2006-09-09

Today I finally moved in to my new apartment. Hannah’s already been living there for almost a week, but I’ve been putting it off for various reasons. At the time of writing, I have no Internet, but I hope it’ll be up by the end of the week. It better.
Last night I was out with the Swedes, both part of the crowd from last time and two new people. We pre-gamed at Patrik’s place and then took a cab to Sanlitun and the same club as last time, partly because we had such a good time there before, and partly because we didn’t really know any others.
I do have to say this: I’ve only seen a small part of the Beijing nightlife, but so far it’s been much more fun going out here than in Sweden. The clubs don’t have entrance fees (or ID checks for that matter), there are no queues or even the notion of exclusivity through keeping people out (the prices do it instead) and it’s an infinitely more interesting mix of people. Small things such as free bag checks and loads of security guards everywhere also weigh in. Oh, and the music rocks. It’s the exact right mixture of songs you want to hear and songs you forgot you want to hear, and the people I’ve been out with really do enjoy dancing. The alcohol is expensive for China (we’ve seen 130 RMB for a glass of whiskey, and the beer costs 25 RMB and the drinks 40 RMB at least), but pretty cheap by Swedish standards. Since I haven’t drunk anything in the clubs, it’s basically the cab fare for me. There’s really nothing quite as satisfying as dancing and having fun for 6 hours straight and only paying 20 RMB for it. The only downside is that they don’t provide water, but that’s easily remedied by buying a water bottle at one of the stalls outside of the clubs.
Going between clubs is a bit rough though. The street vendors are pretty mellow, the pimps as well, but the beggars are really aggressive. They are all either really old or these disgusting, rude and violent children, who do anything to get money. One of them actually clawed a 3 cm long scratch on my hand, which really hurt a lot! Not to mention that bleeding really didn’t go well with my outfit.

(Me talking in English to an American guy outside a club)
American: Where are you from?
Me: Guess.
American: Maine?
(though I didn’t think I had an East Coast accent)

2006-09-10

Went shopping today at the Silk Market. It’s the number one tourist shopping place for fake brands, but it was still a bit depressing to notice that the salespeople speak better English than any other Chinese I’ve met here. Some even spoke Russian. I walked out with a few items and a general sense of having been robbed, but I really have no one else to blame but myself. I’m really rusty at haggling. Next time I’ll try another big shopping place, and hopefully spend less. Hrm. Yeah, right.

2006-09-11

I had my first class today. You know that nightmare you have of taking a test you haven’t prepared for? Now imagine it’s a whole class we’re talking about. I did well on the language placement test – which I maintain was wrongly corrected – and was placed in the highest oral language class. My pronounciation is better than everyone else’s, but that’s about it. The whole class was a bombardment of new words and characters, and I’m seriously considering dropping to a lower level. I should not need to study for 6 hours straight for one 2-hour class, since I’m going to have 4 hours of class every day. I forgot how many frickin characters there are in the Chinese language. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow..
We have mosquito nets over all our windows. So they’re not the best mosquito nets ever, but at least I thought they would only let, I dunno, small bugs in. When I opened my curtains today, there was a bug not much smaller than a palo verde beetle on my window. In other words, it was huge.
Me no like bugs. Luckily, Hannah isn’t as squeamish as I am, so she managed to get it out somehow while I whimpered and squealed and was all girly-like. But honestly now. How the f-ck did it get in??

(Me and Hannah in the local supermarket, looking at the milk selection. The milk is sold in little plastic portion packets by the way – heh, alliteration is fun – and so sweet it’s like drinking flavoured milkshake. I kind of like it though)
Me: Peanut-flavoured milk??
Hannah (looking at the pictures on the packets): Oh look, they have nut-flavoured, grain-flavoured, corn-flavoured… uh… (looking at picture of five smiling girls) girl-flavoured?