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All good things come to an end..

28.07
2011

Well, actually not only good things come to an end. Bad things also come to an end. For example, while drinking a beer, this beer (or for the insiders, imagine: Korean bomb) will be eventually finished. Maybe you finished it yourself, maybe a friend stole it from you, or in eternity it will evaporate. And it’s the about same with EF, you can have a last call and suddenly leave the next day. Of course it can all go according to plan, you know way in advance when you will leave, you announce this to friends and have a nice ‘saying goodbye’-party. But in my case, I think I can best compare myself to evaporating in eternity. I kinda faded out. My EF-course ended, but my time in China didn’t. As you all read, I went backpacking for a week. The first time being back at EF after this trip I realized I missed something…. Well, about half of the people left because their course ended at the same time as mine and they (like normal people) left China at that point. It wasn’t as bad as new people asking me wether I was new too, but it felt like that. So after annoying the EF people for a week with the fact that I had ultimate freedom, my parents arrived and slightly tore up this idea. After a month of great traveling with my parents and sister through China, I was back in BJ for 1 day. I met with Elisa, close to to only person I still knew from the EF family. Drunk a beer and talked about all the crazy things which happened in that month, but also a lot of stories involving people I didn’t really know. And then suddenly the 16th of July arrived and I flew back home to the Netherlands. Somehow I slowly faded out my appearance in BJ, and I actually liked it. No emotional definite last meeting with people, cause it was always possible I saw (some of) those people again somewhere later on.

It feels good being home again. One of the standard questions from Dutch people here is: “How does it feel being home again?” The answer I commonly give is: “It’s is so normal, great!” And it is. Not that many things changed, so it really feels like home. After being welcomed by a semi-surprise party the second day back in The Netherlands by my friends, I also realized friendships didn’t change neither! Thanks a lot for all those happy thoughts. Now I’m just getting back to the normal holiday life, which means “catching terraces” (to translate a Dutch saying terrible wrong in English), working a little, not doing too much and enjoying freedom. Enough time to also make a little picture movie about the experiences I had in China/Hong Kong/Korea. This remember me of all the great people I met all around Asia. And that also leads me to commonly asked question no. 2: “What do you miss of China?”. My answer is: “All the great people I met there during those great 8 months!” Enjoy the movie, an end to this blog, as my adventure in China came to end. I hope you all enjoyed reading it. If you are thinking about going a year abroad to China: don’t be afraid, step up to it and dare to take the step, you will have a great time! China, this is no goodbye but a 再见！

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No goodbye but 再见 (zàijiàn -> see you later)

14.06
2011

Sitting/standing in the train back to Beijing for 18 hours, I decided to write a little about the last 3 weeks here.

Just because some people don't see it, this is 7 times me.

Let me start with some adventure, although a lot of things here in China can be called adventures I guess. 2 weeks ago I set off early in the morning with my hostfather to do some decent Chinese rock climbing. This isn’t that much different from western rock climbing except for the fact that here they don’t care that much about the safety rules. The weather was great, little windy, nice sun. 3 hours outside of Beijing (for the experts: in the direction of Badaling) there are some great rock climbing areas. After a day of climbing I ate together edith my hostfather and all his rockclimbing friends. So I also had to speak some Chinese, which went pretty well I think!

Another thing is that after 8 months of school, this era of time came to an end a week ago. About 20 people were about to leave school (which is a lot for a school with only 50/60 people). For most of those 20 this also meant the trip home, but not for me. I will be in china for a big month more. This brings about some weird feeling. You are saying by to school, but on the other hand you know that after a week of traveling you will be hanging out at school again anyway. In that way it of course isn’t really a goodbye. On the other hand, you do say goodbye to some nice people. This is something which is real. The good thing is the fact that a lot of those people live in Europe which, I learned to realize, is really close. For them it’s definitely a 再见 instead of a goodbye (再见= see you again).

But then about the trip from which I’m coming back now. It all started last week Saturday night when we took the plane to Chengdu for a backpacking trip in south china. Travel mates are Victor and his girlfriend Yohana, both from the land of Tjaves. In Chengdu we camped outside of the bus station with our backpacks which made some Chinese look really surprised. At 5 life started again, together with us. We bought a ticket for the 9:00 bus, because the 8:00 bus was already sold out. So we started our 10 hour roller coaster of luck. Driving with a bus in the mountains in china isn’t that much different then in BJ: behave like a normal car, use your klaxon a lot, realize that there aren’t any rules and just drive like a crazy maniac. Easy a that. If little children have to pee during the trip, their parents just hang them above one of the trash buckets to pee there. Life can be really easy! During the trip I also made my Chinese neighbor happy by sleeping on her shoulder. So after 10 hours we were happy to arrive at the hostel in Jiuzhaigou and eat a good BigYak burger.
Jiuzhaigou is one of the places all Chinese regard as a piece of heaven in china were they really wanna go. Well, we were one of the lucky thousands of Chinese who enter the park every day. Both because we were backpacking as because the ticket price of about 30 euros we decided not to take the bus ticket. This meant a lot of walking. But while walking we passed some of the most beautiful places of the park. Definitely the southern valley is worth walking. Once a little further in the park you can just use the bus, because they don’t check the tickets anymore. So we took the bus to the north-west valley an watched the famous 5 color lake. The thing was that I could only find 4: dark and light blue in the lake, the grey of rocks and the green of plants growing in the lake… But beautiful nature was it anyway!
The second day in the park, the weather was even more beautiful, with a bright blue sky. So even more picture time. This time we took the bus to the north-east valley, which we hadnt seen yet. From the top we hiked down most of it. We passed some wonderful lakes with fancy names as: panda lake (without pandas), the swan lake (without swans) and while going back the tiger lake (without any tigers, except for a Chinese who slept there the day before and became our tiger). All together a great park, with great nature and the bluest lakes I have ever seen. But also a park where the chinese did a good job in reinventing the capitalistic model.

