There's a dead chicken in my dinner!

It turns out when you order roast chicken for dinner in China, you really get everything. I was not really paying attention, just watching some South Park and eating my dinner, when I picked up the head and bit into it. It was so nasty I took a photo of it for you all to enjoy. So enjoy:



Well, I am only two days or two and a half hours away from post-exam bliss! Today I had my oral exam, which I am quietly confident about. My teacher says I did quite well in the Character Knowledge exam - at least over 90! That will be my best mark for the semester I think. Now I only have Reading Comprehension tomorrow, and Listening the day after, then I'm FREEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Also, it turns out we are only going to Ha'erbin for four days now instead of five, as the five day tour included a day of skiing, which none of us want to do.

10 days til I leave Beijing!!

I wish I was asleep...

It's 2am and I only have 6 hours until my exam starts - I should be either studying, or safely tucked into bed, but I am doing neither. Why, you may ask? Because I am the queen of procrastination. Thus this useless 2am blog.

I had my first exam today (well, technically yesterday now). The only exam I had really put any effort into up until 6 hours ago. The class was 汉字知识 (Character Knowledge) - and I think the exam went smashingly. As usual, it appears I overstudied for the exam, and I probably could have passed even without opening the text book. So I'm confident I will score at least an 80/85 for that exam, something in the 90s would be fab.

Post exam - I slept. I only slept three hours on Sunday night, and I must have looked terrible at the exam, because everybody commented on how well rested I didn't look. So Monday arvo I slept for 7 hours. This worked out well because a) I love an afternoon siesta, and b) I should be able to stay awake right through until after my Tuesday exam.

So I guess I had better get back to my study... I have three more lessons to summarise, and then I need to memorise lots and lots of example sentences, all the while refraining from such temptations as eBay and Facebook. I think it's time for another 红牛 (Red Bull).

11 days til I leave Beijing!!!!

新年快乐 and 哈尔滨 (Happy New Year) and (Harbin)

Happy New Year everyone! And Happy Birthday Nan and Bronwyn! What did I do to welcome in the New Year? Why, I studied, and then watched Pulp Fiction, of course! The exam period is nearly upon us - only 2 days of class left (6 hours, not that I'm counting) and then exams start on Monday.

Now, for the exciting news! I'm going to 哈尔滨 (Hā'ěrbīn in Pinyin, Harbin in English). It is China's most northern major city, located about 10 hours north of Beijing by train. Every winter, starting on January 5th, they hold their annual Ha'erbin Ice Festival for around three months. Here is a lil map to show you where Ha'erbin is (spelt Harbin here):



The reason they can have a three month ice festival is because it's bloody cold! January's average high temperature -14℃, and the average low is -26℃, but it can get down to -38℃. At what point is frostbite a possibility? In fact, the temperature is below 0℃ for six months of the year. That must be depressing.

Anyway, eight or nine of my classmates and I are stupid enough to want to go! We're going on a five day tour, leaving on the 14th of January, returning on the 19th - just in time for me to warm up in what will be a blistering Beijing winter, before flying out on the 20th to Bangkok. I normally wouldn't go to such a cold place, because the cold in Beijing is enough for me, but it is so cheap! For five days, hard sleeper train, meals, accommodation and entry tickets (so basically everything included) - less than AU$200! I couldn't really turn that down - I spend almost double that on a pair of jeans.

I don't have a copy of the itinerary yet - I only decided a few hours ago (read: asked mum if it was ok to go), but tomorrow one of the guys in my class is bringing it along hopefully.

And so you get an idea of what we will be seeing, here are a few pictures:





Also, there is a fabulous website by an author/photographer, with lots of great pictures, but I cannot link to them for copyright reasons. So here is the address - take a squiz - it looks fabulously tacky! (Click on the years below)

2003
2005
2007

I will post our itinerary when I get it! Oh, and for those who are interested who is going - Andri, Candra, Nalisha (Candra's girlfriend - she's from one of the -stan countries, possibly Kyrgyzstan, I can never quite remember - so it'll probably quite pleasant for her), Hokky, Vivi, Heru... and I'm sure who else. It'll be quite the Indo trip though!

Our Boxing Day Bash

Merry Christmas everyone. I'm saying that rather half-heartedly, because it doesn't feel anything like Christmas. For starters, it's about 30 degrees too cold, and I'm at uni all week. But we did manage to squeeze in a little get-together on Boxing Day night at Fabien and Christelle's apartment.

