Travel: China studies return to the new semester

26^th Feb – 3^rd march

Sat beside an irish guy on my flight over who had actually lived in china for a while, training with the shaolin monks during the year of the olympics hoping to partake, but they still didn’t recognise kung fu that year, but he did live there for a while, he had forgot most of his Chinese since moving back but he could remember a bit which was cool. Had space beside me on my second flight so could lie down and chill which was nice, and when I got to shanghai I got talking to a guy on my metro (in Chinese) who helped me bring my bags to the dorm from zhongshan via taxi, how sweet! My nerves and anxieties went away on my metro ride, I was glad to be back, spring has arrived, things look hopeful, its no longer freezing either! Im with a Korean girl this semester. As per usual she's noisy in her toiletries, sleeps a lot and watches soap operas/does her makeup and hair for ages and is super loud her her bathroom rituals for a long time. She also doesn’t really clear up after herself so hairs are everywhere, which I of course end up cleaning up - a peroxide blonde like myself clearly not responsible for long black hairs EVERYWHERE, like even on my bed like how?? and then of course the bathroom is always soaked by here after use?! does she try and create a swimming pool or something?! yes they all look very young for like...ever but the toiletry ritual is ODD

Back into work, the release is in april. Got some more jobs and started at the new school. Just going to be me teaching as one guy cant do it now and they don’t think the sri Lankan girl has the idea. A4 is tough, so many words I don’t know, I contemplated switching to A3+ as there’s no A4+ for next semester, but I really like my class, theres an american HK guy and we get one really well, the mood is fun, and of course I have mirijam, I love two of my teachers, but for intensive reading, miri and I both hate her. And of course her class is the hardest. We have a video class this term, the teacher for that is great, good mood and teaches us lots of useful things, like current words, for instance, the new fad A4 back A四腰 plus our course is based around 家有儿女at home with kids. Which is super fun, and we watched a bit last year. However a lot of the students will use English which id prefer if more Chinese was spoken, but mirijam and I are just often speaking in Chinese.

 Finally met one of the guys from n.i paul, hes really nice, spent ages talking and then he came up with an offer, he wants me to consider joining the board for F.O.N.I because some people have to leave and they would like a girl, go to an event and consider, to be honest I think I will if he asks again, get connections and who knows where it would lead eh! Got a new student, an older man, boss, 2 hour lessons basically all in Chinese, my first class we went to a café bar and he was drinking wine, after 2 hours, he could only say @my name is liu, cigarette and wine” I feel a bit like an escort….lol. cindy's workers have hot chocolate for me or lots of sprite every lesson, they moved to a new place and its really nice, bigger team so theres a couple more students. One girl just out of uni has great English. Love that class! they invited me to their grand opening and everything!

Started working for stan for "I AM clothing", im to do the fabrics etc, so I went to the textile convention and ended up making friends with an indian guy who is coming with us for our 清明节Qing ming trip to Suzhou, he lives outside shanghai in Shaoxing绍兴, can speak Chinese and ofc English.  life is random! Hes ofc also in the textile world, but suiting fabrics.

Parham invited me to Iranian new year. It was super fun, great food, and dancing with his friends, a couple shots etc. interesting to seeing the strict Iranian muslims and the chilled ones who want to party, dont dress strict etc would love to find out about their history. so odd the arent meant to drink when Shiraz wine is a specialty!

Thursday was paddys day, the girls and Will who I work with in Lianhua joined, hes so much fun, kept buying shots so I ended up super drunk, and lots of the irianians from the weekend joined too.I think I could barely speak proper in English let alone chinese. Miri and I sneaked off the bunker with some of the Chinese, that place is horrid, underground, awful music and smell...some random guy asked if i wanted to buy drugs. not many people,  we left. Id lost my card in her room so I stayed with her talking shit till 5. Needless to say we didn’t go to class haha.

at the weekend though wehad a class activity were we had to take pictures of beautiful things 美丽we chose a street and kat joined us. nice day, boring activity but with friends so it was fine :)

My speaking and jingdu tests went ok. I got 84 in jingdu, and for my ppt on the changes of bangor for speaking, instead of my 3 mins, I ended up doing over 10, I know I said a lot of stuff wrong but hopefully the vast amount will make up for it haha.   got a 94 in the end haha 说好多废话就够笑死我了吧