have been looking at several different types of sets, especially in Shanghai, and I was holding out till we got to Jinan so that I didn't have to travel with it. BUT, we spent all day looking...and couldn't find one anywhere!!! So we just had to keep shopping!

We also found our way to the most famous of the many springs in this 'Spring City', Baotu Spring. These springs are famous throughout China as they are so pure that you can drink them. People from all over China visit Jinan to see these springs. They are quite pretty, although there was so many people there!

Pauly loves sightseeing!

This is the Baotu Spring. The water is really clear and I think it's cold (we didn't get close enough..)

Everyone brings bottles to fill up. This is where the spring is pumped through so it's easier to fill up the bottles!

The spring is also used for cooling down! It's still pretty hot here!

The pollution was pretty bad yesterday...although it only got worse throughout the day. After hours of walking round town and looking at springs, we caught a cab home and got ready for dinner! Peking duck was the only meal I remember so distinctly from last time I was here...it was fantastic! I'm not really one who'll eat the meat from anything that still looks like the animal either...even things with bones in it is a bit hit and miss with me too...I still ate so much last time! Even though they bring the whole duck to the table and slice it in front of you...it was just soooo good!!! You get thinly sliced shallots, the warm juicy duck meat, and sauce (I think it's hoisin?) and you roll it all up in little pancakes.....amazing!!!

Anyway...I was excited. 'Quan Ju De' Roast duck restaurant is so famous it's in my chinese textbooks...it's listed on the stock exhange...there's an outlet in MELBOURNE!!! We rocked up and as we were working order the whole duck or only half...they told us that they didn't have any. NO ROAST DUCK AT THE ROAST DUCK RESTAURANT!!

So, we ordered from the pictures (I couldn't read what the stuff was) and we think we ordered a lamb curry and bits of lamb deep fried. What came out was yummy little morsels of lamb on toothpicks and what looked like deep fried ducks feet. They said it was lamb, I think it was some part of lamb...probably a tendon or something. It was a chewy, squishy deep fried texture...that we decided to miss....it didn't taste like lamb. As we waited for our meal too, we realised that the only other people in the restaurant worked there! Most were watching the olympics on the tv, but others were doing the books, counting money, and cutting their fingernails. yep.

So we decided to have a look for some ice cream coz that's always good! (Mag-num?) But we found ourselves to be in the dodgiest part of town!!! It was crazy...it was like the end of the world! The smog was really bad so all the lights were shining through the haze and at times there was no one else around except us and a lot of rubbish all over the place. This is really unusual too, there are so many people that pick up after everyone (even someone who sweeps the massive roads!!) so it was really weird. We found our way back to a main road to realise that it was our main road, the one we live on, and that everything was closing up anyway. It was quite an adventure!! We got a cab home and I made tea! A lot of tea in my new tea pot!! :)

The spots aren't on the camera...that's the flash catching the smog!

We can't see the end of the street!

The start of our street.

After all that, I forget to mention that Paul learnt how to say 'it's my girlfriend's birthday today' in mandarin and he kept telling everyone! The lady in the coffee shop up the road played a hilarious bilingual rendition of 'Happy Birsday'...and when I was looking at some clothes, the ladies got on the microphone (they were yelling out the sale items etc) and said happy birthday to me..and then they all came to the change room and said I was a 'white beauty' lol Yep...everyone thinks I'm a supermodel over here!! I mean, people think that where ever I go...but here they keep telling me!! And they say Paul is handsome and charming, and that he has 'intelligent eyes on his head' hehehe that's a saying in chinese. The other day as I was going up one escalator and a little boy-about 9 or 10-was going down, his jaw dropped and he said 'hen piao liang' really loudly and stared as we passed each other! hehehe It means really beautiful!! I had to laugh at that one!!

Anyway...all in all, a really special birthday!! It's pretty cool to be in China! I remember saying this last time I got back...no matter how many bad things I see, do and experience, there are a million more beautiful people, places, or things. We're just getting started!

Peace!

Something bought, something new

2008-08-18T23:58:00.004+08:00

Hey all,

I bought a cheap acoustic guitar today for AUD $100 and it really sings. It's a real no name brand (star sun?) but it is good value seeing as i will only use it for six months. I might get a chance to use this in some english classes down the track, we'll see hey.

I've been smashing the Tsingtao and catching up on the rugby leauge. Caitlin has just come running in all excited as it has just struck twelve oclock and she has just struck 22...Happy Bday Caity!

Anyway, yep trav Terry Campese is smashing it at the moment for the raiders. As someone said, i think it is great that Carney had everything and pissed it all away.

The Broncos St. George game was pretty close...silly Denman Kemp Rd. passing it over the sideline on that last ditch effort for a try. But seriously, how funny was it that all the Brisbane fans were cheering each time the Dell got a bit of a run. They forgot themselves (I did too!). It was good to see the big man score though!

Anyway we are going to have peking duck today-night for Caitlin's bday and I am getting her a fair dinkum true blue original oriental chinese tea set so she can invite other foreign and native noobs over to have tea with them at our apartment.

Oh yeah...and this song has been playing on all the tv stations non stop and now we're addicted to it, do u have it in Aus? check it out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skan0yO-qU8

Ok that's all for now.

See you later!

Pauly

Apartment Inspection

2008-08-15T19:13:00.006+08:00

Hey noobs,

We've made a short video walkthrough of our apartment so you can see where we will be staying during our 6 month stint in China. No need to explain anymore, the video says it all.

Welcome to Jinan!