For dinner, we had handmade dumplings (most of which fell apart when cooked), pasta, Beijing duck, cheese and bread, and chocolate fondue. Unfortunately, I was feeling really ill (my eyes were hurting - I didn't quite understand why until the following day when I couldn't open them for the blinding pain - my first migraine!) so I left before the chocolate fondue. Anyway, a couple of pictures:


Fabien's chocolate collection - his excuse? He's Swiss.






Christelle in the kitchen.



And IT SNOWED AGAIN! But not at all exciting this time, because a) it only snowed a tad, and b) it snowed during the night... Most of it had melted by mid afternoon again. At least now the eerie mist has lifted again.



I'm home in 25 days!

Hooters (yes, exactly what you're thinking)

On Saturday, a number of my classmates and myself sat the HSK exams - HSK stands for 汉语水平考试, and is a proficiency test for Mandarin. The only reason we sat it was because it was free - normally you have to pay around 5-600元, but they'd recently made some changes so we were able to sit it for free. It was split into two sections, and in total went for nearly 5 hours.

There is nothing quite like getting up at 7am on a Saturday to sit an exam that isn't even compulsory. It really takes something out of you. So... we went to Hooters. Now, for those that aren't aware of Hooters, it is an American institution comprising of meat, beer and buxom girls is little clothing. And a Hooters had recently opened in Beijing, so we thought it was the perfect place to celebrate a job well done on the HSK.

The food was great, service was very enthusiastic, and the entertainment... entertaining. Our waitress was a girl called Cice (pronounced C-C). I had the chicken caesar salad, which I was very excited about. We also ordered for the table 50 chicken wings, which we hardly made a dent in. Every half an hour the girls do a little dance in the aisles. Very entertaining. We even told them it was Hokky's birthday, and they made him get up on a stool while they sang Happy Birthday and embarrassed the hell out of him.


From left - me, Yumin (Chinese), Mega, Olly, Candy, Andri, Devi (Indo), Candra, Hokky (Indo)



All the girls in the place!

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

That's right - it snowed! (A few days ago). I would have blogged sooner to post photos, but I was unfortunately sick in bed with a feisty hangover that day, and my camera is out of batteries so I had to wait until one of my friends posted their pictures online! I am sneaky like that. And well, I kill two birds with one stone, because this picture is practically an entire class photo.



13 of the 18 people in that photo are Indonesian... Not surprisingly, my Indonesian has improved dramatically this semester. Our 'listening class' teacher is the lady in the middle, with the pink handbag.

Unfortunately, the snow melted almost entirely the same day. But I'm hoping for a pretty heavy downfall between now and Christmas so I will get my first white Christmas!

I ate meat with a knife and fork!

Yes, yes, very exciting. Today is/was Christelle's birthday - she's a Canadian/French girl (Quebec actually). So we all headed out to a relatively fancy restaurant called Annies for eats - what particularly interested us was their chocolate fondue (but more on that later).

I ordered the New Zealand rock of lamb with vegies, and oh my.... it was FAN-BLOODY-TASTIC. I took a photo, but it's only on my phone so you'll have to wait until I return home to see (which I'm sure you all shall). Watching Horacio trying to eat with a knife and fork was hilarious... The poor tyke could hardly cut his chops, but I'm sure with a set of chopsticks he could have worked wonders. For dessert, Mega and I split a cheesecake, and also had chocolate fondue. Chocolate fondue was clearly created on by God on the seventh day... It combines the decadence of chocolate with the goodness of fruit - a tad like the goodness of a crab, in the convenience of a stick (Dave Hughes fans will know what I mean, in reference to the fantastic-ness (yes, it's a word) of fish'n'chip shop crab sticks).

After dinner, Mega, Olly, Xavier and I headed to Club 13 - a club near university that I've been trying, unsuccessfully, for months to drag people to, but nobody is ever interested, primarily because the club specialises in metal, heavy metal and death metal. Tonight was a tribute to Dimebag Darrell - the lead singer of Pantera who was shot and killed at one of his concerts. It was really odd to see Chinese guys with dreads rockin' out to metal music, but lots of fun. And I am very glad I finally got some people to Club 13 - they all loved it so hopefully we'll get the chance to go back before I leave (tomorrow night is a Sgt. Peppers tribute night, so fingers crossed).

42 days to go, and 80 hours of class to go! Photos to come soon!