Yes I am still alive. The Chinese government have not got on to me and my facebook ways as of yet, and my bike and I are still dodging death on a daily basis. Today a friend mentioned that it’s been a month already and homesickness kicked in for approximately two and a half seconds. Then I got over it. But wow one month. What on earth have I been up to?
Achievements: I can now ride my bike one handed – it’s awfully convenient when I feel like an icecream or something. I pretty much know most of the streets in the Xi Hu (West Lake) district like the back of my hand backwards. I’ve bought an electric stove and made dinner. And pancakes. (Ok with help from AL I admit.) What else? Oh I’ve bargained (EF read). I bargained a shirt down from $280 to $80. (Though it was probably only worth $20.)
The Downside: Because food is so ridiculously cheap I have now gained 3-5kgs (3 on a good day and 5 on a bad). By Chinese standard I am probably now considered obese. Also, I have now gotten so used to the traffic system here that I may find myself driving on the wrong side of the road and casually dismissing traffic lights when I get back to Australia.
The Slightly Problematic: My speaking teacher does not like me. The other day in class I had a pretty amusing argument with her. Amusing on many respects, but mainly because my limited vocabularly did not really allow me to extend my argument too far from “no that’s wrong”. We were discussing the death sentence in China and other Asian countries like Korea and Japan, and after our teacher gave a very passionate explanation that if someone killed someone else then it only made sense that they were also killed, I proceeded to knock back her shallow argument with the only vocab available to me. This included short phrases like “不对” (incorrect), “这什么都不解决” (this doesn’t solve anything) and “很傻” (really stupid). That’s right. Try make sense of that.
All in all, I did find the West Lake in the end. And it’s beautiful.
Filed under: Life., bargain, capital punishment, cook, facebook, lake, obese, stove, traffic