2008-08-14T00:15:00.002+08:00

This is a little tiny post because we are soo tired! We moved in to our apartment today and then had to go out and buy a lot of stuff! Our apartment isn't quite what we've been used to over here. No 4 star styles! (I'll post a video when I get the time) It's up a dark dingy staircase on the second floor. It's a nice lounge room and a good size bedroom, but the kitchen and bathroom are very different to what we're used to! There is no oven, which isn't too bad, and gas cooker that fits the woks on them. We went out and bought a rice cooker (with a steamer) which will come in very handy I think! Oh, and Sam, we have a washing machine in our kitchen too!! But it doesn't fit in like yours...it kinda has to become a bench lol The bathroom is a little tricky, we have the shower, toilet, and basin in the space that usually would hold just the toilet. There's just about enough space for a person to squeeze under the shower head while in between the toilet and basin. We'll work it out though! I think it's like this because we are staying really close to my uni (it's about a block or two away I think) and so these apartments are for the asian teachers who teach at this campus. All the foreign teachers live at the apartments 40mins away at the campus Paul will be teaching at.

OK...that's enough! I'm going to bed!

xoxox

Sex!

2008-08-12T20:28:00.009+08:00

...CONTINUED

Ok, so that was the morning...at night time I wanted to do the last touristy things in Shanghai. I wanted to go to the other side of the river and go up in the highest tower and take some photos. I know...lame. To get to the other side though, you take the 'sight seeing tunnel'. So we bought a return ticket on the tunnel and as the tower was closed, we bought a ticket that combined access to an underwater treasures museum and the China sex culture and sex health museum.

So...first things first...The tourist 'sightseeing tunnel'. What do you think we were going to see? Tourist sights? No. It's a light show while travelling in a little tram-like carriage. It was hilarious. That they spent that much money on something like this is...well it just is! I'll try and post a video of the start of it. We went through different kinds of lights on the walls of the tunnel and as we did, an enthusiastic voice over with accompanying music explained what we were seeing.

For example:
flashing lights - 'twinkling stars'
red colours moving around (on screens) - Magma
coloured fairy lights hanging from the roof - Heaven and Hell.
neon lines flashing down the tunnel - Swirling tunnel

Hilarious!

We didn't know what to expect once we got off! So we found our way to the exhibitions and went to the fish one first. This was terrible! It was a couple of fish tanks with 'rare and exciting' breeds of fish - really just goldfish. Really ugly goldfish. There was also a whole section of turtles; a couple of live ones in dirty tanks and some in a fake pond full of money and heaps of dead stuffed ones that people had put heaps of money on. We're guessing they're lucky. The weirdest and grossest part of this was walking through the part with stuffed animals and others in jars. It was disturbing, particularly the seal with chunks of fur missing and it's face beginning to dry a little...

Paul feeding the stuffed turtle...

A real one!

This goldfish remembers more than three seconds!!

This one...looks like something went drastically wrong!

And now for the SEX! We hired automatic english guides for this one. It was fairly graphic but really interesting! I'll put some photos up of the best bits and explain as I go....I've been told I can be longwinded....

This was the most tasteful of all of the pictures....I think it's actually pretty.

I thought this one was great. In this culture (Taipei) the women are very highly regarded in the relationship. This devi ce is to let a husband know if his wife wants sex!!! She'll put the penis up or down according to her decision and he checks it when he gets home from work!

This one was awful. It was designed as a punishment for 'unchaste' women. It's a wooden saddle with a wooden phallus attached. They were made to ride a donkey naked down the main street with the penis inside - to further desecrate her.

This is an extremely detailed census of the prostitutes in a certain area. It goes into so much detail that it explains the different types of prostitutes and levels and how much they cost and where they live etc

This one is just funny. It is from Paraguay.

We thought Paul was wearing an appropriate shirt!

Ok, before I go...we have arrived in Jinan! We are moving into our apartment tomorrow!! We're really excited!! YAY!!

ALSO...only one week to go! You should all know what that means!

OVER AND OUT

*TSCHHT*

Ancient Gardens...and ancient sex

2008-08-12T10:37:00.004+08:00

As yesterday was our last day in Shanghai, we thought we'd cram as much in as possible! So, I went out during the day to the Yu gardens, the Temple of the Town Gods, the 'old' shopping town surrouding the Yu Gardens and then I went home to rest, and get ready for the night of touristy stuff!

The Yu gardens were pretty amazing. They were created during the Ming dynasty and - if you try to forget the huge amount of people everywhere - very relaxing to walk around! There are lakes and streams running throughout and buildings that have been restored and preserved that you can walk through. Everything that is there has been planned perfectly, down to the last rock, according to feng shui. It took 18 years to finish! There were a lot of little paths and doors to walk through. When looking back at the photos, I realise I have an affection for doors! These gardens have so many that symbolise different things (I know they do...I just don't know what they do!!)

I'll just put some photos in and let them speak for themselves!

There are so many fish! They really get snappy too!

I sat on a verandah looking at this view for ages. As one of the signs said, I felt carefree and joyous.

I'm getting good at taking phtoto's of scenery and me!

Here are two vase shaped doors. They are pretty famous, I have seen this picture several times in books.

This is me. Behind me is the Huxinting Teahouse, one of the most famous in China. The bridge is profoundly named - 'the zig zag bridge'!

The next thing I bumped into was the Temple. There were people there making offerings with incense, it smelled amazing. Again, pictures tell a thousand words...

I then found my way back out to the Yuyuan 'old street'. It's done up in Ming dynasty architecture. It is really good to look at, and there's good shopping there too. I bought lots...! Bartered hard! I'll tell you about that later!