Next on the menu was a small Tibetan village called Langmusi (郎木寺). It is known for the fact it isn’t discovered by the big crowds yet, and for the 700 Tibetan monks which are supposed to live here. Well, when we visited the temple, we only saw a couple of them, but maybe most of them were just somewhere else.. Our main purpose here was to do a horse trekking of 2 days through the highlands and sleep together with some Nomad families. And so we did, two days of horse riding, of seeing a lot of great nature. We spend the night in a nomad tent, under a bunch of blankets, cause it can be pretty cold at more than 4000m height. I also learned how to use the

Our Nomad mom with my horse 'Joost Jr.'

Nomad rock-throwing-toy/weapon-thing, we helped gathering the yak and guiding them home to the camp and we saw the milking of the yak. We ate some local food made on the oven in their tents, which they keep burning on dried yak shit. All together a great two days. After all i figured horse riding is fun, but just for a limited amount of time. After that time a lot of parts of your body start to hurt, but it was worth it. And after that time, saturday already arrived, which meant we had to start our journey back to Beijing again. Because China is big, and Langmusi is small, it wasn’t that easy coming home. 3 hours of bus from Langmusi to Hezuo, followed by 3,5 hours of bus from Hezuo to Lanzhou, a crazy half an hour in a minivan to the other side of the city, and then an 18 hour train trip back to Beijing. Speaking about trains in China. Don’t expect to be able to buy sitting or sleeping tickets for a train on the same day as the departure, they are always all sold out. This meant for us that we had a standing ticket in a train for 18 hours. Also an experience… Luckily the Chinese people were kind enough to offer us from time to time their seat (as i also discovered that my body just isn’t made for sitting on the ground…) One woman kinda adopted me, and offered me her seat a lot, speaking about that i was so young and cute. Well, she may think of me whatever she wanted, that seat came in hand. Because of that i managed to sleep a little. But we did learn something: buy train tickets in advance! And in that way our trip came to an end, an end back home in Beijing again.

Now it’s just a week of relaxing a little, hanging out some at school without having class, and enjoying the nice weather, before my parents and sister come this weekend!

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Queensday and Sleeping on the Great Wall…

17.05
2011

Warning: this post may contain words which won’t be understood by not Dutch people. Don’t feel stupid cause either you use wikipedia.org as the solution for everything or you just regard the Dutch as a special folk. Both are ok.

But let’s start with Quensday aka ‘Koninginnedag‘. It has already been more than 2 weeks ago, but definitely worth telling. For the non-Dutch people: Quensday is a day Dutch people dress up in orange (i hope all of you know orange is kinda the Dutch color…) and do traditional dutch games/do crazy/party to celebrate the birthday of our former Queen. Sounds a little crazy maybe, maybe it also is, but for sure it’s a great day to be in the Netherlands and have fun. Unfortunately a lot of Dutch aren’t in the Netherlands, but for those spending their time in Beijing, the Dutch embassy arranged a little Dutch party. So with the Dutch EF delegation we went to the Dutch residence, armed with an official personal invitation and our ID. I can guarantee all of you, it’s so funny to suddenly be in a place with all Dutch speaking persons. You don’t have to say ‘Excuse me’ in Chinese anymore, but you suddenly have to say ‘Pardon’. It’s such a weird feeling. And on top there were (and be warned, this is the part the initial warning was meant for) ‘bitterballen‘, ‘haring‘, real Heineken (not the one made in China), ‘kip sate‘ with Chinese chicken, ‘hema worst’, Dutch music and a lot more. It really felt like a little part of the Netherlands situated in Beijing for a little while. We met some really nice people. For example some students from one of the other universities (at the other side of BJ) who were also studying Chinese. I also spoke some with some EU delegates situated in Beijing, which was also really interesting.
Some of the people in EF had the idea of sleeping on the Great Wall stuck in their mind for already a long time. But paying 200 bucks for it was a little too much… But recently we finally found the right organization for us: www.leohostel.com offered sleeping at the Great Wall for a fairly more reasonable price. So this wednesday (like most stuff with EF, last-minute) the 4 of us decided to go there. Eventually we gathered 9 people and this friday we went to the Great Wall by private buss to go and camp there. The weather was good, quite windy, but good temperature. The forecast said that the wind would became less strong (but eventually it didn’t really). After a 2,5 hour drive with a driver who got a nice place in my top 3 of most crazy BJ drivers i have met, we arrived at the less public known part of the Great Wall. I doubted this a little cause we arrived at the same time as a bus filled with Japanese, but they left soon after. We walked to the Wall, learned from the guide that especially the Qing emperor was crazy, really crazy (still don’t get why, had something to do cause he was eating jiaozi) and found the place we would sleep in: a watching tower in which the guide would set up our tents. The part of the wall we were was decided in a couple of parts divided by watch towers (or what was left of them). From tower 0 till tower 3 the wall was renovated a little, from tower 3 till tower 6 not at all. We climbed till close to tower 5 (lost some people on the way, but it is said that while building the wall every meter 1 person died) to watch the sunset from there. Once we arrived there we realized that the sunset from there would be way after our dinner time, so we went back to see the sun fall behind the mountain we just climbed. While this also took to long we decided to go back and eat our dinner. After dinner we went to our tents and went to sleep…. Well, not really, we drunk some beers, talked a lot, laughed a lot, repeated the words of the day “comfortable” and “gangbang” (both said in Italian way), took some crazy pictures, saw Mathias trying to open a wine bottle without corkscrew and laughed some more. The next day we could have waken up at 3 to climb the wall again and see the sunrise, but we didn’t. We just had a nice sleep, packed our stuff, ate breakfast (baozi!) and went back to Beijing again. Altogether it was a great experience and how many people can say the slept at the Great Wall?!

And then suddenly the day arrived that it’s only 3 more weeks of school, and then my EF experience ends. Although my China experience will go on a little longer, it’s such a weird feeling that the end of 8 months of EF is coming closer fast as a (maybe fake Chinese one?!) ferrari. It means we have to enjoy these last three weeks even more, do the things we always wanted to do. And nearly forgot, next week also got the only test which really matters here: the international known HSK test. Enough to do these weeks.

