Saturday 22^nd of August

Hello!

I'm writing this in English, because my good friend Pan promised she would read it, if I wrote it in English. So feel very special Pan! I started to write a part of the weblog on the Beijing International Airport (so I wouldn't forget the details) while I was waiting for my connecting flight to Harbin. I was sitting in a small fast food noodle restaurant called 'Mymill' to eat something, because I was very hungry. I hadn't eaten anything during the flight, except for some salted almonds and some kind of Dame Blanche mouse sort of desert. But let me start from the beginning:

The packing was a little hectic. I left everything to the last moment! So I had to figure out what to pack in like a few hours… while packing and cleaning my house. My friend Gillian, my two brothers Gabor and Edward and Joanne (Edward’s girlfriend) came to say goodbye. I even got a present of Gabor. He gave a book called ‘hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy’. It’s supposed to be a very funny book and I wanted to read it, so I was very happy about it.

Anyway… so I went to Schiphol and Gabor joined me. We went to get my boarding pass and drop off my luggage first. After that, we went to the Burger King for some hamburgers and a Starbuck’s ice coffee. Then we went to ‘explore’ the world on a globe and a world map on the airport somewhere. And then it was time for me to board!, so I greeted him and went through customs, straight to the gate.

I didn’t really check, but I think we left on time… and I fell a sleep in no time… until dinner was served. I chose the pasta for dinner, but it didn’t really taste good and I wasn’t that hungry, so I just a dame blanche mouse kind of desert… and tried to read my new book, but I fell a sleep after only having read a few pages (this doesn’t mean the book is boring, just that I was very tired). Anyway… I kept waking up, because I couldn’t find a right sleeping position. I was lucky, because I was sitting in the window seat (which was arranged by my friend Pearl) in a row of three… no one was sitting in the middle and a nice guy was sitting in the aisle seat… So I had plenty room to sleep, but I still didn’t sleep well. Anyway… somewhere during the flight, I woke up and the movie ‘he’s just not that into you’ was just starting, so I watched that, even though I’ve already seen it… But I really like the movie… especially the part where Ben Affleck goes to help his girlfriend (who had dumped him because he didn’t want to marry) when her father was sick… and she sees him helping and they hug! It’s a very romantic moment… And the movie has a good ending for them, so I like it.

Anyway… so finally I arrive in Beijing! And I was holding in my pee, because I hate airplane bathrooms and I thought it would be easier to pee on the airport… So when I got of I immediately went to find a bathroom… and there it was!!! The squatting toilet!!!(That’s how Pan and I call it, because you have to squat to pee). And even though my Chinese friend Pan warned me about this toilet, I was still very shocked… And I told my self HELL NO am I going to pee in that! So I turned around and prayed I would find another toilet! And God answered my prayers… Even though I don’t sit when using  the normal public bathrooms, I was just strange for me to use the squatting one. The rest went rather smoothly… except for the fact that the people hardly speak any English and that my flight number was not in correspondence with the one on the flight information on the boards at the airport… I had to pick up my baggage and check in and drop it off for the connecting flight… but I just followed my instinct and everything went ok. I was very hungry, so I went to look for something to eat. I found a subway and a noodle restaurant… and I thought, I cannot come all the way to China and eat Subway!!!, so I went to mymill (the noodle restaurant) and I ordered a noodle soup with seafood. This soup (and I have some pictures of it) had half an egg that looked about 3 months old… brown and not very attractive… and the shrimp with the head and eyes… and some squid rings (is this called calamari??) and something that looked like black sea weed or something. Luckily I had a cola to wash away the bad taste of the soup every time I took a bite… Soon it was 11.30 and time to board for the flight to Harbin. My boarding pass said that I had to be at gate 30, but I heard something being broadcasted in Chinese about Harbin… so I suspected something was wrong… but since I didn’t understand any words, except Harbin… I just went to gate 30 and looked around… It was very busy at the gate and no sign saying Harbin… So I was puzzled… After I while I just went to the flight schedules presented on some flight information boards and I saw that the gate had changed to 25B… I didn’t know where this was, and since the gate was about to close in like 5 minutes, I had to hurry like HELL!!! BTW the Beijing International Airport was very disappointing to me… in my opinion it looks very cheap, because it’s made of the cheap Chinese material… The shops were also a little disappointing… Most of the customs officers were also wearing mouth caps, which gives some kind of alarming feeling (like you can easily catch a disease or something).