The best part about the 'old' shopping centre is that Nanxing steamed bun restaurant is there. I have been craving good steamed buns for a while (these are more like little dumplings...I'm still working out the difference). I had heard about this place, and finally found my way through the crowds...it was worth it! There were sooo many people lined up it was crazy. There was a downstairs line for takeaway and I asked a lady in the line if I was in the right place (still in mandarin...no one spoke english, except the tourists and they weren't going to be any help to me!!) she recommended that I stay in the line coz the buns are really tasty. So I lined up with the other 100 people waiting! She sent her daughter upstairs and we realised that there were seats up there and that we could order and eat upstairs. She invited me to come with them which I thought was lovely! Once we pushed our way upstairs, we found out it was going to be at least a 45 minute wait till the next batch was cooked. They didn't want to stay that long, so I bought the minimum 16 buns for 20RMB (about $3aud) and then had to stand in the crowded dining room waiting for a seat. I didn't know what was going on as I had paid for my meal and was given a ticket and, although I could speak mandarin, they just pointed to the back of the room. I eventually spoke to one of the waitresses and she found me a seat with a family. We started chatting and I found out that one of the ladies were from Guangdong province and that this was her first time eating the buns too. I must admit that I stood out up there. I was the only westerner and I later found out there was a certain way to eat these buns without making a fool of yourself. Needless to say, all eyes were on me when I put on in my mouth. A collective gasp went around the tables closest to me and a lady waiting for a seat behind me actually stopped me and said "too hot, a little at a time!!", so with everyone still watching (and my mouth burning) I tried the next one. Now, these little buggers are little 'bags' of soft steamed pastry with a little bit of meat inside and a yummy liquid. It was the liquid that is the trick. So I took a little bite, not easy as they are slippery little things in chopsticks! The liquid exploded all over the table. The lady sitting next to me from Guangdong was giggling and said she was glad that I went first.......ok, so I think I learnt my lesson. They were awesome though. I wish I could go back and wait all over again!

I'm using the last of our free internet in Shanghai to write this, but we have to check out soon, so...that was the ancient gardens...stay tuned for ancient sex!

TO BE CONTINUED...

Life at the moment...

2008-08-10T18:02:00.003+08:00

As you know...our tummies haven't been friends with us lately...and after looking at this menu, I think I know why...

(I'm not sure what happens when a peanut has been 'decorticated'...)

(Although I'm not going to order it, I get Duck Jaws...but...'as closely linked as flesh and blood'??? And although the peanut above might not be happy, the beef here certainly is.)

So, other than eating, we have been exploring Shanghai. Paul dragged me (again) out to the People's Garden yesterday...

Having to enjoy the sunshine...

Paul is loving it!

I went on a little adventure by myself today! I decided to have a look at the books at the Foreign Language Bookshop. In China everything is grouped together, so the whole street was full of bookshops. It was fantastic! I spent hours wandering through big shopping centres full of books and little tiny nooks on the street. The only english books were at the FL Bookstore, but I decided to find a book that I'll want to translate...and so I bought a book on tea! It's got history, traditions, ceremony, and then a bit about all the famous teas of China. I can understand some of it already.

My collection so far...Ginseng tea, Dragon Well tea, and Jasmine tea. A teapot/cup.

This is the view along the street.
This is in the part of the old French Concession. The streets are lined with trees and there are bakeries, and bookstores!

奥运加油！

2008-08-10T17:21:00.007+08:00

奥运加油！ Literally: Olympics Fill up with oil!

ao yun jia you

Ok...so that doesn't make sense. But the words 'jia you' do mean to fill with oil, also meaning to fill up your tank. This is the catchphrase that everyone cheers here. It makes more sense when you're cheering on a person. If you listen closely to the crowds cheering, that's what they're saying!

奥运加油！中国加油！Go the Olympics! Go China!

It's crazy over here at the moment. Everyone is excited about the Games. Particularly Pauly! We watched the opening ceremony and Paul is trying to watch as much as he can. They don't show too much Aussie stuff obviously, and due to broadcasting laws, nothing in English. We did watch Hackett's 400m today though. Probably not the best one to watch. Poor bugger. I'm looking forward to the table tennis! That will definitely be on. We've been watching a lot of weightlifting and some diving and gymnastics.

You can't miss much though. When I drag Paul out to eat we usually find a massive TV that is playing something. When I say massive, I mean a floor of a shopping centre...or maybe the side of a building!

Here are some examples of what it's like here:

Hong Kong

A reconstruction of the Olympic stadiums...in Leggo!

Guangzhou

This is a countdown clock in a shopping centre. There was also another reconstruction of the stadiums in the lobby of our hotel.

Hangzhou
A random Olympic display at the Quancheng Square.

Shanghai

We were lucky enough to see a part of the torch relay....

This is the newspaper's special on the Olympics!

Us watching the Opening ceremony!

Don't miss anything...this is the weightlifting in the shopping centre...China's first gold!

澳大利亚加油！

GO AUSTRALIA!

茶 Tea!

2008-08-05T17:20:00.005+08:00

Tea, tea, tea!

Hangzhou has the only museum in China that is solely dedicated to tea. Of course, Paul really wanted to go, so I caved in and said yes. (ok, that gives real meaning to 'lol')

So first we jumped in a cab. The cab driver was really cool and wanted to chat, all in mandarin again, so I was chatting and translating for Paul the whole way. He said he'd take us to the tea museum (just out of town), but the tea there just isn't very good. He said he could take us to a place to get the best, the very best - he said - tea in China. Of course we agreed...he was driving! So he took us off the beaten track - literally, we had to walk up muddy little roads to get to a lady's house in the hills - and he made us tea.

Pauly and the cab driver on the way back to the cab.

