Moving on and moving out

I have been doing a lot of moving on and moving out since I've been here in Beijing. I have had to move on from my daily routine, my comfortable bubble I had around myself, my relationships that are struggling across the world... I have had to move out from two apartments and it will soon be three. I will be in Wuhan in just a matter of days now. I will be spending a lot of quality me time there. Exploration, adventure, and certainly confusion await me in my new city. I will only have a roommate/coworker for my first four days and then she is flying back to Beijing to open a new Romp N Roll in Wangjing. I will then spend the remainder of my time there alone. But I am trying to think of it as not being "lonely" but just as getting to know more of myself. I have done a lot of learning about me so far. I have really never spent so much time away from home. Without a familiar face to comfort me when I am depressed and feeling glum. Thankfully I do not often feel this way when I am here. I am really very happy to be in this city and to be meeting new people and making new friends. I'd say it's a good thing to move on and move out every once in awhile.


Theresa and I are hopefully going to mark a few things off our Bucket List this "weekend." We are going to do some adventuring the great city of Beijing. We will probably also do some bargaining and some eating... and possibly some TV watching, too. This is my last weekend in Beijing for a few weeks. I want to get a few things marked off of my touristy list before I go. When I get back I will have been in China for close to two months. I feel like I really haven't done very much sightseeing and like time is already going by too fast. It will be hard to do a lot of the sites over the summer because it will be insanely hot. It is already pretty sweltering here now. I only have a few things right now on my list of things to do in Wuhan. I will be really mad at myself if I do not do all of these things while I am there.

Along with "the list" we also have neat cards with things to do in Beijing on them. Jill gave them to us. So we are going to see how many cards we can get through in a year. I am pretty sure there are 99 of them. That's a lot of doing over the next year!!

I am going to get back to work now. I have a babies class coming up in a few minutes.

Here- Enjoy some fat, half naked Chinese men =)



















Mandarin lesson:
Huai le (broken) CONGRATS Mom for getting it right!

Up the creek without a paddle

UPDATE I got a new VPN and put up some pictures from HouHai!

UPDATE Just kidding about the pictures that I mentioned posting below... My blog doesn't like to update through email if I include pictures. When my VPN works I will update with pictures from these glorious days that I write about here.

I have attached pictures of day 3 of my first holiday. They mostly go along with the following post... But because of VPN issues I have to email my posts in right now and cannot embed the pictures in the post.
And by "creek" I mean lake... and by "paddle" I mean engine... But you get the point.

For our final day of Dragon Boat Festival, Anna, Theresa, and I decided we would go to HouHai ("Ho Hi") to explore and have a little fun. HouHai is in the center of the traditional hutong area of central Beijing. The hutong is full of restaurants, shops, cafes, and street vendors and it has a beautiful, picturesque lake in the middle of it. We began the day by taking the subway out to Guloudajie where Anna's subway card mysteriously decided to stop working... Much to her dismay she had to cry out, "huai le," to have the attendant fix the problem. We walked through Gulou and into HouHai and found a rather expensive, but still delicious, restaurant by the lake. I ordered duck and enjoyed every moment of eating it! After eating we decided to rent a boat and drive around the lake for an hour. So the three of us hopped on board with our captain, Anna. We were ready to speed out into the open sea and go exploring. This would have been great, but speed we did not. Instead our boat crept at a snail's pace through the water. The paddle boats went by us. The swimmers went by us. The baby ducks went by us. Just when we thought it couldn't get any slower, the engine died. Our boat was huai le. We were stranded. Three white girls in the middle of a lake. Anna found the company's phone number so she called.

Anna: "Umm, hello?"
Company: click
Call back
Anna: "Ni hao. Engwen?"
Company: click
Call back
Anna: talkingasfastaspossible "Hello! Our boat is dead on the water. We need someone to fix it."
Company: click

We began getting concerned about making it back in the one hour time slot allotted to us. Surely they would not understand our English when we explain why we are late. Thankfully, a repairman showed up from across the lake. All we could say was, "huai le." He pulled out his Swiss Army knife and stuck half his body in the water. After a few attempts he was able to make our boat start. Now don't get me wrong, we still maneuvered the boat at a snail's pace back to the dock. But we did make it back, without even a minute to spare.

After laughing hysterically about our boat troubles, we caught a taxi and went to April Gourmet. This is a treasure buried in Tuanjiehu that sells foreign food. I bought some blueberry muffin Pop Tarts and gawked at all of the imported cheeses and cereals. I will certainly be returning for gouda and Fruity Pebbles.
We then booked it back to Gulou to meet up with more friends in another hutong. We ate Mexican on the roof at Amigos and chatted the night away. The curse of huai le seemed to have dissipated. I enjoyed an oreo McFlurry and a nice walk along the alley of the hutong and then headed home with Theresa. I went to sleep and was well rested and ready for the first day back to work.

So upon arriving to Romp n Roll yesterday morning, I was informed that my class for the day was canceled. Occasionally I am happy to have a canceled class. However, it was my only class for the whole day... I spent my 9 hours of work doing a lot of sitting, web searching, snoozing, pacing, studying, snacking, and reviewing. The day felt like it dragged on for an eternity... When it was finally 6:00, I headed out the door and decided I would walk to Paris Baguette to fulfill my cheese bagel craving I had been having. I crossed the street from the SoHo building and tripped on some medal thing coming out of the sidewalk. I was thankful not to fall on my face. I lifted my left foot to continue walking and off came my flip flop! I started laughing out loud. My shoe had now fallen to the huai le curse. I turned around and walked towards home, shoe in hand. As if I don't get stared at enough in Beijing. I'm sure they loved to see the white girl with only one shoe walking on the nasty, city streets.

Think you have figured out what HUAI LE means? Leave it in a comment...

Thankful

 

For a new bracelet

in a new city

with a new friend.

Beijing love

Breaking up is hard to do

 

We had to say goodbye to our friend, Jill, this week. We celebrated in the best way Beijing knows how to... by going out for DUCK! Jilly- you will be missed =)

Speaking of duck, it may very well be my favorite food here in The Middle Kingdom. So good in fact that I ate it again yesterday and am going to the infamous Lu Qin's early next week for my "goodbye dinner." I will only be gone for three weeks in Wuhan but I am already missing Beijing. 

We ended our holiday with a bang yesterday... more to come on that when I upload the pictures. Without the pictures my story will just not have due justice. 

Mandarin lesson:

Fēicháng hào chī 非常好吃 (very tasty)