Well hello world!

---

Well hello world!


Okay..soo, after an eventful summer and and exciting time in Canada, I made my way over to Beijing. A little small detour to Qatar for 12 hours, and a stunning chubby baby to accompany me and my mum on the flight. I'm moving to Beijing for a year, and no plans yet for the future, but what i do know is that i will be working at an architecture firm for at least a while. My mum, horrified by the thought of me moving to China, decided that this is the perfect time for her to travel and go places she had never. It's a great plan. It really is. And her thoughts behind it was "hey! i am going to have a free-of-charge travel guide!". Now what she didn't calculate is that her newly appointed travel guide does not have a clue. I don't mean that in the sense that I didn't know Beijing. I mean that with all my heart. I did not know Beijing, China, Mandarin, their culture and my knowledge about their food lacked alot of detail! My mum's dreams of an easy ride shattered at the first hour in Beijing, as we got into a cab only to understand that, not only do they have a complete different name for the hotel we were going to, but that my pretend Chinese accent ( learnt from the lonelyplanet and various websites) was a failure!


A short taxi journey later, a little bit of word exchange and a lot of pointing later, we had arrived. Our suitcases, looking as tired and worn out as we were, were dropped off, and the bell boy announced " Ten or Twenty is ok". My mum, still a bit stunned, managed to read 10 yuan from the notes in her bag, and handed it over with a smirk which turned into a loud laugh as the door shut. " HA!!! 10 or 20 is ok!". From that day, that became his name. Every morning and evening as we strolled in and out, my mum would whisper, " there he is! 10 or 20 is ok! He seems happy today"

Though we thought his phrase was amusing, no bell boy was better than " Don't worry mam!" bell boy. I wish i had asked his name, but everytime there was any conversation between him and us, it included a taxi, him and my mum and i confused. He would calm us down by saying " Don't worry mam!" and shut the door, while the taxi man had clearly announced that he did not know where the address we had shown him was! and was still shaking his head! more than 5 times, we sat, knowing we were going to be dropped off at an address "near" the place we actually wanted to go. I did not mind. I was too high on his comfortable assurance that i should not worry. Every time we would return, he would say " See mam! no worry! "

---