As I was thinking how amazing it was sitting in this lady's house, drinking tea with the driver and looking out over the hills of tea plantations, with her chicken's scratching around outside.....
Paul was thinking about how we are getting poisoned by the not-properly-boiled-water in the tea and how we may get murdered and no-one would know coz we're in the middle of nowhere and how we shouldn't be near chickens coz of the bird flu.....

This is the view from the lady's house. That's the hill that the tea came from. She picked it herself.

We survived though, and the tea was good! We decided to buy some (the whole idea of taking us there, obviously) and paid an embarassing sum. I will not repeat it, the same way I will not repeat how much our tailored suits cost in Thailand. Hey, they are both good stories....even though the lonely planet guide warns us about it.

Anyway, the Longjing (Dragon well) tea is one of the most sought after in China and Hangzhou is the place to get it. The cab driver said that the tea picked from the specific hill was the best out of all the longjing tea, so we really got the best. Really.

After that adventure, it was decided that we would continue to the tea museum. The driver had other ideas. He stopped, without explaining, for lunch. So we sat in the car waiting for his lunch to be cooked and then he brought the bowl back in the car to eat later. He did wind the windows down for us though...

Finally arrived at the tea museum. I loved it. It was all about the history of tea and it's export etc. Then heaps on the best way to make the tea and why and the ceremonies that go with each type of tea. Those of you who know me...know that this was a dream!! I have a box at megan and jim's in Aus packed with 3 types of green tea, a couple of herbal teas, 4 types of black tea......

Ancient tea pot that has a little fire in it to keep the tea warm. Ingenious!

Ancient machine for processing the tea. Modern enthusiastic Paul.

The gardens of the tea museum.

Thanks for tuning in! I'll tea you later!

Caity xox

PS: ...and you say I'm not funny!

Update: Hangzhou.

2008-08-05T16:28:00.004+08:00

Ok, so it's been a while. Paul has been taking up all the internet time! ;)

Here is the real update. The stuff you all want to hear about...(Robbie, Matto, Travis...I can hear your groans from here!! Shush and read the good stuff!)

I'll go back to Guangzhou. bleaugh. Paul has said enough about that.

Hangzhou: a breath of fresh air, quite literally. Although it was still a little smoggy, it felt further away, ie covering the hills but not blanketing your lungs. It was also quite a bit cooler in Hangzhou. The best parts were the scenery! Hangzhou is famous for it's 'West Lake' (one of 36 'West Lakes' in China...this one is the most famous though). We stayed in a place that was walking distance from Hubin Lu (lit: street beside lake) which was really nice to walk along and look at the water and stuff. (and stuff mum :))

This is the view from one of the seated areas.
The Emperor's used to take walks around the lake and take in the scenery.

This was just super cute. The statues were pretty big!

This is the view from the beginning of Qianhefang Lu (Old street)

looking up to the Ling Yin Temple.

Big gold Buddha. This has to be one of my favourite statues in
China so far!! Just looking at him makes you happy!

The Buddha has little golden kids all over him...I thought this little one was interesting!

This street has been restored and looks like an 'old town'. It even had a traditional pharmacy that is still operating the same way it has for years! There was a lot of medicinal shops that had things from dried frogs and caterpillars to something that looks like it came from Harry Potter!! It took a while to translate, but I worked out that it was Ginseng!

This is the pharmacy that has been running since the Qing dynasty!

This is the Ginseng. They also have dried versions in red velvet cases.
These have labels on them that say "about 70 years", "about 90 years"!

This lovely man was the first to introduce me to 'Long Jing' or Dragon well tea.

He is using the traditional method of drying the leaves. He pushes the leaves
gently into the heated steel bowl and swishes them around.

That's all for now...the whole next blog will be dedicated to tea! Get excited!

xox
C

Shanghai! How are you today?

2008-08-04T22:44:00.027+08:00

Hiya,

We are now in Shanghai and it is super awesome. That little guy above is Cj7 and he has decided to come along with us on our Chinese holiday. Caitlin is clearly happy to have him around (I think she is using him as a replacement for Gizmo (our fat little kitten)).

Anyway, today started out pretty smoggy but before the sun set we saw the clearest, most blue sky we had seen since we have been in China. It makes you appreciate them (blue skies) much more once you begin to see them so infrequently...like... once in a blue sky day.

We did a bunch of stuff today that is probably boring for most of you so I'll shorten it to a quick yet informative and efficient list:

1. Woke up and went and had breakfast in an AWESOME 1920's themed blues and jazz bar. (Food was excellent and decor/atmosphere was really great)

They served the best carbonara I have ever had.

2. Walked along the super tourist walk along the river (similar to the one in Hong Kong)

This thing gave me a fright and made everyone crowd around after I put the money in...

3. Booked a boat cruise for the night time.

4. Walked along a massive mall/shopping street

Caitlin with some random Chinese noob in the mall.

5. Came home and watched the Titans v Storm game (poor poor Titans)

6. Briefly visited the Yu Garden shopping and heritage streets.

7. Went out on aforementioned boat cruise.

8. Had some MaoDongLao (McDonalds) for dinner and came home (You can take the boy out of Australia but you can't take the McDonalds out of the boy).

HAHA! I didn't even take this picture! Just goes to show that you don't need to travel to write a travel blog, just Google Image search and Blogger.com. Nice. Noobs.

I guess that list was a bit longer than expected...oh well. Righto....catch up with you noobs later!

Pauly

Edit: Ok. I'm not sure why but the movies don't seem to be working for some reason?? Oh well, if you get them working that's cool, if you didn't, they wern't uber spectactular so don't worry too much k ;)

14 Days of Porcelain

2008-08-02T10:15:00.004+08:00

I'd just like to celebrate our first 2 weeks in China by stating that I have managed to achieve the seemingly impossible. I have managed to last this whole time without having to utilise a chinese squat toilet. Whether this be a result of impeccable hotel choices, unrivaled bowel movement scheduling (discounting the 2 days in our hotel room where said schedule was torn apart, shredded, burnt, recycled and then destroyed again) or a combination of both + a dash of luck, i am grateful to the lords of poo (once again, except for the day they struck me down...I'm sure I deserved it for some reason though, perhaps it was just poo karma).

