Last class before exams!

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!

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!

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...

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?

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!

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!

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!

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! :)