Last week; 90 degrees. This week; 50. Brrrr.. Within the span of about 12 hours and some significant downpours, Beijing has nearly skipped over autumn and went from summer marsh to winter coats. Uncool.
But first, on a positive note, apologizes to all my faithful blog readers (im pretty sure my numbers are around 4 now… ;) ) It has been a bit since I’ve written and I hated to leave my less-than optimistic latent droan up for so long. Truth be told, I’ve really started to enjoy the comfort of living here. Yea, small stuff happens.. but things are generally relaxed now, I’m getting used to work (im not ecstatic about it, but it’s decent), making a few plans, etc.
My first good news is that I’ve just found a Chinese Teacher. I’ve been ‘interviewing’ a few the last week, and even though I should get free lessons from work, they’re in 3 mo. increments and the next one doesn’t start till December. Bad news is it’s a bit expensive. 100RMB per hour (2 hrs, 2x a week) so it comes to about $240 a month, but Jan and I will split it. But I suppose it’s worth it if I can actually speak Chinese from it. The teacher I’ve chosen seems really good though. Very conversational, giving instructions and speaking in Chinese with me as much as possible, and making me work. J I need to adopt some of those qualities in my own teaching I think; not letting students ‘slack off’ or be lazy.
We had our ‘house warming-party’ last week, which is almost a joke to call it that. One girl I work with came over and we had some drinks and chatted for a few hrs. Her name is Aubrey. Very nice. All the Chinese have trouble with her name. Also, my immediate supervisor, Candy (English name, from Hong Kong) is pretty awesome too. I think we could be good friends. Yesterday she wanted to know if I wanted to help her decide which shoes to buy at the mall during our dinner break. A girl after my own heart. J Besides the work group, I’ve met a few of Jan’s friends from the university a time or two (we have ‘gone out’ I believe 3 times so far in our month here). Still feels quite busy usually and it’s hard to go meet new people all the time, but I’m sure we’ll get there; especially with the social butterfly of a bf I’ve got ;).
Tomorrow (Wednesday the 22nd) is the Chinese Mid-Autumn festival where families meet and share moon cakes. These fancy red and gold boxes are taking over every supermarket and people are walking out with multiple bags at a time. I got one from one of my students last week. Made from dough and egg yolks, they are supposed to bring luck or good fortune.. like most Chinese traditions or symbols. We should be meeting with my father’s cousin and his girlfriend for dinner later this week. Hopefully we can learn some more about it! We bought a fancy ‘rice wine’ or basically Chinese vodka also recently. In the store, there are all these urn-looking porcelain things that are quite expensive. We’re hoping to slowly enjoy them and use them as decoration around our living room.
After this festival, there is ‘national week,’ beginning on October 1. I’ll have 5 days off (3 holiday, 2 ‘weekend’) so Jan and I have booked for Shanghai! Friday morning till Monday night. It was a toss up between a flight and a 13-hr bus ride.. (the flight won). We still don’t know where we’re staying, but there might be some others going from Jan’s school we’ll figure it out with. Unfortunately, this is the travel season now; one month into the job; and I wasn’t really prepared for a vacation or asked in time to get extra days off; but within the next 2 weeks, 4 of my 10 ‘work-holidays’ will be used up. I also have 10 days I can choose, but with significant notice of course. And as the temperatures are dropping significantly, it is surely better to do it now rather than later. But even still, I haven’t even gotten my first pay check yet.