© to most of the pictures in this post and the pictures on my photo part belonging to this story are made available by Carolina Fong Guzzy. Thanks a lot for your great pictures Caro!

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안녕하세요 Korea!

27.04
2011

Speaking about last-minute trips, i also now how to deal with those now. The idea of going to Korea wasn’t last-minute at all. Already for a long time i wanted to visit Korea, because of the great stories i heard about it, the Korean friends i made in Beijing en which i want to visit again and the fact of seeing more of this side of the world. Speaking about Korea, i of course speak about South-Korea. Being in China everyone know you are speaking about the Southern part of Korea while speaking about ‘Korea’. But while saying ‘Korea’ in other countries, a really common following question is ‘do you mean South- or North-Korea?’. So just to be clear: i went to South-Korea, because going to their neighbours isn’t really possible…

But about this trip to Korea: it all started wednesday one-and-a-half week ago, while going out. While just chatting a little i discovered a friend (Carolina) had to go out of the country for visa business and was actually planning to go to Korea. I immediately jumped in, and two days later we (Carolina, Vivain (Dutch) and me) booked the plain tickets for the upcoming week and started arranging the other stuff.

And that way in a week we were suddenly in the plane heading for 5 days of Korean food & fun. Unfortunately the university students were all in there midterms, so they were all supposed to be busy studying. Luckily they still managed to see their friends, show us around and have fun together with us. Actually immediately the first day we enjoyed the nightlife with Soon & Soon, Soon Kyu and Soon Cheol (also known as Soon tequila). Of course ate the famous Korean bbq. It’s really a mystery why this isn’t known that much in the Netherlands, but it should be, it’s amazing! This was followed by spending some time in a bar drinking Korean alcohol (why this kind of alcohol isn’t known in the Netherlands is also a mystery to me). Normal the schedule for a nice Korean night is: restaurant, bar (for drinking some, and eating some more), club, and afterwards eating some more. We actually ended our night after step 2 because of the fact it was only our first day, so we were kind of tired.
Of course we also played the role of a real tourist in Seoul. We saw the famous palaces gyeongbokgung and changdeokgung and took some photo’s of the Korean people who walk around there dressed up in traditional Little moment of being proud © by meKorean clothing. gyeongbokgung was filled with school kids, apparently all on school trips. I don’t know why, but somehow the liked saying to “oww, you are so handsome!”, which i will take as a compliment. But after number 4 i was about to get back to them with “gamsahamnida!”, which is the Korean for ‘thank you’. In between the two palaces was a nice area which can be compared with the Beijing 798 district. All the non-Beijing still won’t have a clue how it looks like now, sorry for that ^^ It has something to do with art. The area also got some streets with old and new houses all build in traditional Korean style. Really beautiful to see!

The guesthouse we stayed at was studio 41st which i definitely recommend to all people planning to visit Seoul. The crew is great, the place is nice and the rooms are really convenient. As breakfast the Barbara sometimes made traditional Korean food. One morning this was ‘hut dog’, which isn’t the Korean version of a ‘hot dog’, but instead is kind of a pancake. Really tasty. Close to all the meals we ate in Korea were Korean style in some sort. A lot of times accompanied by Korean friends, we ate really tasteful dishes. I really like Korean food, and am starting to see some opportunities for the Dutch economy. Friday was the day to explore the Seoul nightlife some more. I realize by now that i have only been talking about ‘Korea’, well we went to Seoul in Korea. That night we finished another step more. First we ate great traditional Korean food, afterwards went to a bar to drink some ‘Korean water’ (as we call it), and eventually went to one of the 4 biggest clubs in Seoul: ‘Heaven’. This name sounds familiar to those also following me on Facebook as i placed the mysterious status “just went to heaven yesterday”. Thanks Soon Cheol for showing us part of the nightlife!
Other side of the story was that we had to wake up at 6:15 the day after. Kind of the bad part of the story. Luckily Vivian did wake up, and helped us waking up too, otherwise i think i would have been able to make it

Part of the traditional Pusan sashimi

to the bus in time. Cause we were about to take a 6 hour bus trip to Busan, the second city of Korea. Busan is famous for it’s beaches, and because it’s at the seaside, also because of the fish. We went there also to visit another friend of mine, Inyeong. She guided us around through the city, invited us to eat Busan sashimi for lunch (including crazy see creatures which were still moving when you touched them) and showed us some greatpoints to have a view over the city. The weather that day was really good, so some great pictures have been shot. By night we checked out the skyline of Busan from some close mountain. Afterwards it was already time to take the train (4 hours) back to Seoul. This was also a whole experience, but traveling is invented for gaining great experiences and because of that we do so ^^

Then sunday already arrived, which meant it was already our last full day in Korea. Because of the previous two days, we just took it easy in the morning. But after some nice breakfast we went out on adventure again and went to meet with some friends again. Unfortunately there was some misunderstanding, but we still had a great time. Korean people are (generally spoken of course) compared to other Asian people really well dressed. Of course they have to get those clothes somewhere, and by coincidence we found one of those places. Looked around a lot, bought some, and looked around some more in one the real Korean people shopping area’s. Barely any foreign people. Funny to see is that Korean couples sometimes were the same sweater/shoes/clothes. This is called (how surprising) ‘couple-clothes’. For my European mind this is something really funny, cause in the Netherlands i would never see something like that, but in Korea it’s actually pretty common. Culture difference!

Than it was already time to say goodbye to dear friends and get them to promise they will visit the Netherlands sometime. But our time in Korea was crazily nice. I really enjoyed it. Getting to pick a favorite Asian city is getting harder and harder. Seoul/Busan/Hong Kong/Beijing….. Like always more pictures can be found at the photo part of my blog

This thursday it’s of course Koninginnedag (Quensday -> Dutch national day), and that one isn’t forgotten in Beijing neither. The embassy organizes a party for (of course) all the dutch people here in Beijing. I bet this is going to be fun too, so there will hopefully be a new post somewhere soon!

