Life up until now

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I feel I have somewhat neglected my blog recently as I settle into my rarely changing daily routine of class, gym, food, study, more food, alcohol. Now that I approach my 4^th month here living inChina has become less and less strange and has actually begun to feel like home, in a warped cut off from the rest of the world kind of home; I live in a Chinese bubble.

My Mandarin is improving everyday, and everyday I amaze myself at what I can understand and communicate to others. I mean, don’t get me wrong, my sentence structure is still poor and I do often panic speak (for example I meant to ask a woman if she could help me take my coat off a rail, and instead I pointed at it and said “I can help”) but nevertheless, they seem to understand the majority of the time. The real challenge I feel will be conversing with the taxi drivers as they try to make painful small talk about how beautiful my white skin is. However as of yet I am not quite there yet and so rely heavily on my friends to do the talking, or just tell them a combination of “Sorry I don’t understand” and “Sorry my Chinese is bad” resulting in a deathly silent taxi ride. Both I feel moderately comfortable with.

I’ve had a few minor hiccups this past month, first and foremost being the cancellation of my debit card by Natwest who thought I was being done for fraud; obviously I didn’t tell them I was coming to China before I left, so they cancelled my card and sent me a new one which my Dad then had to send to me. If there is one thing I have learnt whilst being here, it’s that the Chinese postal system sucks. Like really sucks. Combining the painfully stressful conversations with Chinese DHL workers and the creepy man with no teeth who works at the package collection booth on campus who feels the need to look at my student card and tell me how 漂亮 I am every time he sees me, receiving mail is not an enjoyable experience. But as I’m sure you’ll all be pleased to know that after 2 weeks of being poor and a hefty amount of debt to my friends racked up, my card finally arrived yesterday afternoon. Heaven.

The second thing that I feel needs mentioning is that I managed to drop my laptop resulting in a thick black line running horizontally down the screen, which in turn means I now have to scale down my tabs so as I can see them all clearly. I feel that I could claim for it and get it fixed on my travel insurance, but as I already explained the post, I don’t want to be sans-laptop for a month. So instead I will have to put up with it for the rest of the year as in spite what people may think, getting cheap electronic goods in China is somewhat of a myth; although Apple might may well manufacture their products here, they then get shipped back to America to then be sold back to China at retail price. You can imagine how much this has upset me, especially since I covered my iPhone in beer and am now sporting a teeny tiny Chinese brick that clicks with every button and has a polyphonic ringtone that makes my ears bleed every time I hear it.

The final thing that has deeply upset me is that, as expected, my dorm building is a bit of a hole. Not as much of a hole as some, but more so than others, so you can imagine my excitement when I came back from class at the beginning of this week to the odd smell of oil and the remnants of the communal showers in the hallway. Now I already wear shoes in the shower (and actually around the entire building in general) and make it my mission to ensure none of my possessions ever touch that floor, but I was happy at the thought of maybe finally being able to wash myself without the worry of scratching myself on a rusty nail and getting tetnus. But no, my dreams have been shattered as for some reason, the building execs have deemed it a good idea to rip out the old shitty showers, and replace them with new, even shitter showers. With lowered walls that a person over 5’6 could see over, no ledge to put my shower bag on and what I can only imagine is some form of sewage oil on the floors, the Chinese have taken away the one thing in my building that I moderately liked. I feel I now have to wear shower shoes on top of my shower shoes so they don’t get ruined. Typical. On the plus side, 3 months on and I have just discovered that there is a kitchen on the first floor of my building. Porridge breakfast here we come.

Halloween has both been and gone since my last post, and anyone who remotely knows me will know how much I love fancy dress. To one party my friends and I all went as dead doctors and nurses, complete with personalised name tags and syringes filled with vodka. But I feel as though my greatest outfit, possibly ever, was that my friends and I decided it’d be a good idea to go as Star Wars characters; I got Yoda. So having never seen the films and with the urge to look as slutty/hilarious as possible, I wore a custom-made jacket, fastened ears to the side of my head and painted my entire body green. We won the fancy dress competition hands down and were presented with a bottle of sambuka. I really don’t remember much after that, just that for the next few weeks people were talking about the small green girl dancing on the tables for an hour or two. I also failed to read the 'face paint' box and so my skin had a definite green tinge to it for the next week. And I also ruined some of my favourite clothes. I feel the night was a success.

If anything, living here has definitely made me appreciate theUKroads, as on multiple occasions I have seen my life flash before my eyes as a bus or taxi has almost driven straight into me. Chinese roads are mad. With 2 million people living inBeijingalone, there are cars and people everywhere, which does in face come in handy as I feel working on a pack mentality when crossing the road could very possibly keep you from being run over; they can’t hit all of you. There is a disturbing law that I heard though that states that if a car hits you they will either have to pay for your medical bills or your funeral costs, and seeing as a funeral is generally cheaper…you do the math. My friend here has seen someone be run over and then re-run over I assume in an attempt to kill them. Like I said, mad. We had a taste of how little they care about rules on the road the other week when we went go-karting in a place that is also a bar. There was just something about putting

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Comments

[Emily]

putting...?
There was just something about putting what?! Hope China is good (and not as cold as here). Miss you!x