Even yesterday, when we went to a tea museum in the middle of nowhere, the white reflected light of a western porcelain bowl called to me and said "Pauly, come here, rest your weay buttocks on my strong supportive lap and have your western way with me". And so I did.

However, we still have a long trip ahead of us and I doubt that this luck can keep up. I will take each day as it comes.

Wish me luck, and give me strength.

Pauly

Hangzhou

2008-07-30T22:21:00.004+08:00

Hello to all those avid readers of our blog (all 3-4 of you!),

We are in Hangzhou now and it is way better than Guangzhou. It is definately more of a touristy city and the scenery is much more appealing. It has also been cooler as it has been raining.

We were stuck in Guangzhou (also known as Canton) - the place where cantonese was created and is still mainly spoken. This left Caitlin's translation powers looking crippled and decrepit. Not to worry though as now we are in Hangzhou (1.45 hours flight north east and 45 minutes train from shanghai), she is coming into her own. It's pretty amazing how well she can speak this crazy language, and whenever i try and repeat what she says (and i still feel i do it verbatim), i only get puzzled looks from the chinese folk I am trying to converse with...jerks. She bought a super duper translator today (she needs a bit more than mine can handle for her uni course mum and steph), and it is touch sensitive with a stylus. She can copy any chinese character she sees into it and it will translate it into english (text and voice). This also works for english to mandarin and also for phrases. It's pretty gnarley, I'll add a picture.

We went out to the night markets tonight but they were just like any old markets. I'm keen to go to a techno market at some stage. We missed out in Guangzhou. Stupid Guangzhou.

Ok the real reason we didn't like Guangzhou is because a restaurant tricked us into drinking tap water which we though was distilled water. This left us both with a horrible case of "pepper belly". $400 worth of cancellations and re- bookings, 10 gastro-stop pills, 8 gastrolite drinks and a course of doxycyclin later - we may have left Guangzhou, but its memory will remain with our bowels forever.

Anyway, I'm going to sign off for now. See you when I have something more exciting to write.

Pauly

P.s - We are staying in another 4 star hotel for super cheap but once again, I don't think we really belong here.

The thing is, laundry at these hotels costs HEAPS (like $30 for 4 shirts and 4 shorts) so we havn't had a chance to get much done. We have been using detergent in the bathtubs and stuff for small items of clothing and hanging them in the bathroom. So we are down to some of those old clothes we thought we could need at some stage but probably wont be wearing much (me more so than Caitlin). So, when coming home from the night markets, we walk back through the lobby (remember it has been raining) and there is classical pianist placing in the lobby and adjoining cocktail lounge. I walk past the pianist with insanely loud and sqeaky white sneakers, an old grey shirt and board shorts with a bag containing the pizza we couldn't finish at pizza hut. We were all all wet. All the nicely dressed people in the lounge kinda looked at us weird. We don't belong in places like this...but I don't care because in China.....I'M RICH BIATCH!

Where are we?

2008-07-27T10:52:00.003+08:00

I've been meaning to do this since before we left! Here is a rough map of where we're going. I think that if you click on it, it will open it in a new window and make it really big so that you can read it.

Still not missing anyone yet...

ok, just a little bit.

Rugby... League?

2008-07-26T18:32:00.010+08:00

Hey noobs,

Pauly here. Not gonna write too much as not much has happened over the last couple o days. Shanghai should be awesome though. I'm really enjoying the dim sum and dumplings over here....nothing like what they are like in Australia.

The main thing I wanted to say was that I am now able to enjoy a cheap beer, aforementioned dim sum and the NRL in China. I subscribed to a website known as Aussie Sport TV.com, and, for a small monthly fee I can now enjoy all of the NRL games over the internet. Although the games are not live (usually come online 1 - 2 days after actually), I am still excited to be able to watch the nrl and hopefully the rugby league world cup wherever I am on our travels. As the games are delayed please do not comment on the games on this blog unless I initiate the conversation with you, noobs ;) This internet site is only available outside of Australia and is basically just the Bigpond sports NRL feeds. Still, it is better than nothing.

Also, check out this awesome advertisement we found in the Guangzhou subway. Very creative I thought.

The picture on the bottom is an image of what the Guangzhou subway system looks like. The ad probably resonates more with us as we have been becoming familiar with the subway and the different train lines, but still, its pretty cool. I think the ad says stuff about how smooth, safe and easy the ride is (as if it is a car but its not, its for the train system how cool!)

Matto will like this one.

Anyway, peace out noobs.

Pauly

I MISS MY KITTEN!

2008-07-26T18:12:00.002+08:00

Hey Gizmo, I hope you're keeping up to date with our trip! Maybe you could subscribe to our RSS feed? You'd like that. Then you can get an email everytime we write a new post! Are you being a good kitten? I hope so. Don't annoy Heckle too much. Or eat Blue. You only eat canned fish, ok? Good girl. (I bet you're purring as you read this) I know you miss me too.

Love you little monkey. xox

PS: Thanks mummy and daddy for looking after her!! xoxoxoxoxox

2008-07-26T16:47:00.005+08:00

IT'S SOOOO HOT!!