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As promised: 香港：绿色的城市

10.04
2011

For everyone to whom i promised never to publish a (close to) completely Chinese post, here is the promised China story about Hong Kong:

       两个月以前我跟Laura一起打算去香港旅行。Laura希望见她很久没看见的香港朋友，因为她在那儿学过三个月左右的汉语。我就想去香港旅游，去一下香港的名胜。我们马上订了飞机票。时间过得很快， 转眼间就到了3月20号。我们一起坐飞机去了香港，到了香港，坐香港的地铁去旅馆。 香港的旅馆挺不错的，服务很周到房间也很舒适，不过离一些旅游区和一些名胜有点儿远。 幸好香港的地铁很快，很方便。从旅馆到香港市中心，只要30分钟。第一天我在铜锣湾(Causeway Bay)逛逛，在那儿我尝了米饭比萨。这个菜又有意思又特别。第二天，我跟Laura一起去了太平山(Victoria Peak)。那天天气比第一天的好多了。天空很蓝，很晴，气温25度左右。那里风景很棒，特别是向下看，有居高临下的感觉。从太平山下去的时候我没坐火车，而是走了山路。在香港爬山感觉很轻松。走了三个小时左右的山路，我到了香港仔(Aberdeen). 从那儿我坐公共汽车回到了香港市中心。晚上我在一家荷兰的饭馆儿吃了一顿晚饭。我吃到地道的荷兰菜， 感觉像回到荷兰一样， Bitterballen － 炒牛肉饺子，也吃了Boerenkool，可是我不知道在汉语怎么讲。当然我也喝了荷兰啤酒，力波啤酒（Heineken)。我很开心。星期二我跟Laura，Maddie，还有他的一个朋友一起去喝茶了，尝了香港很有名的点心，Dimsum。我觉得香港菜很好吃，香港风味菜果然很不错。那晚上我认识了Laura的香港朋友。我们一起吃了晚饭。他们都会说汉语，粤语还有英语。有时候我跟他们说英语，有时候说汉语，因为我也想练习一下我的汉语，看看怎样。周三我看到了东涌， 我本来以为那里是香港最有名的地方。可是去了东涌以后，我一点儿也没觉得东涌什么特别。星期四我购了一会儿物。然后我坐船去南丫（Lamma）岛。在那儿我爬了三个小时的山。南丫（Lamma）岛比香港市中心安静得多。我还找到了真正豪达奶酪。在南丫（Lamma）岛，我刚巧错过一班船。我4点半才到，船4点一刻就开走了。我很倒霉。星期五我们换了一家旅馆。新的旅馆挺便宜的，住两天只付二百五十块左右。 周六我跟Manki出去了，她也是Laura的朋友，还是本地人，带我去了几个特别的地方。我们先吃了香港特有的午饭，然后我们去了赤柱（Stanley）,一个很美的地方。在那儿我给我妹妹买了一个礼物。然后我们坐巴士去了深海湾(shenhaiwan,Deepwater Bay)，一个最美的海滩。在那儿我们走了一会儿，很遗憾那天天气不太好，天空有点儿灰暗。然后我们去了夜市（yeshi, Night Market)吃晚饭， 那还有香港很有名的「煲仔饭」(baozifan – claypot)。那天晚上我还买了一顶新帽子。时间过得很快，星期日已经到了，我们得去飞机场，回到我家-北京。可是我在香港还是有很多地方没去看，还有很多山路我没走。我不知道什么时候我能再到香港，可是我一定要再到那儿！

I hope you all enjoyed reading ^^ A next story will follow soon, still have to decide wether to write it in English or Chinese…

btw everyone who is only seeing squares here: Chinese is a bit harder then only writing squares, just be wise and install the Chinese language on your computer ;)

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Hong Kong, the green metropolis!

28.03
2011

Cause that was definitely the first impression i got of Hong Kong (which i will just call HK from now on). Normally you can already give your eyes this great impression from the airplane when arriving at HK airport. Unfortunately the day we (Laura and me) arrived at HK, the weather wasn’t that good. It was as foggy as that we could only see the ground appearing under the airplane a few seconds before we landed. Not ‘the great landing at HK experience’. Reason 1 to come back someday.

Kinda real drop/licorice in HKI won’t try to describe my whole story, so i will try to fish out the nice/funny/interesting so worth-telling stories. Actually i can just go on about my first day in HK. Because of the busy schedule of Laura (meeting a lot of friends), she dropped me at ‘Causeway Bay’ where i just played the tourist myself. I ate rice pizza. No, this isn’t a pizza with rice, but a pizza made of rice. The pizza bottom is made from rice, while are different toppings on top. I can immediately tell something about the things i ate. The next day i ate Dutch food. Real Dutch food including, real Dutch ‘bitterballen’ which they translated in ‘Deep fried Beef Dumplings’ and real Dutch ‘boerenkool’, translated as ‘Dutch farmer stew’. Of course this was all put together with a nice Heineken. You couldn’t make me happier at that moment. Of course i also ate the typical Cantonese dim-sum (as lunch together with Maddie and a friend of her). I ate some pirate food, some food at a stand at the middle of the street and a double quarter pounder at the Mc, as they have those (the double quarter pounders) in HK. I can’t complain.

I also couldn’t leave HK without being at the most known sites. At monday, which eventually became the day with the nicest weather – 25º and clear sun, we went to The Peak. This is a point form where you got a great view over a big part of HK. The weather was great, so the was great too. From there I walked the first part of the Hong Kong Trail. Hong Kong is the city with the 4th biggest population density (6349 people / km2). But besides this fact, HK is also a city with great hiking trails. Really great hiking trails. One of the 4 biggest trails is the Hong Kong trail, from which i walked the first part that afternoon. first part of the HK TrailGreat path (unfortunately all paved), great views and great nature. Another day the ‘Big Buddha’ was visited by us. ‘The Big Buddha’, it all sounds impressive. It is indeed a big buddha, but not the biggest. It’s the biggest outside, sitting buddha, wow… Walking around in some of the neighborhoods of HK is also just really funny. Lot’s of shops, and always things to see. HK is a really modern city (more modern than Beijing for sure), but is on the other hand Chinese too. It’s the combination which makes HK beautiful. HK is also always green, something im not used to anymore her in Beijing. A lot of water, small islands to discover, traveling by ferrie, or by great subway, great hiking, decent shopping, nice food and nice people. I think i lost myself a little in Hong Kong.

