Oh really!?

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It's been almost a month sans update.

Since the October break when I wrote last, I've stayed pretty busy. Between teaching and going out with friends, October has managed to fly by.

In the last month...

I spent a couple of nights in a row and an entire day hanging out with the band in their apartment while they were packing up. I got some late-night Filipino lessons and ate some delicious food. Yummmmm. Watched a ton of movies... "Like oooh my god, I am sooo pissed, I think I'm gonna have a bf." "What a beautiful chocolate man!" Philip inspired me to paint my toenails black, and Rach left my "iced tea" in the freezer a bit too long so it really was ICE tea. Tried my best but tears fell and they were the kind of hugs you don't want to end. That was a really tough goodbye. Those five people are simply.. amazing. I felt such a connection with each of them. But, fingers crossed, I'll see them all again in January when I go to the Philippines.

My post-teaching plans for January have changed from Thailand to Philippines because I was invited to stay with Rachel and her family while I'm there, and I'd love to see her again. Overlooking the fact that I can stay and eat for the better part of three weeks for free... Phils also has incredible diving, beaches, and site-seeing. And the Filipino people are so amazing. The only aspect missing is the Buddhism, but I know I'll be back to Asia sometime in my lifetime. I have a lifetime ahead of me.

Before the October holiday was over, I discovered sticky pics with Yue and experienced my first truly "bad China day"...my plans to climb Thousand Buddah Mountain were postponed by rain.. again... it rained all day, I got ripped off by my taxi driver, fell in a puddle, almost died on the escalator in Walmart... but it ended up alright. I met up with Thomas and we ate pasta, drank wine and had some great conversation.

My new roomie Jonathon (Jon) arrived late on the 10th and I went with Richard and Jenny to the Jinan airport to pick him up. He's a cool guy, we get along most of the time, but it sure is something different to have a room mate after I got used to having the place to myself. Takes a lot of patience and flexibility.

On the 13th, Tom, Jon and I met up and went to Jenny's Cafe. I went home early... the two of them decided to meander their way to Quan Cheng Square (looong way from Jenny's!), proceeded to eat duck fetus, drink baijou and go swimming naked in a spring with some Chinese men. Kind of glad I missed that.

I had a "Food"/potluck class with all three of my SAC classes. I brought PB and J sandwiches and they all brought a bunch of strange Chinese snacks... I tried some pickled cucumber from Zibo (pickled cuke but not pickles, curiously enough)... almost tried a thousand year old egg but decided to steer clear of that... decided I hate hawthorn. Green bean cake. Small "mantou". Some other little things. And of course I was loaded up with things to take home. Including a hard-boiled egg from Monica (class 3) with my face drawn on one side and "I love you" written on the other. It was a fun class.

Melissa and I spent a Wednesday afternoon together. I went over to her apartment and one of her students was there, cooking Chinese food, so we ate and talked for a while then went out on our "peacock" mission, to find peacock feathers. And somehow, "peacock" became this ridiculous but hilarious joke... "Well peacock you!" "Shama the peacock?" We found feathers on Shanda Nan Lu, and Melissa pointed out a brothel to me (I'll know never to wander into that place...), which really made my heart ache because all of the girls in the doorway looked so sad. We took a cab to Allen's place and spent some time there... I caught a gecko and put it in a cup that Allen didn't want to drink from ever again in fear of "death by gecko". Imagine that on an obit. "Allen was a great son, brother, friend and boyfriend. Death by gecko." I discovered that apparently when I eat meat, I turn into a super hero... I get X-ray vision, but one eye gets a LOT larger than the other... I grow a beard and I get gassy. These are the kinds of jokes I should just keep in a private journal but I don't want to forget any of them, and they're funny. The three of us took a cab to Spring Cafe for a really nice dinner then ran into Greg, Maree, and Rebecca so we talked with them for a while and Mel was falling asleep so we all left.

Molly left for Aus. (Canberra) and I didn't even get to see her off because they had her farewell dinner at a "meat restaurant" that apparently I wouldn't be able to bare.

Had Friday the 21st off and I met Sophia at Jenny's for dinner. Hadn't seen her since mid-Autumn day, we've both been so busy. She's teaching English at a college as well as working as a document translator for an African businessman in Qingdao. It was so good to see her again, and we had a good laugh. "Oh really!?" haha. Went to Pyramid afterwards to check out the new band... not too bad but nothing compared to Rachel and the guys. We were just sitting enjoying our drinks (my rum and coke, Sophia's gin and tonic) when a guy comes and sits beside me and asks, "Are you Laura? And you're from Canada?" Not knowing WHO this guy is, I say yes and find out that his name is Milan and he's a Canadian engineer visiting China on business but he Googled Jinan and found my Travelblog so he knew who I was. We talked for a while and then the three of us went out on the dance floor for a while before Soph and I had to leave.

