I'm Back too!!

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

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

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.