But some more cool stuff to tell, let me think. Maddie, a local in HK and also studying with us at Beijing, showed us around at her place. All of that together with a really nice dinner. Before all of Local snackthat i just went to one of the small islands HK got. Did some great hiking there, through great nature. But because the ferry back only went once every one-and-a-half hour, i was about to come late. Luckily the public transport is really good. At Saturday i spend the day together with Man Ki (English name: Monkey), a local friend of Laura, whom i met during the ‘pirate’ dinner earlier that weak. She showed me around at some of the places of HK I hadn’t seen before. At night we ate local Chinese food at a stand in the middle of a famous night market street. We met two other nice people there, and talked a lot about all kind of funny things. I realized again that Mandarin and Cantonese are really different, but both certainly interesting! Man ki, thanks again for showing me around that day!

Rice pizzaA complete different story is the one about the hostel i spent my last two nights. Because of the sevens (a big rugby tournament), we had to move places for the last weekend. I just thought of something cheap. On the internet i ended up at one of the many hostel in the ‘Chungkings Mansions’. Well, eventually it turned out to be cheap, 25 euro’s for two nights. But i can assure everyone that i didn’t pay to much for the things i got. A really small room, without own bathroom. The shared bathroom also wasn’t that much of a bathroom. The shower was some tube from which, with some luck, some water could appear. Didn’t dear to take a shower. The hostel was located at one of the floor above a big mall with fake stuff. It was the central of close to all Indian and Arabic people for my feeling. It was an ‘experience’ but as Maddie said: “but you can get nice curries over there!”

And after no-time it was sunday again, and time to head for the airport again. Arriving back at Beijing capital airport was a weird experience too. The airplane arrived at practically the same place as my airplane in October. Walked the same route again, went through immigration again, drove past the same places. A really weird feeling. You are coming ‘home’, while realizing it’s not home at the same time too. But the end is approaching crazily fast too. little more than 2 months school left, and 2,5 months till my parents and sister arrive at Beijing. Time is passing by now really fast.

Just for the record: as a school assignment we have to write an essay of 700 characters. I will do this about my trip to Hong Kong. So for all the people i promised to never write a story in Chinese on my website, somewhere later this week, you all will probably be pleased by a complete Chinese article!

For more pictures, and certainly about this trip cause i got for more nice pictures than i can upload in this post, i refer to my photo part and my flickr page. Both can be found in the left menu.

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Dutch coincidence and more!

13.03
2011

To start with: i want to show my compassion to everyone who is in any way related with stuff happened in Japan. I myself also got some friends in Japan, but luckily you are okay Naho and Gosuke! For people reading the dutch news which was telling that the earthquake was even felt in Beijing, i didn’t feel anything.

Although it feels weird to talk about the stuff i have experienced here, the last couple of weeks, i am still going to try to. I can start again with telling how sorry i am about not giving a sign of live from me for such a long time, but i think i did that enough in previous posts. And since the snow has disappeared for quite some time, and it’s now 20 degrees Celsius here, is it time for something new:

The weekend after our “ancient city”-trip, a new trip was already planned. Together with Estelle, Naho, William and Martijn we went for a day trip to Tianjin. The real Joostdiemaghetweten-fans will recognize this name from something, and yeah, true, i have already been there once. But it’s still a nice city with enough to see. But another consequence of having been there before, is that i kinda had to guide this time. Well no problem, so equipped with scanned pages from the Lonely Planet in The Netherlands (thanks mom/dad/Fem) we started. The trip was definitely nice, and i also saw some new stuff. The dinner could be called special because the service was more than bad, but we had fun anyway with shouting to the waiter in Dutch/Korean/Japanese and Italian. Somehow i got the feeling that also didn’t work.

But now I’m almost forgetting to tell about earlier that day. Cause that day, in the early morning (well wasn’t that early, but “early morning” sounds cool) i went to church. Well, i’m not that

Part of lvl 3, Tove and Mehmet (holding a certificate) are leaving...

religious, only a little catholic, but going to a church here in China was certainly on my list of wanna-do’s. The funny part is that i didn’t go to a Chinese church, but to a Korean. Together with Estelle (Korean) we attended a church service. Of course i didn’t understand anything of it, expect for ‘Jesus’ and ‘amen’ which was pronounced quite the same. But the thing is that all the rituals and other stuff is quite the same. It was really interesting! A funny story is the part when we were getting our communion wafer (dutch: hostie). We had been standing all the time in the back of church cause we were slightly late… So not that many people noticed the only weird, not Korean, blond hair guy in the back of the church. But while walking towards the priest, i of course had to come in front. So with every step i took, i kind of felt another bunch of eyes stuck in my back. Had to keep concentrated not to laugh while having this feeling, but i succeeded.

Next thing i can tell something about is the fact that the world is actually really small. 2 weeks ago a Dutch girl (Rianne) arrived, who told us that she lives in “Waddinxveen”. Waddinxveen en my homecity are only like 25 km away from each other, and both use Gouda as a big city to go out for example. Because my high school was in Gouda i also had some friends from Waddinxveen and actually Rianne knows one of my best friends from high school. Actually i was waiting for such a coincidence becoming true, but when it eventually happens, you are still super surprised of course.

Unfortunately the time also came to say goodbye to people who are really valuable to me. It’s part of EF, but it still sucks so badly. So: Estelle – 당신이보고 싶을거야, Naho and Gosuke – あなたと話せなくて寂しい, Koen – Zie je snel in Nederland weer man!, Tove – Jag kommer att sakna dig, (and already in advance) Roberto – Te voy a extranar! For all the people who i am missing: i am terribly sorry, send an email to support@joostdiemaghetweten.com for requests to be included. Furthermore: no rights can be granted to these statements… But a nice thing is that Paulien is back in Beijing for a week! Welcome Paulien, *sorry dutch* gekke Belg van me!

