i was outside reading earlier today, frantically working my way through the ED384 course book. i looked up, and there was a little boy walking along with a small bucket. he was taking his wu gui for a walk. An wu gui is a turtle. they, here in china at least, live in notoriously small enclosures - such as small buckets, glass tanks, or anything else that appears to be too small to sustain the life of an animal. he stopped, and placed the little wu gui on the ground so it could have a decent walk. here i was thinking how cute the whole thing was, then he picks his wu gui up and throws it over onto the grass. oh. fortunately the wu gui survived this ordeal.
i finished my readings and somehow an hour and a half passed as i tried on a pair of jeans and four pairs of shorts, all of which were too small, bought some peaches, and wandered through the supermarket, buying my obligatory date cake (which is not cake that one if obliged to take on a date, but cake that i feel obliged to buy because, after having done so a few times, the nice lady at the bakery starts putting some in a bag for me as i approach the bakery coming down the escalator.), bananas, lychees (which are actually lizhi (lee-jhir, sort of, i guess) so i'm not sure where lychee came from - in fact, ping pong is about the only word(s) that seem to have made it across into the English language intact. Even wok - i mean, who'd have thought that wok wasn't a chinese word?)... i lost my train of thought. maybe that's where all the time goes? my mind isn't particularly linear. It has more tangents than... um, whatever the tangents were coming from in the first place.
anyway - so i left the supermarket and found that it was almost dark. this often happens, but not at half four in the afternoon. curious. then it started to rain... well, sort of... i think the first drop hit me before any others built up the courage to jump off the clouds. I thought I'd been bombarded by one of the pigeons soaring around above. However, pretty soon it was raining so hard, in MASSIVE drops, that everyone around was dashing for cover. I saw a man with two umbrellas... i bet HE was dry. Now I'm back inside, of course, but I had to close my window because it was raining inside my room.
i say that in a rather neutral tone, because, quite simply, half of me is looking forward to it, and half of me is torn up about leaving china.
we gathered last night on the area called houhai - a series of hutong (a complex network of little alley type streets that are home to a huge number of Beijing's people, but double as a tourist attraction in many parts of the city, with courtyard residences, temples, and dilapidated façades that beg to be photographed.) around a couple of lakes. Bars line the shores of the lakes, with hundreds of people drifting around on electric boats, and thousands more meandering through the shops, restaurants, and bars, or just generally enjoying the fine summer evenings. We sat on some couches overlooking the lake and bargained for cheaper drinks. Then we sat on a rooftop and bargained for cheaper drinks. I went off to get some dinner, ordered a pizza, they were going to call when it was ready, but didn't, pizza went cold, i got angry, got my money back, still wanted the pizza, ended up off at an indian place called Raj, with considerably better food than pizza anyway, and chai, like real chai, not latte style, which the owner was very proud of, then took my food back to the rooftop and wondered why I'd ever consider living anywhere else. We noticed a complete absence of noisy little drunken eighteen year olds (and their teenybopper companions drinking kiddypop-alcohol stuff), of drugs, of "massage girls", or really anything else that generally makes bar strips unpleasant places to be. Oh, and I bought new sandals. And today I bought a fan. It's shaped like a big fat cat, which is a little disconcerting. The airconditioner makes my room like a fridge - I'm sure that's not healthy. The next batch of muesli will be created tomorrow. Speaking of airconditioners, eightzerofive's kongtiao is STILL dripping.
I have a new boy starting tomorrow who is fluent in English. It's kind of neat, because I have someone to talk to. But it's kind of sad, being happy about talking to a four year old. I'm still not sure what to teach. It was suggested that I did stuff in the classroom. But, really, that's insanely boring. I think we'll do bingo tomorrow, and go over last week's sporty words. I'm sure I can come up with something more exciting. It would be fun to make boats... but we don't have any water to float them in. We could make parachutes... they're always fun. Making stuff is cool - learning English in context... rather than "this is a book shelf, I know you don't care, but it's what your teachers want you to learn, so they can learn it at the same time, because they don't want to give up their lunchtime for an English class where they can decide what they want to learn." see? parachutes are cool.