Anyway… I made my flight for Beijing, which took about 1.40 hours, and during this flight, I was so tired, I slept the whole way. This time I was in the aisle seat with (again) nobody in the middle and an older guy in the window seat. This guy even passed me to go to the toilet, while I was sleeping, without me noticing anything!!! … So, I arrived at Harbin Airport on time and in like 20 minutes I was outside. Pan was waiting there with her father to pick me up and we immediately went to the car and drove to the international housing of the Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT). This took about 30 – 40 minutes, I think. Her father doesn’t speak a word English so we have to communicate through Pan. He’s very friendly, but a scary driver (but every Harbinner probably is)! He drove in the opposite direction of a one way street!!! The explanation for this is, that one of the main roads, near the HIT campus is closed off, because of construction work for the metro line in Harbin. This causes a lot of traffic jams … which frustrates the drivers. Everything is stuck and you’ll keep going in circles, because some of the roads are one-way.  However, I don’t think this construction work is the cause of people driving like maniacs… I think the people here in Harbin generally drive like maniacs… there seem to be no rules in traffic… Even as a pedestrian, you really need to be careful, especially when crossing the street. Pan taught me: follow the crowd!!! And hide behind them, while crossing. Until now she’s been holding my hand almost every time we cross a street, to make sure I’m safe J

Anyway… when we arrived at the International Student Dormitory, I registered. I was lucky to have Pan, since the people there only speak Chinese. She arranged everything for me and arranged that we live together. So we live in 1 room on the 7^th floor, which they call they 8^th floor here (the ground floor is the 1^st floor). There are staying 2 korean girls in the room next to ours. They don’t speak English very well, so Pan communicates with them in Chinese (their Chinese is very good, Pan says).

I won’t talk about the room, because it’ll spoil the rest of the story… I went to the supermarket on campus…  very large one, with almost everything available… from milk to internet-wires…

After I took a shower, Pan and her parents took me to dinner in a very nice restaurant. The food was actually very nice… I ate something that tastes like sperzie bonen and some kind of steamed fish. Some pork dumplings, some sea weed (like the Japanese sea weed), some wonton soup, some small friend shrimps, some lamb and some tofu. After that Pan took me to a Carrefour (big supermarket) to buy some stuff and then they took me home and I went to sleep! That was day 1 for me. Pan stayed at her home that night.

Sunday 23^rd of August

Day 2 Pan and her parents woke me up around 9. They came to bring her stuff to the room. I took a bath right away and we headed to the city center. She walked from the campus to the center. This was very exciting. The streets in Harbin are always very busy. Since the people drive like maniacs, pedestrians just take a chance crossing the street every time. This looks very dangerous, but once you get a hang of it, it’s okay. I went to a beautiful department store and some kind of mall in the centre. I forgot the names, but they look very beautiful and luxurious. There is an overload of jewelery shops and everything looks so pretty… Most of the jewelery is 24K and very nicely made. The price of 18K is rather cheap in comparison to the Netherlands and even Suriname, I think and the jewelery is much prettier, so you can imagine how much I love these stores! I bought a jade pendant almost right away. I was looking around and just fell in love (even though someone once told me that you’re not supposed to buy jade for yourself, but like get it as a present). The fact that they said that it is 55% off, made me buy it instantly… but I think most of the shops that have really high prices offer large discounts… Most of the jewelery is 24K and very nicely made. Anyway… we walked around the mall (The clothing brand Morgan seems to be very expensive here).

Anyway… around 15.00h we had to be back for a tour around campus by some Chinese woman. So we got a fast bite to eat in a small restaurant somewhere. Pan recommended it… I had some kind of noodle with minced beef and she had a cold noodle (and I mean really cold, like refrigerator cold). Her’s was a Korean dish… and tasted sweet and sour (in Dutch I would say: it tastes like: zuurgoed) and I find that a lot of dishes here have this kind of taste. My dish was normal dish. In my opinion it didn’t really taste much different from some kind of instant noodle thing (Pan will be very disappointed when she reads this). To win time, we took the bus back to the campus. This costs 1 yuan per person, which is 10 eurocents! It brought us a few stops further, somewhere nearby the campus (The buses are very ghetto-looking, old and rusty).

At the tour, the woman showed us where the faculty is, where we were going to have class. It’s in a very nice park and the building is also very beautiful… I think is a new building. After the tour we (Pan, Tessa (a Dutch classmate of ours) and I) went to fetch our laptops and went to a coffee house just outside our campus for some internet. Our dorms don’t have internet yet. I ordered an ice coffee. But literary got black coffee with some ice in it! Terrible!

At six the whole group went to have a bite to eat in a Chinese pizza restaurant. The pizza wasn’t very good… but Pan had some kind of dish with rice and all sorts of mushrooms… that was good!