Last weekend was also quite exciting. Actually the fun already started on Thursday with going to the gym for the first time. Maybe i was a little too enthusiastic, so my muscles hurt a little. Luckily for friday a ‘let’s run around like maniacs for 3 hours’-session was planned. This can be read as Laser Game/Laser Tag, but not forget that this one was Chinese style. This meant first of all that we were playing laser game outside, secondly we were all dressed in army suits (although an American civil war was taking place because of that), and last but best, we had big guns (including 1 sniper each team)! So we run around like crazy for 3 hours. The good thing was that i could take some rest in the train on saturday before going to the great wall. This time we went to the great wall by ourselves, not with an EF trip. All the other times other, higher lvl people arranged the train tickets when that had to be done. But since i was one of the highest lvl persons in the group we went with, i arranged the tickets together with Koen. And the nice part was that we were able to arrange this really well. Chinese confidence boost! It was really nice seeing a different part of the wall, and the weather wasn’t that bad too. So altogether a great trip.

Well, i think i wrote some new reading material for all of you. So this is going to be the end of this weeks story. In a week i will go to Hong Kong for a week, so i think somehow that will give me some new story material. btw, don’t think i only live in the weekends doing day trips, i also got normal school during the week, and go out etc, just the normal life here, which isn’t probably that normal… well wrote enough crap for today, speak to you soon!

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Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

19.02
2011

2 weeks ago, finally the moment came: snow in Beijing. All of the Beijing people had been talking about the fact that there hadn’t been any snow and that that was such a weird fact. But in the night of previous week wednesday it was finally there: SNOW! All the Dutch people reading this probably think that i’m exaggerating, and maybe i am a little, but some of the EF people had never seen snow so for them it was even more special. The funny thing is that life in here in China just does go on with snow. It’s now like in the Netherlands that everything is stuck. No, with only a little snow, immediately snowplows (red. sneeuwschuivers) pop up and the subway (which is also partly above ground – to save myself from critical comments) just continues driving. The taxidrivers, who normally drive as maniacs, also just continue their work, although it’s really funny to see that they suddenly drive like some old grannies. Their guts are suddenly gone.

Ok, but lets see what other things happened here in Beijing lately. Well, of course always funny things happen here in Beijing. For example yesterday: i got on the subway at my home station. The next station a family (mother, father and little boy from around 5 i guess) sat besides me. For the Beijing-experts: it was evening and i was traveling towards the center so it wasn’t that busy. First of all the boy was eating a sweet potato, and because i wasn’t feeling that well, the smell annoyed me a little. But that wasn’t the point. After 3 stations the little boy had to pee. So his mother took him to one of the doors (the subway in the Netherlands and Beijing look kind of the same), and boy was just peeing against the closed door! In front of everyone, in the middle of the subway. I wonder if he had to poop, how they would have fixed that. We can call it a little culture difference.

Last sunday, William, Naho, Soonkyu, Laura and me went to ‘an ancient village’. Because Laura and Soonkyu hadn’t any idea where we were actually going, the name of the village remained ‘the ancient village’ for a long time. The actual name of the village is “Chuandixia”. The traditional Chinese character for this name is the character with the most strokes in Chinese. In the picture somewhere around here you can see the character written in snow. To my opinion it actually looks really nice, but i’m really wondering how people are able to write the character the small way. But let’s return to the story! Chuandixia is located about 100km west of Beijing. That morning the weather gods had blessed us with even more snow, so it would become even a bigger adventure. And that seemed to be true. We arrived at the place our buss was supposed to leave and immediately some van drivers told us that because of the snow the busses weren’t driving. Of course we didn’t believe them at first, they just wanted to make money over us, but after a little while and some bargaining, we got a van including driver, who drove us in 2 hours to the village, would wait for us there and would take us back again for like 10 euro per person, it’s going to be a whole different world when i’m back in the Netherlands… The bargaining included Soonkyu saying that the driver was sooo handsome, while he wasn’t at all, but that’s always a nice tactic of getting a lower price and also includes a lot fun. So after a funny two hour drive we arrived at the village and were immediately directed to having lunch. We were actually the only tourists at that time, and we were having lunch in kind of the living room of one of the few families who lived there. The food was really good, only Naho didn’t really agree on that one. And like real China style we ate with chopsticks (duh…) and in front of the TV. Afterwards we walked around a little, continuously followed by some dogs, and saw the village. Because it wasn’t that big, we were kinda finished after 2 hours. Luckily we could also put the girls in the snow, and luckily i could also shove some snow into William’s face (William, i don’t know if you read this, but if you do, i bet you will remember). So it’s was definitely a nice day, with a lot of snow and a lot of fun!

Also worth telling is that this month we played pingpong (just for fun, the chinese character is: 乒乓球，pīngpāngqiú, just for the information and because it looks funny). So Thomas, i finally used your pingpong bat! He worked really well. Two of the EF people were kinda pro pingpong players, so after a little while they got invited to play against some of the little children (i think between 6 and 10 +/- 12) who were training there. Actually those kids where extremely good at playing pingpangqiu, so Koen and Emmy had a hard job on them, but eventually defeated them. But it is really funny to see those little children play so well. All together really fun!

I can also tell something about school. I forgot if i told something about it last time, but i’ve been promoted to lvl 3 since one-and-a-halve week now. It’s a really big difference, the classes are nearly completely given in Chinese, and the lvl is (of course) just higher. But i really like it. Some of the nice people of lvl 2 also joined me in lvl 3 last week, so all together it’s a lot of fun again in lvl 3 again.

