29.03.09 Ice cold

We had one week of Summer and now it has been chilly. The heat was turned off some time ago and that's why it often feels colder in our room than outside. There has been a lot of wind and since the windows don't keep the wind outside, the inside of our room is really cold, and because you get really cold inside the outside also feels cold. But hopefully it's starting to warm up now. :)

The steps

This week I was mostly in the room studying and watching TV online and trying to stay warm. But on Sunday I went for a trip. We went to North-East of Beijing where there is a water reservoir place. The bus trip took about 3 hours and when we reached our destination it was snowing. We climbed up a mountain and then down. The scenery was really nice but the problem was the weather and because of that, you couldn't really see that much. The place might be a big tourist place during the Summer, but now it just looked old and in bad shape. The stairs we had to use to climb up didn't look too safe. First there were some metal steps that were slippery and then there were some wooden steps that were not in the best shape.

Boats on a lake

All in all, the trip was ok and since I didn't have any expectations, I guess the trip filled the expectations. :) It was a simple trip and with better weather, it would have been nicer to look at the scenery. And at least it was some exercise, which I haven't been doing here at all. I just hope I'm not getting too fat :P

Summer is here

It seems like my life is filled with going to lessons and studying. And the strangest thing is that I feel I should be studying more... Especially more Chinese. It's not enough to sit in class almost 20 hours per week and I should be studying more during the afternoons, but I just can't. Too much is too much. Despite the lack of extra effort, at least one of my Chinese teachers thinks I'm a good student. Probably mainly because I come to class on time :P

I've also studied Chinese twice now with a Chinese girl. I read texts from my book and she corrects my pronunciation. And then I correct her English pronunciation. The pronunciation is very hard and the problem is that speaking is the most important thing. There are four different tones in Chinese and I've been told now, that I can read the words well but the tones are not correct. And if I don't get the tones exactly right most of the Chinese people don't even try to understand me.

So, in other words, I haven't been doing almost anything lately. On Saturday we had a birthday party in the dormitory for a four year old girl from Bangladesh, whose mother is studying here. Besides that I've only gone to a massage and studied. But now I can start sightseeing because the Summer is here! And yes, I mean Summer, not Spring. Because in my book 20 degrees and more is Summer not Spring, and about 20 degrees is what we've had this week.

By the way, coming here for the Autumn would have been easier, because then other people would have been interested in getting to know people and go sightseeing. Now everyone has their own friends and they've seen everything they want to see. And also, in case you were wondering, the university, nor anyone else in here, doesn't arrange anything for the foreign students. So no parties and no events. Kinda sucks.

Pictures

I had problems putting pictures in the previous blog update. I tried to get pictures there for two days (that's why the update is late), but still couldn't get them there. Sorry that there's no pictures. But I have a photo gallery now, thanks to Matti, so you can see all my good pictures that I've taken here.

08.03.09 The international women's day

This week went by really fast, probably because I've actually had more things to do this week and I've even felt that I don't have enough time to do everything. The beginning of the week was pretty normal (and I should done more school work then when I still had time :P), but on Wednesday we went to a bar with few of my friends and it was awesome. You had to pay 30rmb (a little over 3 euros) to get into the bar, but in the bar it was free bar (this is what I call student price, the Finnish bars should learn from this :D). We danced so much during the night and had so much fun. But in the morning it was time to get back to reality and I went to my Chinese class at 8am with about three hours of sleep.

Thursday and Friday went by so fast and on Saturday I went shopping with few of my friends. It seems that China is seriously affecting my shopping habits. In Finland I only go shopping when I really need something, but here I'm going shopping just for fun. And I've been buying more things than usually, but thank god it's really cheap here. For example, the biggest amount shopping I've done was yesterday and I spent 200rmb which is about 23 euros. With 200rmb I bought two tops, a skirt and a summer dress... A note to Matti, bring a BIG bag when you come here :P

Today is the international women's day and we went to the Temple of Heaven Park (Tiantan park) with my roommate and her friend. The weather was amazing, the sun was shining and it was really warm. The park was huge and inside the park you can see the Round Altar (Yuanqiutan), the Imperial Vault of Heaven (Huangqiongyu), the Echo Wall (Huiyinbi) and the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest (Qiniandian).

The Round Altar was a circular structure that was used for making sacrifices. The altar has three layers and all steps leading to the top and everything in the structure is multiples of nine. This is because odd numbers are considered heavenly and nine is the biggest single digit odd number. The Echo Wall is a circular wall that is supposed to carry human voice along the wall. We didn't try if it really does echo and with all the people there I don't think we would have been able to hear the echo. The Qiniandian is a tall temple on top of three marble terraces where the Emperors went to pray for good harvest.

Since it was Sunday there were a lot of people in the park and they were playing cards, singing and dancing. On our way out we stopped to watch people dance and I was even taken for a dance by one Chinese man :) When we got out of the park we stopped by at the Pearl Market to look at some pearls, silks and other things they had before we went back to the dormitory.