After dinner we went to the Family restaurant… where there was a party held for us by the Chinese professors. We met 3 of our teachers (one of them we already knew, a Dutch professor from the Netherlands). The party was very nice. Everyone got to know each other a little better. And I drank some flower tea (a tea where the flowers opens up, if you pour hot water on it! very cute!). I needed to go the bathroom badly! So I went. Of course it was the awkward bathroom again and for the first time I tried it, and it was okay. Haha. Shortly before the party ended, Pan and I went to the supermarket and back to our dorms. In the dorms I cleaned my bathroom, because it was very dirty! I took a bath and that was day 2 for me!

Monday 24^th of August

Class started today for the first time. We all decided the night before that we would all walk together to class. We met in the entrance hall of the dorms and around 7.30 a.m. we walked to school. On our way (just in front of the coffee house with wireless internet) Chinese people sell some food, Chinese cakes and such. We all bought something to eat. I had some kind of flat brad with egg and ‘bosui’ inside (I don’t know the English name of bosui). Class starts at 8.00 and last until twelve. This class is taught by a Dutch professor, Martin de Jong (he was at the party) and a Chinese one of which I don’t know the name. First there was some kind of welcoming introduction, where the director or headmaster of HIT, who can’t speak English btw, introduced himself and told us a little about HIT. One of the Chinese teachers had to translate everything. And the Chinese teachers introduced themselves as well. After that the class started… and it’s a nice course to begin with, advanced cross cultural management. Mostly about the differences between the Chinese and Dutch culture, but since there is someone from Peru and I am from Suriname, the teacher also takes that into account when discussing issues. After class we had some lunch in a food court, where I had some ho-foen, broad noodles with exactly 3 mall pieces of beef and vegetables. It was very good, but it had a little too little meat…

In the afternoon, we went for our registration at HIT. The registration was a disaster. I really don’t want to bother you with that story, but it was a lot of walking around and waiting so long for everything to get arranged every time. So it took us a few hours to get registered and get a meal card (we need this card to buy food in the kantine, you can load it up with money and scan it when you buy something, something like a chipknip). The funny thing about registering was that they necessarily needed a Chinese name from everybody and since non of the foreigners have Chinese names, they made up a Chinese name for us). So my name is (and Pan found this one) something pronounced like Djie – Saier (I should ask her how to write this in PinYin). It seems that Gisele Bunchen’s name is also translated this way. Alexander is a very common name in China and the translation is Yali-Sjanda. They just hear the name and make something that sounds like it.

After the registration Pan brought me to the most famous street of Harbin. We went by taxi, which costs about 15 yuan! When I called the taxi, he saw us a little late. And without even watching out for other traffic, the taxi just really stopped hard and suddenly. There was man on bicycle behind him and he was of course very shocked and had to stop really fast too. Thank God nothing happened, but just to show how crazy the people here drive! Anyway… the famous street is a very Western looking street, with a lot of shops. Somewhere around there, she brought me to a cathedral, which is a site to see in Harbin, a Russian style cathedral. There was also some kind of modeling award show there, so I saw some Chinese models both male and female J. On the way to the cathedral I also came across a very expensive mall with brands such as Louis Vuitton and Escada!!! This was very surprising to me, since we don’t even have these shops in Rotterdam! Anyway… back to the street. The street ends at a river (but I hadn’t reached the end of the street). I went to look around some shops, mostly jewelery shops again. I had some kind of ice coffee (because the temperature here is around 30 degrees or something!, very nice weather) and cakes. I had on some very uncomfortable shoes, so after a while my feet really started hurting. I had an excuse to buy new shoes!!! J So I found me some very nice shoes! I bought 2 pairs, since they were only 135 yuan and very nice and comfortable. I bought a slipper and some kind of turquoise sandal.

After a while one of our Chinese classmates came to join us. His name is Yu-Gang. He took us to dinner. The restaurant was very nice (I would say ‘sfeervol’ in Dutch) with bamboo and Chinese opera masks etc. The food was very good. I eat a minced pork ball covered in rice and some noodles (witte vermicellie) with pork and vegetables that had the sweet and sour taste again, some eggplant with potatoes and a Sichuan dish (chicken filet with some vegetables), which is very spicy but very good!

After dinner I went back to my dorm by taxi. Pan went to her home. At the dorm, I took a shower and fell asleep immediately. I woke up again around 2 a.m. and couldn’t sleep until 4 a.m. so I read the article I had to read for the next day in class.

Tuesday 25^th of August

Even though I slept so little, I made it on time for class! After class Pan and I went to have lunch at the same place I was yesterday (I had some fried noodles and Pan some fried rice) and tried to arrange the internet in our room. This took a while and finally I couldn’t be arranged, since both of us have Windows Vista… and the Harbin Institute of Technology!!! Doesn’t have the software for this Windows! A disaster!!! Anyway... in the evening she brought me to rather expensive looking mall with brand such as Salvatore Ferregamo, called ‘New World’. Here I found a underwear brand called ‘Yiselle’, with also a Chinese name of it, so Pan found an even better name for me: Djies –Ella or something. I bought a blouse and dress on sale in this store! The dress was 70 yuan (from the Yiselle brand) and in the afternoon I bought some Chinese cheap dresses in the supermarket on campus for 80 yuan a piece after Pan did some bargaining!!!