The average temp during the day has been between 36-38 degrees CELCIUS! Apparently it's going to be 42C on monday. The relative humidity around 62%. You walk outside, it hits you in the face...and then you sweat. No one else seems to be worried about the heat. They use umbrella's to shield from the sun...but the sun is hotter in Aus. It's the damn heat that is hot EVERYWHERE! We stand in the shade and it doesn't matter! It's crazy watching men work and women carry huge loads of merchandise...I think we look hotter than them! It's insane. But as long as we stay in air-conditioning my body continues to function. This means only one thing: Shopping! As long as we shop in air-con, everything is fine! :) This makes me happy!

I bought a bag today! It's '很好皮‘ (very good leather) and very soft. I bartered the lady down to 600RMB which is about $90ish AUD. Look at this:

It's awesome!

We did brave the heat yesterday; I dragged Paul around to some touristy sites. Guangzhou doesn't have too many...people mainly come here for the food and shopping! We did make it to the huge garden in the north of the city though, as there is the Sun Yat Sen Monument (couldn't find..the garden is so huge), the Five Rams statue (also didn't see...), and the Zhenhai Tower. This is the Zhenhai Tower. It's part of the old city walls and, being the on
the tallest peak in Guangzhou, was where they kept an eye out for intruders etc.

There are also many other little statues etc hidden throughout the park. Trying to convince Paul that walking up steep steps when we were literally melting was tranquil and relaxing was quite hard to do. I must admit that it was a lot quieter (and if we sat still enough for long enough, it might have been cooler) than the actual city outside the park. There were heaps of little hidey spaces and clearings in the gardens and people were either lying in hammocks fanning themselves and sleeping, or squatting on the ground playing card games. We also passed a couple of older people walking around for what looked like excersise. At one stage there was an old man by himself in a little clearing walking backwards and forwards, faster one way and clapping on the way back. It was way too hot for us to be walking anywhere that wasn't with a purpose!

Beautiful! The gardens were too I suppose!

According to Paul, this was part of 'The Lame Wall of China'.

I'm finding I can use my mandarin a lot more here. In Hong Kong everyone spoke Cantonese and most spoke English. Here everyone speaks Mandarin and then Canto and then if we're reeeeally lucky, a smattering of English. This is good. I have to remember how to barter, and find laundry detergent, and ask directions...so far so good. I do have to thank Stephanie for then electronic translator she gave Paul! It's coming in handy!

What else...oh yeah....you know you're in China when you see people peeing in the street (or on the street that you just walked on). So far it's only kids, and only peeing.

Before I go, I'll show you some of the food!

This is Paul's 'spaghetti with sausages and vegetables' and soup (?) and
sweet potato chips. He also ordered an Oreo milk drink...it was yummy!

This is at the same restaurant (RBT) as above. I ordered the 'RBT Beef noodle with
mushroom' as well as my favourite...Pearl milk tea (a strong milky tea with sago pearls at the bottom!)

Teapuccino anyone??

This is in the middle of Beijing Lu (Beijing Street), which is a mall like Queen st. This is what is
underneath the actual street that we're walking on. They found parts of old streets and city walls. Some are
over 7 centuries old! As you can see, they keep putting more roads on top. (Also notice the Coke advertising, very subtle)

This is Beijing Lu. It's really busy and pretty much like Queen Street...notice the McDonalds??

Duets

2008-07-24T11:40:00.007+08:00

Hi all!
Last night was a great night! We decided that we would go to the Avenue of the Stars and soak up the night life and the skyline. During the day we went out to the Ladies Market and Pauly bought the most stuff! Ironically it was me who did the buying in the Technology street! It was all clothes and bags and the like, which is always fun! It's obviously a place where a lot of tourists go as we saw several beggers. They weren't just any old beggars though! There was one boy, about 11 years old, who was in something that looked like the down dog yoga position (hands and feet on the ground with bum in the air) but he had one foot wrapped around over his back with his foot next to the opposite ear. When we saw him, we both gasped out loud. It looks like it really hurts! His knees and joints were hyper-extending. It was crazy. We gave him money in the hope that he stopped!

Anyway, after the markets, we came back to the hotel...just in time for happy hour! Usually we just help ourselves to the food and drink in the lounge upstairs, but this time they kept refilling our drinks for us, so we kept missing the hotel's bus to Tsim Sha Tsui and just had to keep on drinking! After missing the final bus, we caught a cab at 9ish. We made it to the avenue of stars for a look around and some photos.

It was a lovely view of the Hong Kong Island (we are on the Kowloon Peninsula, which is attached to Mainland China). We missed the light show, which is at 7.30 I think. In the light show most of the buildings have laser lights and strobes etc flashing around and writing in the sky. I'll make sure we don't miss it on the way back!

After soaking up the sights and taking photos of the stars' name plaques and hand prints on the avenue...ok, we only knew Jackie Chan!

We decided it was time for another cocktail. We had a couple at a blues bar overlooking the skyline, again...it's pretty amazing, I can't believe we are actually in Hong Kong! Then Pauly decided that as I had not yet sung Karaoke, I had to partake in this 'rite of passage' and I had to do it tonight! So we jumped in a cab and the driver dropped us off saying 'it somewhere around here'...he didn't know much english! We eventually found one after asking around and then had to request some songs. We were the only westerners in there and they didn't have any of the songs we asked for...except one: 'My Heart Will Go On'. Let me just say...I nailed it. Then I think they found the only other english songs they had: 'Where have all the flowers gone' and another one about 'finding my man' or something to that effect, which Pauly did an awesome rendition of! Then they took the mic's of us.