I was walking home one afternoon when I was stopped by a Chinese girl right outside of the Shandong Uni gate near Oma. She introduced herself as May, told me she'd just come back from a year in the UK where she completed her post-graduate studies and asked me if I'd be interested in participating in a language exchange program with her, so I got her number (nice thing about cell phones!) and we agreed to meet up the next Monday. We met outside of Oma and went to Quan Cheng Square. Stopped in at Pizza Hut where "between the hours of 14:00 and 17:00 you can enjoy the delicious of a choice drink and sweet for 20 RMB" (so reads the menu) So we had coffee/tea and tiramisu, and had a great conversation (language exchange).
((Random note, Pizza Hut has a "Deep Sea Eel Pizza".))

Danny and his family chose a Chinese name for my upon my request. It's a more traditional name, not so widely used in the city any more, so I think I'll adopt two names (one trad., one city), but the name Danny chose for me is special.

Danny and Jon had a baijou and beer night. My place reeked. That's all I'll say.

Wednesday afternoon I met Sophia at home and made pancakes for her, then we went to Quan Cheng Square, more specifially to get sticky pictures in the photo booth outside of WalMart! Sooo much fun, for 6 kaui (a buck) you can pick out 12-36 borders/pictures and you go into a little photo booth and take as long as you want to super-impose your face into a toilet bowl or kissing Harry Potter. It's fantastic. We both bought little key-chain photo albums and filled them up with our pictures. Wandered around and ended up at a Taiwanese cafe and had coffee but I found a few slightly more interesting things on the menu.. bloody beef cakes, simmered duck tongue, rainbow jelly coffee drink (amongst others). I left to meet Rebecca at WalMart and we went back to the photo booth place to get MORE sticky pictures and we took a LOT! Then we went to Pizza Hut and had veggie pizza (skipped out on the Deep Sea Eel) and coffee with another one of Rebecca's friends.

Last night I met up with Snow, Simon and Richard (three students from the SAC) for dinner at UBC and had a great time trying to teach knife-and-fork operation. One of the Chinese veggies Richard was eating is defined in Simon's electronic dictionary as "bird rape". A vegetable. We had a good laugh over that but then I had to explain why that word is inappropriate in a Western country. Simon and Snow came back to my apartment and we carved the two little pumpkins I picked up at RT-Mart. One of the pumpkins we carved especially for Simon. Glasses and all.

This week has been a good, busy week. It's getting cooler every day in Jinan, especially at night. Getting out of bed is tough in the morning, especially with tile floors. Jon and I finally figured out (with Danny's help) how to work the electric heater for the hot water tank. We'd been relying on the solar heating system and thus enjoying cold showers for the last two weeks or so.

Teaching is going well, my college classes are frustrating but I like the students. My kids classes are great all except for the Little Sunshine (2-year olds) that I still hate doing, even if it's only for two hours on Sunday mornings. And my B-class at Oma just graduated to C-class so I'm no longer teaching them. I have a new B-class... Wendy, June, Python and Duck. Python is probably the least aggressive person I have ever met and Duck, he's just funny. Their English is a lot worse than my old B-class but they're all hard workers so the classes are alright.

As excited as I am to see you all and to come home, I know that when the time comes to leave China, I will miss it. I won't miss teaching but I'll miss the students and the friends I've made here. Danny, Sophia and Yue especially. My Chinese friends are some of the kindest hearted and most genuine people I've ever known.

So, that's it for my long update. My fingers and toes are freezing and I have to get outside in the sunshine. I'm sure there will be another update soon, as this weekend is full of Halloween parties and those will definately result in some interesting pictures. ((Update: there will definately be another update soon when my computer lets me upload pics to post. For this entry, no such luck.))

Love and miss you all,

Laura



+ I had my first "trench" experience in the SAC WC.

++ Somehow, when I told the taxi driver "Walmart", it translated into "take us into the middle of no where, rob us blind, cut us up into small pieces and bury us in a mound of garbage." That was an interesting taxi ride.

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Comments

[Tyler]

Hey, Hey
I'm glad you are havin' a pretty good time over there an' makin' alot of friends. I was worried that you would have a tough time makin' it through your workterm, but I'm glad things are lookin' up. Take care hun, can't wait to have that party when you get back. Tyler