After the mall, we went home and ate some noodles. Pan slept in the dorms that night.

Wednesday 26^th of August

The Dutch guys had bought a bike yesterday, so today on our way to school, we met them. They were in a group bicycling to the faculty. It was very something to see, because everyone around was just staring and looking at them. Foreigners on a bike!!! Anyway… after class we had some lunch in a cafeteria nearby the faculty where we have class. The food is not really good. We all ate together. Pan had some eggplant and I had some vegetables with mushrooms.

After lunch I went to the coffee house to work a little on the website I’m making for the TUDelft. The internet is really slow, so it took forever to finally not even get the job done. Around 5 p.m. I went to my dorm and Pan suggested we go to the city center again to find me a bathing suit. There is a swimming pool on campus, so I wanted a bathing suit. On our way, we went to see the Dutch guys, who were playing tennis. It seemed they had bought 4 rackets for 550 yuan and they broke in like 5 minutes, so they were a little angry. Pan finally (after a few days) arranged something for them to get their money back. Before we went to the city center, we went to look at an apartment. Pan’s boyfriend will be arrive here soon and needs a place to live, so she had to arrange an apartment for him. After that, we went to the center. I didn’t find a bikini, but we found some very nice roasted duck in a very luxurious supermarket in the shopping mall. The duck was our dinner that night.

After dinner, I went downstairs to the Dutch guys’ dorm. They were having a party, because one of the guys got a little niece that day and one of the Russian people also staying at the International House, was having his birthday party. One of the Dutch people, Bart, can play guitar very well, so they were playing music and singing the whole night. They were translating the Dutch song (Het is een nacht or It is a night) and some kind of weird Russian song (WOP! The condom was in the pocket) in English and singing it with everyone. It was so funny. They were of course drinking beer and I was drinking a Sprite. It was a very fun night and it lasted until 2 a.m.!!!

Thursday 27^th of August

I couldn’t get out of bed and thank god Pan was with me, otherwise I wouldn’t have! I was so tired from the night before! In class I could hardly stay awake. It was terrible!

After class, I went to Pan’s home to finish the work for the TUDelft, hoping her internet would be a little better and faster and it was! I finished my work that night and now I’m very much relieved. Her mother came home around 6 p.m. and cooked us some dinner. She cooked so many dishes in one hour and it was very good! I had some crab, eggplant, paprika with potatoes, tjoeng (a Chinese dish), corn and fried fish. I also had some kind of melon and some blue berry juice. After dinner, Pan’s parents walked me to the dorm. They live nearby and wanted to go for a walk, so they took me to the dorm. It is kind of strange, since I can’t speak with them (because they only speak and understand Chinese), but they a very nice people. Pan wasn’t feeling well, so she stayed home.

Friday 28^th of August

Today class started at 9.30 a.m. which was very nice, because I could sleep in. Luckily Pan called me around 9, because I forgot to set my alarm and I almost overslept! I took a bath very fast and went to class. In class we had in Oasistan game to play. It was very much fun. It was a political debate about a fictional country Oasistan. At 12 we had lunch in the kantine again. The food hadn’t improved, so I ate only a little bit. At 13.30 the game went on in class and around 15.30 the class was finished.

After class I went to play pingpong with the Dutch people and Yu-Gang. We played for almost 2 hours. The Dutch guys seemed to be really good and I was only playing for the fun of it. After pingpong, we went to have dinner in a restaurant nearby. Yu-Gang ordered us some food and we had some really nice things to eat. We had some spare ribs, potatoes with vegetables, chicken wings, the spicy Sichuan dish and some eggplant again. The eggplant was really really really good. In the restaurant some of our other classmates joined us and soon we had to meet with our professor. He was taking us to some bars in the neighborhood.  The night was really fun. We went to 2 bars. Alcohol is extremely cheap here!!! Cocktails are 15 yuan or something. After the bars we went to a club called Earth. That night was opening night, but the club seemed really empty, but very nice looking. It was strange that there were a lot of poles and the Dutch guys even went pole dancing. Our final stop that night was Blues. The place was very busy with foreigners, mostly Russians. The music was nice and there was even some live rapping from a Chinese, Brazilian guy! He looked Chinese, but it seemed that he was from Brazil… he was rapping in English and Portugese, which was very impressive.

We danced all night. Everyone joined in and it was very much fun. We called it a night around 6 a.m.!! It was already daylight when e left the club. I had a blast!