Moving on, buying things, moving on

Well, I've been lazy for a while. We got back from Shanghai last Saturday, but since then I've been struggling with this place and although this site definitely says "diary", whining about culture shock isn't going to keep me cheerful. SO! I have been super lazy and not written anything down for a while.

The National Day holiday was good. Hangzhou was sunny, full of tourists, but beautiful and green, with minimal smog (China's standard of "minimal") - I got many photos, which I shall upload soon *promisespromises* - We went up the Leifeng Pagoda, a legendary pagoda that collapsed during the Qing Dynasty and is now a crumpled heap underneath the new Leifeng Pagoda, built a few decades ago. I'm a little dubious about whether the local council has built a pagoda and shoved some bricks under it to make it look "authentic", purely because the bricks don't look at all worn, (considering they're supposed to have been put there by the Tang Dynasty [618-907AD]) also all the tourists keep chucking pennies at the "ruins", which, if they are genuine, makes my forehead-vein twitch. This was the source of much debate between Louise and I, by "debate" I mean 10 minutes of Louise snapping: "I disagree." "No." "Why." - And quite frankly I am sick of each conversation being an interrogation, so all opinions shall be kept to myself from now on. -_-

Suzhou was ok... *flail* Ruth had to get an aeroplane to Shanghai first, then travel to Suzhou (Suzhou not having its own airport) - unfortunately her Chinese mother told her that there'd be loads of buses and trains between the two cities because of the holiday, but, of course, they were all full or closing by the time she got there. It ended with us getting a text from her, saying she was in an unmarked taxi with a few other Chinese students *head-desk* Golden rule of Chinese un-marked taxis is that they will try and charge you ridiculous prices, and they will stop half way and demand more money and kick you out if you refuse. Suprise suprise, half way the guy stopped the taxi and asked Ruth "She told you it was 80元? I want 90元!" In fairness, this is the equivalent of the price hike of £1, usually they ask for an extra thousand 元 -__- Apparently the price hike is exclusive to white people though, Ruth said the driver only asked her for extra and the other Chinese students in the car were all looking suitably awkward -_- If you couple this with the 100 Chinese shop-owners and taxis yelling "HELLO!" at us as we walked down the street, Suzhou basically turned in to a China hate-fest. It's hard not to punch someone when you can see the dollar signs rolling in their eyes just because they've realised you're white -____________-

The last week has basically been a struggle with trying to deal with people I-don't-like-but-am-stuck-with and finding something in China to like (I came for the ancient stuffs, despite knowing the Maoists destroyed most of it I didn't consider that they'd literally destroyed EVERYTHING) - The weather's getting colder, so it's getting easier to stay in bed longer God knows what'll happen in winter - I need to buy jumpers as well, litearlly only packed t-shirts -__-
The Cambridge students here are also turning out to be quite... defensive - Since the Shanghai episode, when the whole "I wanna drop a bomb on this country and leave"-emotion reared its ugly head, if I say anything negative about this place they jump on me... so now I have three people doing the interrogation approach -_- I do not like people who can't spell chill-ax -_-

On the bright side! Taekwondo is muchos fun and we've started working towards the next level ^^ There's also been an influx of new members, so I managed to pounce on one and have a chat in Chinese - Poor girl is only 16 and I'm pretty sure i terrified her, BUT everything does seem better when you're getting on with the people from a country and not imagining creative deaths for them. ^_^ There was an interesting episode where she was telling me to put my ass on her feet so she could do sit ups, she then asked me my name straight afterwards... needless to say I thought she was asking for the English word for butt -___-

This weekend also saw my first morning of teaching a small child the complexities of the English language! Huzzah? Hmmm, the dad's frequent insistences that I be able to teach grammar led me to believe his daughter was quite advanced... turns out she's still using the "When's your birthday? My birthday is in June" textbook BUT she does like some English-speaking films... so we're going to talk about them... we're going to talk about Twilight... *twitchtwitch* and the Backstreet Boys... For some reason the Backstreet Boys are very popular in China, as is Celine Dion - in particular the Titanic theme tune... *melts*

I has also purchased a Chinese phone ^^ It's a tad senile... it takes a few minutes to get itself organised if you haven't used it for a while... but it's white and pink - very Chinese girl-style ^^ It nows means when China Mobile pimp my phone out to salespeople I'll be able to understand what they're trying to flog ^^ Today was also a banfan 拌饭 day, which is a Korean dish that comes in a stone pot, with rice, vegetables and a big fried egg on top ^_^ Totally full of msg because I am so addicted to it right now *nomnomnom* A goodly day~ ^^