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Wednesday, November 15, 2006 - Good times Little things that make life real good right now: - the beautiful, beautiful weather. Sunshine, blue skies and around 10 C day time. People say you appreciate Swedish spring so much because you’ve lived through the Swedish winter, but I’ve yet to experience the sandstorms and I still love the fall weather here. I’m not missing Sweden one bit on this one. - the old men and women chatting in our neighbourhood. They’re usually the first people I see as I bicycle to school each morning, and a gentle reminder of the crazy city I’m bicycling out into. - Delicious meals for under 10 RMB, or, if I’m splurging, 20 RMB. I miss Swedish/Western food occasionally, or more often my Mom’s cooking, but until I get to experience the joys of knäckebröd again, Beijing ain’t a bad place to be. - All the random cool people you meet. Yesterday I listened to a girl imitating a Jamaican and St Vincent accent – I’ve said it before, but the randomness and the feeling that anything’s possible in this crazy, thrilling city is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. - I was utterly convinced I did crap on my elective course exams, and in Sweden, I would’ve. But here, the teachers grade as nice as they possibly can, which means I’m amongst the top students in each of my classes. I feel a little cheated by my surprisingly easy classes, especially after hearing Nico’s horror tales of the rigorous Chinese summer school at Beijing Normal University, but hopefully, this means I’ll be motivated to do some reading on my own as well as be able to enjoy life to the fullest here. - Me and Hannah have managed to use gas (for water heating) for a total of 9.5 RMB last month. Whoa. We need to stop with the crazy excess showering. - Shopping. - that Blogger is only partially banned - the bicycle repair shack that keeps putting the chain back on my bicycle and tightening various screws on it. I’ve yet to pay for any of their services, even though they look more annoyed for each time. I keep waiting for them to snap and demand 1 RMB for the trouble and effort. - Beida has a rule that you cannot bicycle through the gates. I’ve now mastered the art of following the rules without having to get off or even slow down: I put one foot down mid-bicycling, push for leverage and ride on. So far, it seems to work, though I’ve yet to dare to look at the security guard when I’m doing that. Fun: Last Saturday I went shopping at Hongqiao Pearl Market with Qianqian and Nico. Since QQ is really insecure about her English (she’s Austrian) and Nico speaks Chinese fluently, (I should be used to his Chinese skills by now, but each and every time I’m impressed by his complete lack of a foreign accent and a vocabulary probably surpassing my own. It’s my blog, I can be impressed by talented people if I want to. This guy speaks French, English and Chinese fluently, pretty good German, and dabbles in Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, Russian, Greek and Uyghur. And that’s just the stuff he’s mentioned. Now that’s linguistic talent.) we spoke Chinese the entire day. Of course, this proved very confusing to the rows and rows of “Hallo!!!”-ing salespeople at Hongqiao, when they noticed they were face to face with a foreigner who sounded like a Chinese. That didn’t stop some of the more diligent ones from quoting “foreigner” prices to us, so we came up with a shopping strategy: we were going to pretend that Nico was a Uyghur. This strategy proved to work surprisingly well – with his foreign-but-not-obviously-western looks, his excellent Chinese and his huge-ass Uyghur medallion around his neck, (he travelled in Xinjiang for three weeks this summer) it seemed a logical explanation and stopped the “Hallo!!!”-ing. Instead, me and QQ would admonish the salespeople for thinking he was a Westerner, when in fact he spoke no English at all. Also, it was interesting to hear Chinese (Han) people’s total ignorance regarding other Chinese minorities, when instead they started barraging him with questions about Xinjiang. And then we came to the last stall, where Nico wanted to buy gloves. We did the whole “He’s not a westerner, he’s Uyghur!” routine, but one of the younger salesgirls refused to believe us. Giggling and shouting at the same time, she maintained he couldn’t be Uyghur, and we insisted he was. The whole thing escalated with three salesgirls giggling and pulling at him, asking if he was single, etc. Finally, as we were leaving, she shouted: “He can’t be Uyghur! Uyghurs can’t be that good-looking!!” and then collapsed in a fit of hysterics. If only you could’ve seen that scene. MSN conversation with Hannah: Me: (on why we’re chatting and not talking to each other, with about 3 m separating us and open doors) “Sorry, throat sore” Hannah: “ahh” Hannah: “hold on” Hannah: “I think I can make it over there” Me: “are you sure?” … Moments later, Hannah is huffing and puffing in the doorway, dragging herself onto my bed, looking utterly exhausted. My throat’s even sorer from laughing. Who said this girl ain’t funny? mispronouncing “city”: Nico: “Chicago is the second largest sissy, after all. Sorry, city.” Me (amused): “So who’s the biggest sissy?” Nico (deadpan, without missing a beat): “San Francisco.” |
How old is Nico? Does he have a life outside of school? How, pray tell, can he be trilingual AND be fluent in 8 other languages, including Uyghur (which made me feel bad for not even knowing what it is)? More importantly, where does one learn to speak Uyghur outside of where it is actually spoken?