After another couple of cocktails, we decided to approach the table of rowdy boys playing a dice game. They agreed to teach us how to play and we picked it up pretty quickly! Let's just say...I'm awesome! The game went a little like this:
Everyone had a cup with 5 dice in it and we all shook it and then the loser from the last round got to pick how we'd play it: either Lucky or Liar. If it was lucky, we all took our cups off and showed everyone and the one with the lowest hand got another chance to roll whichever of the dice he wanted to improve. If he was still the lowest, he drank. If not, the next lowest got a chance etc. That's 'lucky'...now for the part I shone in...'liar'! This is a lot like poker. You have a look at your dice and then say something that you think that either everyone actually has, or you bluff it! Example: "5 4's" in all the dice on the table (we were playing with 6 ppl, so that was 30 dice) I was guessing that there were 5x4's rolled. Then the next person would have to say either 6 4's or 5 5's, they have to go up at least one. I was great at bluffing so I would say something like 7 6's and then someone would say 8 6's and then I'd call them. I'd win coz I didn't have any 6's!!!!!!! HEHEHEHEHEH I'm awesome. Then there was this other game that was a lot like the crazy game that Barney, N.P.H., played on How I met your mother.

((Side note...this is why we don't belong in the executive suite: Paul is sitting on the couch eating macca's and spilt ketchup from his chips on the carpet...I turned around in time to see him trying to RUB IT INTO THE CARPET!!!!))

Ok, back to the game: It's not going to make any sense as I still don't think we understand it!!! We would watch them and it just did not make any sense at all!!! It didn't help that they would speak in Cantonese! Ok, so two people play. They put their hands in fists out in front of them and then it works a little like 'scissors paper rock'...ish. One person calls out 5, 10, 15, or 20. (this is how many fingers there are...) as they call out the number, they flash their hands out. The number they call is a guess of how many fingers the other person puts out as well as theirs. Is this making any sense? I didn't think so!

ANYWAY....it was fun and we played it all the way home on the taxi. The driver was laughing at us! We got home at around 4am. Here are some more photos of the night:

Executive Decision

2008-07-21T17:22:00.012+08:00

Ok...where do I start?? First of all, I must agree with Paul's observation of the girl sitting in front of us. She looked like she was 20+, but acted like she was 12. It was quite irritating!!

Anyway, we're off the plane, we have our bags, navigated the taxi rank (they have different coloured taxi's depending on where you are going! We are in the red zone...) We started getting nervous as it was a 50 minute drive from the airport and things started looking seedy. BUT THEN...we arrived at a hotel that was something out of a movie!! (The Royal Plaza Hotel) The lobby is full of plush carpeting, gold, and chandeliers! There were porters who opened our doors and took our luggage (brought to our rooms later (((This is Paul....that's normal Caitlin...ok do go on...)))). We were whisked away to check in, wonderful service, and then paid the deposit and were asked if we would mind if we were upgraded....for free. Paul and I looked at each other and made an executive decision...the Executive Suite it was!!! The upgrade means that we have access to the exclusive Executive Club lounge, breakfast daily (in our choice of the downstairs restaurant - open to all - or the club lounge which is lovely and peaceful), the China South News daily, complimentary afternoon tea, and free cocktails - or anything for that matter - between 6-8pm!!!!!!!! We can't believe our luck!

(Hi...this is Paul editing Burnsey's post...because I can.....and also, in the spirit of ########... (i had to edit my own post..fill in the blanks.) I'd like to mention some things Caitlin may not have emphasised enough about our sweet suite upgrade! (((I have just been smashing the free cocktails at the EXECUTIVE LOUNGE p.s))) I can have my suit pressed each day, ((((I knew i should have brought that thai suit....I'll have to buy another muahahaha)))), Sweet in room dvd player, PLUSSSSS we can check out at 4:00 on our last day! I love this hotel...they get me. Screw it...we are staying here until March 09. I love you all dearly and miss you already.)))))))))

(p.s the in room internet is a god send...ok, back to Caitlin....she has authority to edit my posts to so this could get very interesting.)

We've had pretty good food so far, although we haven't had time to venture too far away from shopping centres and the like. My favourite pick has been BBQ Pork and a Pearl Milk Tea (strong milky iced tea with tapioca pearls) Yummy!

Today we got ourselves organised (I haven't actually received any cash yet, so there were emails and even phone calls to try and sort it out. It will be rectified by the end of the week. There are smiles all around) and then went out on a mission...to buy our new phones! Pauly wants to get something extremely awesome and up to date but will have to pay big for it...even here. If he wants an iPhone, it's AUD$1200ish and must be on a 3 year plan...obviously that can't happen (P.s this is paul again...this fact is wrong. The iphone is cheap but it must be on a 3 year plan (like 300 AUD) but to buy it OUTRIGHT and unlocked is like $1400 AUD...just thought i'd clear that up. I think i'll use caitlins old phone and buy and up to date phone when i leave HK in March-ish-ly-ism). So while we were in the technology streets of Hong Kong, I ended up buying everything! (Actually 'I' ended up buying everything as burnsey as broke as heath ledger and jake gyllanhall at the moment (what too soon...poor spelling...meh...it was worth it...i have no regrets)) I got a LG KF700. It's fantastic! The only downside is that it's an LG! It's really easy to use and has a touch screen and number pad. We looked at a couple of phones, including the iPhone, and found that my LG's combination of touch and buttons is the best! It also has a little stylus pen that comes with it...and it's really cute too. :)

As a side note...as I write this, Pauly is watching Jackie Chan sing a song called "We are Ready"...can you guess what it is about? Yes...the Olympics! As we expected, Hong Kong has Olympic fever. Every shop has the colours or the mascots somewhere. The shopping centre that's connected to our hotel (7 floors of shopping!) even has a replica of the Olympic Stadiums made out of Leggo! It's huge and really intricate; all of the stadiums and streets are full of people all doing something...and there's a little train that goes around!! I was excited! Paul, not so much. If I can get the video to work, I'll post it!