Day before yesterday (so that’s the 17th of February) was the day of “The Lantern Festival“. The Chinese

Just because this made me happy this morning :)

Spring festival lasts till this day. It also means that after this day fireworks isn’t allowed anymore (after 2 weeks!). So being able to sleep at the 17th of February isn’t completely guaranteed too. At this day also traditional Chinese food has to be eaten. It’s called ‘yuanxiao’. You cant describe it as kind of really sticky rice balls with inside some kind of sweet liquids and/or some nuts. Tastes quite… special.

Well, i think you all got enough to read again. Of course i shouldn’t give you too much, otherwise you all wouldn’t hunker for my next story :P no, i’m just kidding. A last funny thing is the misunderstanding between our ‘European’ humor and the way Asian people read it. It’s actually really funny how some ‘European’ sarcasm get misunderstood. Delivers some funny situations.

So to all of you: (i know it’s kind of late but..) still a really happy Valentines Day!

Speak to you next time/tot de volgende keer/and for the Korean readers: 안녕!

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Where is everyone?!

02.02
2011

Well… because I probably can’t sleep anyway because of the fireworks, i will finally write something new on my blog. I know you have been waiting on a new entry for 2,5 weeks now, sorry about that. It’s not because i don’t like you or something, it’s just because i didn’t have that much time and was kinda afraid of writing in English. That’s the next point: English. I will try writing in English again, partly because i think i can, partly because in that way more people will be able to read it (including friends here in Beijing and all over the world), partly because it’s possible (red. Dutch: toch klinkt “gewoon omdat het kan” toffer). Don’t watch my English to closely cause it’s probably not completely without mistakes…

But where to start. Let’s start with the skiing one-and-a-halve week ago. Together with my roommate Cesar (who lives in another room in the same house), my host father and host mother we went out on a skiing trip. Only 1,5h driving from our house there already was the possibility to ski. But first we dropped Alan (host father) at some ice climbing place. It’s a shame i don’t got all my climbing stuff here in Beijing, otherwise i would have definitely have joined him. But anyways, skiing is really cool too! I didn’t want to expect to much of the area, cause it could only disappoint me, and it was a little smaller than expected. But skiing is skiing, and skiing is fun, so i don’t care. It was actually a lot of fun. Chinese people ski like they drive their cars. That means some of them ski like maniacs. I’ve seen a lot of really funny crashes. Some of the people who are not that good at skiing just go to the steepest slope and go down like those little children from Club-Met, this means they go down straight away. Fun guaranteed!

Some random Chinese sitting 'China style'

Most of the new people in school aren’t that new anymore. They have been here for a month or little less now already and know their way around now too. That means they can at least find Juicy. But we already had to say goodbye to some of them too. It’s weird after having known them for such a small time to already say goodbye again. But that’s part of the EF life, and I’m getting slightly more used to it each time (as far as possible of course). Tomorrow (or well later on today already) Ayrat will also leave. He is one of the people who has been here for a longer time now, so that’s always worse to say goodbye. But Ayrat, i will certainly see you later on in Russia sometime!

The Dutch camp here in Beijing exists of only 5 people now, 2 people left us again. With some of those people we came with the idea to visit the Dutch restaurant here in Beijing. I knew there is a Dutch restaurant so i called that one (it was something like the 10th of January by then). The charming lady on the other side of the line told me that they restaurant (with “ballenbak”) changed owner at the 1st of January and was closed now for an indefinite period. Kind of a bad one. Luckily there is also a Dutch bakery in the same neighborhood so we headed for that one. Sorry for all not-Dutch people now, there will come some Dutch food slag: the bakery had “Bitterballen, kroketten, saucijzenbroodjes, stroopwafels” and more international food. Of course we had to try wether they were real or not. Especially the “saucijzenbroodjes” (sausage rolls) tasted really nice! We Dutch people were happy for that moment!

And right now it’s the 3rd of February. For most of you a normal wednesday just as normal as all the other ones. But for Chinese people and us here in China it isn’t a special day at all. Fireworks has been flying around our ears for the last couple days already and today it’s finally the big day: it’s Chinese New Year. So to all of you: 兔年快乐！For the people who can’t read this (and i think it’s most of you) and can’t guess it too (i hope that’s less people) it means: Happy new year of the Rabbit. Funny btw to see that such a lot of your mobile phones don’t support Chinese, that’s a bad thing! But back to Beijing, cause it’s amazing here right now. RIght now there isn’t that much fireworks anymore, but damn at 12 o’clock the hell broke loose. Check out the movie i made for some moving images, but it’s amazing. I would advise everyone who wants to see real fireworks once to go to China during this time. What we regard as really nice and expensive fireworks in the Netherlands is here kind of normal. After having watched the fireworks for a little while from the roof of our 17-floor building, we ate Jiaozi (dumplings) which is a typical Chinese tradition. I like the tradition cause i like Jiaozi! During these days a lot of people go to their hometowns, to their family. My hostfather didn’t. But this also kinda explains the title, during these days it was even quiet in subway during rush hour. The people who have been in Beijing know how hard to imagine that is.

And because people are raising fireworks i decided to write this new post now. Please don’t blame me too much on my English cause it’s not that good. I don’t know if i will continue writing in English, the next post will deliver the temporarily answer. And while listening to the midday show of Ruud de Wild on radio 538 i say goodbye to you from the year of the Rabbit while most of you are still in the year of the Tiger. Good luck with changing in a couple of hours ;) 再见！

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Nieuw vlees in de kuip, veel vlees!

16.01
2011

For the people reading this with google translate: don’t take the title too literally. First of all Google Translate translates it wrong: ‘new meat in the cockpit, lots of meat’ can be called a funny translation. Secondly, it’s a Dutch saying. The meaning can be described as: there a lot of new people, a lot!