Unbelievable.
"This guy speaks French, English and Chinese fluently, pretty good German, and dabbles in Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, Russian, Greek and Uyghur." Dabbles, as in knows a little. Where does that translate into "is fluent in 8 other languages"?
Nico's 21.
I'll tell you how: His mother is French, he's born in the States and grew up there, he's studied Chinese and linguistics for two years, which is how he dabbled in the other languages. Swedish, Norwegian boyfriends for short periods of time, his Dad is Greek, he's traveled in Russia and Xinjiang. (Uyghur is both the name of the minority living there and their language.) Not sure how German came about - high school I think - but it's about the same as my German nowadays (can understand, but have difficulties speaking it)
Linguistics is his passion, and he picks up languages easily. Impressive and humbling, but not unbelievable.
Well, I never know when you're understating. For example, you think your English is bad, but that's a dirty lie and we all know it. :) so I figure dabbling means "knows them as well as I (you) know German" That's 7 languages on the list, plus his Latin should count too, no?
And unbelievable is hyperbole, of course.
Truly unbelievable would be if he knew !Kung, Phonecian, Basque, Hawaiian, Ainu and Yahi.
rotflmao, @ "he cant be uyghur coz hes good looking"
thats soOoo true tho, thier kinda pudgy inbreed looking hahahahaha...
unfort for those sales girls he doesnt swing for that team!
oh the irony!
you and hannah are being so extravagent spending so much on gas!
and you dont even cook at home!!!
you really ought not to complain about scoring highly in your classes.... i have a niggling feeling that "the teachers grade as nice as they possibly can" translates in to i've worked my ass off and still cant take credit :)
oh how my two cousins are so unlike me!
how much do you miss cheese.... the yummy nutty semi hard swiss kind, or fragrant sharp french sort oh god and the oddly (unnatural) coloured squidgy addictive american varieties that tastes like CRACK!
wtf... jamaican/st vincent accent on chinese? no cant be... english right? that would be weird, a carribian-chinese accent.... o_0
exactly why is it unkosher to bike though the gates at beida? wtf kind of rule is that?
and im upset coz my rss feeder wont load your blog... :(
Kevin: The other day, I mispronounced "endorphines". My English ain't bad, but it could definitely use some improvement.
Lil: re: Nico, I just heard from credible (?) sources that he's actually 60-40% =P He still has a boyfriend though, so that poor salesgirl will just have to keep on dreaming.
And about my score results, I ain't kidding you - sure I'm busy here, but there is none of that stress that I experienced in Uppsala. And frankly, I study far less than i.e. Hannah, because I have advantages already. And for those two exams, they were preceded by two of the most difficult weeks in my life so far, so I really, really didn't study much for those. And the teacher really, really graded nicely.
*Groan* Stop talking about cheese, girl, God what I wouldn't give for some creamy cheddar, port salut, mozzarella, feta.. arrghhh
The accents were in English yes, but the girl who did them mentioned knowing a Jamaican-born Chinese. Now that's gotta be one of the coolest things ever.
As for the biking part, it's to maintain order and safety - a lot of people do get off of their bikes, but they just end up blocking the entrance and creating even greater traffic hazards.
I didn't even know you could RSS feed my blog! Cool.
omfg, so the empty store at the end of the street has turned magically over night in to jones the grocer, which is a gourmet deli/cafe/shop selling all things haute gastronomique... a foodies paradise...
we already had 2 of these in our neighbourhood (walking distance) and one other fairly near by
anyways i digress, the new store had a whole range of new cheeses, and they had a swedish Västerbotten... OMFG... its even better than proper parmersian!
i ended up eating almost 100g all by myself!!
that and their Prosciutto is really really good, its the soft kind, not so dry... Mmmmm
okay i need to stop, other wise im going to end up eating something disgusting like a whopper. :S
...jamacian!, right... okay i know something cooler, an asian who was raised in ireland with a accent like a leprechaun living in tahiti, just beucase she can! so now she also speaks a little poly-french
and she holidays here in NZ!!! how out there is that?!?!!!!
Mmmmm.... buffalo motz!!!... *drools*
have you learnt how to do that thing where you have your right foot on the right pedal then push off up to speed with your left foot on the inside (between your leg and your bike frame) and then once your good and gone swinging your leg backwards over the back wheel and thusly planting your bum on the seat?.... but gracefully...
my dad does it and he looks like a ballet dancer!
my old rss would load your blog but now my new one which also does torrents (we get a whole bunch of american tv shows as soon as it airs) wont.. and that sucks!
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