Updates

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???

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.

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