Otherwise, I'm going to post some photo's of the hotel and our room, hong kong streets, lunch, and of course, my new phone!

Apparently videos are difficult to add...I'll let Pauly do that in a later blog! P.s that thing hanging off the side of the phone is the antenna....not really...it's the stylus. noobs. hahah this is paul again without brackets. noobs

Love to all...don't miss you too much yet!
XOXOXOXOX

The Departed

2008-07-21T15:31:00.009+08:00

So we have arrived in Hong Kong. I'll let you know a little about our flight and stuff and Caitlin can talk about what we have been up to.

We finally flew out of the land of sweeping plains whilst sleeping on a plane. Not really though. The plane was pretty cramped and I struggled to get any sleep at all so I just annoyed Caitlin and watched movies on demand (And trust me, I was pretty demanding too). The two noobs sitting in front of us made me ashamed to be Australian and I pittied all of the Hong Kong people who would have to deal with them during their stay. As we flew into Hong Kong, the gorgeous landscape and city scapes were slightly tainted by the arrogant narration provided by the ,ugly, fat (and slightly retarded i still believe) woman in front of us.

"Check that joint over there ey! WOOOO shit I don't think he knows how to steer this thing hey! Hey, they definately love their shitty skyscrapers don't they, they all look the same though. Each one of them cargo ships are huge hey, in real life they are massive. Woooooo shit i dont think he (the pilot) knows how close he is to the water...oh no theres some land.....woooo shit I'M F#@KING RETARDED!!!! etc"

I was going to get a photo of her but i think it might have broken my camera (the olympus is shock proof, water proof and freeze proof but I dont think it is ugly okka proof)...

Anyway, enough of all that whinging....after that things in Hong Kong started going our way! I'll let Caitlin tell you all about that though. I'll leave you with some photos of taking off, mid flight and landing plus some very weary photos of us waiting for our bags.

Pauly

Six days to go...

2008-07-14T14:50:00.003+08:00

Dear Diary,

Yep. Six Days.

We are flying out to Hong Kong on Sunday the 20th of July to begin our 7 month stint in the middle kingdom. We've decided to start this blog instead of doing the group e-mail thing so those who are interested can keep up with what we are doing over there (and therefore won’t have to listen to our noobish holiday stories once we get home!).

Caitlin will start Uni at Shandong University on September 1st and I will begin teaching at the Shandong Institute of Commerce and Technology (that's a scary thought!) on August 31st. Both of those are in Jinan City, Shandong Province for those of you playing at home.

We are just in the process of clearing out our old West End Queenslander - selling all of our furniture, moving stuff over to Megan and Jim's and cancelling all financial obligations we have in Australia (not many just gas, electricity, internet, phone etc).

We are going to miss this place. I am going to put some photos up for reminiscent purposes, but you can look at them too if you like.

We went out for some spirited spirits at Southbank's 'Plough Inn' as a small going away bash with some friends. It was really good. We got home about two and had to get up this morning to apply for my visa and get Caitlin's visa back. Caitlin now has her F visa and I should have my z visa (working visa) by tomorrow. I paid extra to have it done by tomorrow because you can't put a price on good organisation ;)

Anyway, as far as this blog goes, we will try to put in an entry once or twice a week. I think I'll do all my entries on the Sabbath each week.

Until our next post, see you later faithful readers.

Pauly

P.s - for those noobs who need an explanation, this wikipedia article relating to noobs should bring you up to speed. Noobs.

Origin

The word newbie is a variant of 'new boy' and comes from British public school and military slang. Its earliest known usage on the Internet may have been on the USENET newsgroup talk.bizarre^[1].

Before it entered popular discourse by way of the Internet, the term "newbie" had a limited usage among U.S. troops in the Vietnam War as a slang term for a new man in a unit.^[2]

Alternative spellings

"Newbie" can be used as a term to identify newcomers to a game, place, or organization. The variant spellings of "newbie" are also used, especially in online games, as a catch-all insult regardless of the recipient's actual skill or experience. Someone who acts like a "newbie," but isn't one would be referred to as one of the variant spellings.^{[citation needed]} The variant "noob" has become common in spoken English in parts of New York City and New Jersey as a substitute for the word dude. Alternative spellings include "newb," "n00b," "N00B," "noob," and "nub". These alternative spellings of the term, other than "newb," inherit the definition of "newbie" but are generally used in a derogatory manner to indicate uselessness because of the ignorance associated with being a newcomer.

Two noobs in China

What's Crackin?

Sup?

Last class before exams!

It's beginning to look a little bit, sorta similar to, kinda like Christmas!

Oy!

And presto...

Bout that time eh?

long time no see!

Soo...the weather's nice today!

The Hospital!

Last Saturday...

Let's go back to the....past....

My Students...

Our mini holiday

Updates

Winter? Already???

Big Weekend.

Mid Autumn Festival

曲阜 Qufu (pronounced: Chew-foo)

She had a rough childhood...

I'm Back too!!

Haircut

I'm Back

Things are different here!

大明湖 Da Ming Lake

Chop Suky

Just a couple of extra things...

祝你生日快乐！ Happy Birthday to me!!

Something bought, something new

Apartment Inspection

Welcome to Jinan!

Sex!

Ancient Gardens...and ancient sex

Life at the moment...

奥运加油！

茶 Tea!

Update: Hangzhou.

Shanghai! How are you today?

14 Days of Porcelain

Hangzhou

Where are we?

Rugby... League?

I MISS MY KITTEN!

Duets

Executive Decision

The Departed

Six days to go...

Alternative spellings

曲阜　Qufu (pronounced: Chew-foo)