Blogs from Kunming, Yunnan, China, Asia - page 13

Because my textbook doesn't have a lot of visual appeal to offer, I'm only going to add one thematically relevant picture to this post. Enjoy the pretty, irrelevant Kunming flowers. The title for the post comes from an exercise we had as homework to practice some new vocabulary. This particular exercise is "collocation": you're given a list of vocabulary words, and instructed to add a noun, or verb, or some other specific part of speech in order to create a suitable and grammatical combination. For simpler exercises, you're given words like "conserve," and told to add a noun (e.g. "conserve labor"), or "hooligan," and told to add an adjective (e.g. "loud hooligan"). From a language learner's perspective, this is actually a very useful exercise, giving practice in creating short verb phrases and noun phrases and offering ... read more

There's a man in Kunming who's known, if only in legend, to all the foreigners in the city. Many have had the pleasure of making his acquaintance, but I had only heard the rumors: there's this crazy wandering peddler; he sells honey; he knows one word of English--"HONEY!" and he loves nothing more than selling jars of honey to foreigners. I was having kind of a bummer of a time, Sunday, trying to get a bunch of errands done. I had a lot of homework, and was hoping to get to Green Lake, the big park in the center of town, to get some photos of the weekend folk life. I was also hoping to run into the honey man, who is rumored to hang out primarily around Green Lake. But first, I also had some ... read more

Time passes by very fast. And the more we want to stop it, the faster it passes by. To be honest, I don't even know what I should or what I would like to write. On February 27 was half a year since I came here. I organized a small dinner party for the closest friends. But instead of joy, I only felt sadness. From some time, I've been looking at everything through a prism of memories and I feel that soon I will have to go back to Poland. And although many people don't want to hear that, sometimes I have a feeling I don't want to go back (yet). But of course, there is a part of me that can't wait to come back. A lot of things have happened for the last 6 ... read more

I’ve been on vacation now since the twenty-third of February. I started out with ten days in Guilin and Yangshou, which was nice. Yangshou was particularly good fun. Now I’m back in Kunming, taking intensive Chinese classes at Keats school. I studying Chinese with a private teacher for four hours a day, and I’m also learning Tai Chi for four hours a week. The Chinese lessons are really good, and I think I’m improving much more quickly than when I took the lessons last year -- mostly because last year I was a horrible student, and couldn’t be bothered to study. Now I’m spending about four hours a day studying to match my four hours and class, and progressing quickly as a result. As for Tai Chi, I expected it to be traumatic given my lack ... read more

I know that those who read my blog have been waiting for the New Year Eve post. But February came and there's still nothing... Well... I guess I owe an apology and a few words of "an excuse". Many things have happened lately. So many that I haven't had time to write anything. I didn't even have time for a deep breath! Together with the year's end came news that I have to move out from my apartment within three weeks. Chinese government decided to destroy part of the building I lived in. And it so happen that it was the part my apartment was in. Bad luck? Not really... I quickly started looking for a new place to live and found it at the beginning of January. Better one. Located in Kundu district, (famous for ... read more