A couple of weeks ago, Beijing turned off all the central
heating. We have a wall heater but we haven’t had to use it at all because our
apartment gets quite warm during the day and not too cold at night. The corridors and classrooms at school are
quite cold despite the increasing warmth outside.
I think after one month here, we have made it through the
survival stage and now we are starting to have the time and energy to think
about enjoying ourselves. We can now get comfortably to and from school by both
subway and taxi without any concerns. We can go shopping easily at a variety of
places; supermarkets, markets, clothing stores, etc. We can get drinking water
in 20 litre bottles (you can’t drink Beijing tap water). We can top up our
subway cards. All those things that proved so hard and time consuming when we
first arrived are fine now. But I still haven’t worked out the apartment cards
yet!
On Sunday afternoon, Thy and I had our first Chinese lesson.
We have a private tutor who comes to our apartment for a 2 hour lesson each
week. She was very good and taught us how to read pinyin (the pronunciation of
many sounds is very different) and say the tones. We learnt a basic sentence
structure, “I am …” and with a few extra words, we can say quite a few
sentences! It was so much fun. Thyson also learnt the most important question,
“Can I fish here?”
It’s only 3 more days until the Spring Break when we have
one week off school. Most teachers are heading out of the country for beach
holidays in places like Thailand and Vietnam. We are staying in Beijing for the
week because we don’t have our passports at the moment (we had to hand them in
for some immigration procedure). You can’t take a flight, the train or stay in
a hotel without it. Never mind, there’s plenty to see and do here, I just hope
the smog moves on by then!
Anyway, off to school now, and this evening we’re heading
into the hutongs for dinner with a few friends. Should be lots of fun. Bye for
now.
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