So what do you do when it's 2am and the incessant dripping from outside is keeping you awake? Not much. But, what do you do when said dripping continues the next day? You stick your head out the window to figure out who the culprit is. You see that it's the air conditioning unit from the apartment above, on the seventh floor. You rehearse your Chinese for "air conditioner" - kong tiao, and head on up the stairs. When confronted by a woman who doesn't speak English, and promptly slams the door shut again, you ring the buzzer again. You accuse them of keeping you awake in the best way you no how "wo bu kun" - i don't sleep. they misunderstand what is going on, and think you're asking them what to do when your own air conditioner is broken. They proudly give you a number in English, then say it in Chinese, but as you understand Chinese, you realise that not only are they giving you information you don't want, they're giving you the wrong number. You decide that your Chinese is inadequate and call a friend to do the talking for you. She's not there. You call a different friend. Man of 705 then proceeds to explain how he's not used his air conditioner this summer. Man proceeds to explain that he only has one, and it's not above where you're pointing too. You continue to accuse him anyway, because, well, you're here now, and what else are you going to do? You decide to return to your apartment and climb outside the window again to take another look. People on the ground look up at you like you're a little bit crazy. You're used to that by now; people look at you like you're a little bit crazy if you stop to buy vegetables at the market, or if you, well, they just stop and stare anyway - what else are they going to do? You decide that you were wrong. The unit is actually on the eighth floor. Your mobile rings - it's the friend that didn't answer the first time. She wants to help, but you explain that it's alright, there isn't much that can be done until you know what's going on. You go back up the stairs and knock on that door. A man comes to the door wearing not much, you don't quite no where to look, and nor does he. You try the Chinese thing again, but give up after about two point eight seconds. You call the same friend and have her explain the situation. The man reacts well and says he'll have it sorted it in the morning. You know that's probably the best solution you're going to get, so you quit while you're not really ahead and go home. You also realise that it wouldn't be fair to make him turn it off. It's still 28 degrees, and that won't change much overnight. The forecast for tomorrow is 38, down from the initial 41 earlier today, so little chance of it being off tomorrow during the day either. Your mobile rings later - it's the same friend that wasn't there the first time, but called you back. She explains that there is a sort of law against this sort of thing - that he can't even operate it as is. They offer to come around and make him sort it out tonight. You decline, because you figure you can deal with it as is for another night. However, you explain that you're happy for them to give him grief tomorrow if it's not sorted by then. You all agree this is a good plan. You decide to take the sound matters into your own hands, because, well, you're a kiwi. If you were at home, you would have offered to try to fix the unit for the guy yourself, but, you're not. So, you rummage around through the random stuff under your bed that was left there from when Chinese people lived in the apartment sometime before you. You find a nice scarf that might be expensive, but you don't care, because it's ugly by your reckoning. You tie it here, shove it in there, twist it around there, and eventually get it suspended across the gap through which the water is falling. The noise changes from a tap tap tap to a sput sput sput. But we all know that a sput is preferable to a tap. Admit it, you know - you were even thinking the same thing. You settle back in your room, almost 9pm, wondering what happened to yet another day, wishing you'd eaten dinner earlier instead of that big rice dumpling and the bits of cake you sampled at the supermarket. You poor a glass of ice tea and decide that as there is little else worth writing about, you should write about this, because someone might find it interesting, and everyone else will just continue to think that you're a little bit weird.
apologies for the lack of posts... I'm living in assignmentland. Plus, there isn't much going on that is worth writing about... unless you want to hear some educational theory?
No? Ok.
I'll endeavour to do something interesting so I can write about it. We had children's day, which I guess was interesting, but, I've had enough of it for a bit, without writing about it...!
We've had a week of cooler weather; a pleasant deviation from the normal heat. Though, the mosquitoes are prolific. Plus, the forecast for the next two days is 37 and 36. That's just silly.
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