Afgelopen twee weken zijn zo’n 40 nieuwe mensen gekomen. Dit klinkt wellicht niet zo heel veel. Zeker voor de mensen op andere EF locaties is dit niks. Maar bij ons waren we eerst met zo’n 20 mensen en als er dan plots 40 bijkomen is dat een bizarre hoeveelheid. Gezelligheid ten top dus in ieder geval, en met de 7 Nederlanders kunnen we nu ook een front vormen tegen de Spaanstaligen. Wat deze ontwikkeling ook inhield was dat het oude lvl 1 werd bevorderd tot level 2. Ik kan me nu dus officieel level 2 noemen. Momenteel heb ik m’n zinnen al gezet op level 3, maar daar moet ik nog wel veel voor leren. Level 1 is nu weer het level met de complete of nagenoeg complete beginners. Het is erg grappig om te zien hoe zij de beginselen van het Chinees leren, en stiekem voel ik me af en toe ook wel goed omdat ik dat nu kan…

Zoveel nieuwe mensen betekent ook dat al die mensen Beijing nog moeten ontdekken, en in bepaalde onderdelen helpen wij ze daar goed bij. Waar ik op doel is uitgaan. Afgelopen twee woensdagen werd iedereen meteen geïntroduceerd in het woensdagritueel. Bij het woensdagritueel hoort echter ook deels dat je op donderdag gewoon op 9 uur weer op school bent. Niet iedereen heeft dit deel weten te voltooien. Spijtig.

Vorig weekend ben ik op zondag met Ayrat (Russisch) en Gosuke (Japans) naar Tianjin 天津 geweest. Dit is een stadje 200 km ten oosten van Beijing. Het ligt aan de zee en is bekend om zijn seafood. Vanuit Beijing vertrekt elk kwartier ongeveer een trein naar Tianjin die je daar met 500 km/h heenbrengt. In een half uurtje waren we er. Voor de rekenwonders onder ons: we hadden 1 tussenstop en natuurlijk acceleratie en afremmen ;) Tianjin is een kleine stad met zijn 8 miljoen inwoners. Uiteraard bekeken we de mustsee’s in Tianjin. Dit hield in dat we ook een drankje deden

Rice cookies with stuff

in een soort van wannabe Euromast, met bovenin een ronddraaiend cafe. Supergaaf dus. Op de ruiten stonden de windrichtingen aangegeven met zowaar ook Nederland vermeld! ‘s Avonds aten we hotpot (zie vorige post voor uitleg) maar dan met vis. Hier kon je daarnaast ook in aquaria aanwijzen welke vis je wilde en de verscheen dan een tijdje later op je bord. Beetje crue, maar zeker een aanrader. En in een half uurtje waren we weer terug in Beijing, daarna nog even anderhalf uur met de metro en toen was ik weer thuis. Heerlijk het openbaar vervoer hier.

Vorige vrijdag moesten we vaarwel zeggen tegen Kim, en deze vrijdag tegen Jon. 2 buitengewoon toffe mensen waarmee ik een hoop plezier heb gehad. Helaas moesten ze alweer terug naar Noorwegen respectievelijk de Verenigde Staten. Ergens in deze post zie je een foto van de oude mensen tijdens het afscheid van Jon. De mensen die hier nu al langer dan 3 weken zijn worden gekscherend Dinosaurs genoemd. Eerst was het Fosils, maar omdat dit zo niet cool klinkt hebben we er Dinosaurs van gemaakt.

En oja: m’n nieuwe hostfamily. Ik leef nu samen met de Venezuelaan (wat rolt dat lekker van de tong :P ) Cesar. Erg gezellig dus. Verder heb ik (uiteraard) een nieuwe hostvader en hostmoeder. M’n hostvader verkoopt medische apparatuur aan ziekenhuizen en houdt erg van skiën en klimmen, eigenlijk gewoon van van het leven genieten. M’n hostmoeder doet niks. Echt, klinkt erg kortaf, maar het is echt waar. Meeste tijd is ze thuis op haar kamer, beetje slapen ofso, beetje internetten ofso… Ook heb ik een nieuwe hostoma die buitengewoon lekker kookt. Ik merk dat ik aan ben gekomen sinds ik hier zit. Maar wees gerust, ik ben niet dik. Eigenlijk valt het ook wel mee… Een mooi verhaal over de Chinese gewoontes: in China is het een goed teken als je dik bent. Dik zijn is een teken van rijkdom, je kunt immers veel eten kopen. De idealen zijn dus lichtelijk verschillend.

My new room

Ik zit hier nu 3 maanden en toch kom ik nog geregeld dingen tegen waar ik van op kijk. Je nagels knippen in de subway is vanuit mijn oogpunt toch wel origineel te noemen. In de tv’s in de metro zag ik een tijdje terug ook een documentaire over dierproeven. Hierbij werden zonder schuwen toch wel schokkende beelden laten zien. Muizen werd iets ingespoten en aan het einde werden de hersenen van de beesten geshowd waarbij een duidelijk verschil in grootte te zien was. Dit noem ik toch wel schokkend. Maar hier blijkbaar normaal.

Aangezien ik verder eigenlijk niet zodanig veel boeiends te vertellen heb, maar even wat cijfertjes: officieel is de grens van 200 reacties nu gepasseerd. Ook heeft mijn blog nu officieel meer dan 8000 pageviews, dit betekent dat er 8000 paginas zijn bekeken op m’n website. Daartegenover staat dat er 4400 bezoekers zijn geweest. Voor de snelle rekenaars betekent dat dat gemiddeld genomen elke bezoeker +-1,8 pagina bekijkt waarbij elk bezoek gemiddeld 2 minuten en 46 seconden duurt. Uiteraard staat Nederland veruit bovenaan met aantal bezoekers. Nederland wordt gevolgd door China en vervolgens België. Leuk om te weten is dat mijn blog verder vanuit nog 35 andere landen is bezocht, van Ghana tot Guatemala tot Maleisië. In Nederland zelf staat Amsterdam met 526 bezoekers bovenaan, op de voet gevolgd door Gouda, Rotterdam en Hekendorp (!), respectievelijk met 436, 398 en 186 bezoeken. Heerlijk wat je met technologie allemaal kunt doen!

Meer foto’s zijn zoals gebruikelijk te vinden in het fotogedeelte (klink links op de link “beginnend spleetoog” onder photos) of door hier te klikken.

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