Beijing and freedom!

A very late blog update, but things have been crazy since being released from quarantine and allowed to run riot in Beijing. After the quarantine hotel we moved into apartments on UIBE campus, just north of the centre in a fairly vibrant area. After a bit of freedom I soon realised I love Beijing. It’s a frantic, noisy, diverse and vast city. The streets are incredibly hectic at all times with incessant car horns, bus loudspeakers, public service announcements and pumped up Chinese pop music. Getting around is easy though - the subway is so clean, modern and efficient - and just 20p to get anywhere in the city! Taxis are everywhere and, along with everything else, so cheap. Taxis are quite an experience though; they never know any English and there seem to be no real rules of the road, just carnage. Chinese drivers are basically just playing a real life version of GTA.

I've seen a lot here, but there’s a lot I still need to see. Memorable visits include the Wall – obviously, the Confusius temple, the Summer palace and a lot of street markets and shopping districts. One place that particularly sticks out in my mind is Wangfujing snack street where you’ll find scorpions, grasshoppers, starfish and other insects and weird meat on offer. The caterpillar was the most disgusting thing I've ever eaten.

Wangfujing snack market

The course is pretty intensive and quite long hours, but with so many kids games and activities to learn about the lessons often just involve regressing back into an 8 year old and playing word games or grammar challenges for a while. Despite the long hours of studying we still get enough time to rip it up and paint the town red pretty frequently. I’m going to miss our usual haunts – the side street bars in San-li-tun and the Manchester pub in the beautiful bar area around Hou Hai lake.

But never mind, I’ll soon by leaving Beijing and heading for my teaching placement in Changsha, in central Hunan province. Should be awesome! :D

Arrival = Quarantine

I'm here and it's all good, although due to the swine flu paranoia here it's not exactly an ideal situation. After arriving in the vast, airy and sparkling Beijing airport we were all given facemasks and then took a coach to a hotel the other side of Beijing, so we got to see a bit of the city which looks totally fascinating and crazy.

We may be in a plush 4 star hotel but we are confined here for a week. Twice a day we have our temperature taken and when walking around the hotel we are meant to wear our masks, but that rule has been allowed to slide I think. It's very frustrating being in central Beijing but not getting to go out and explore the many sights, temples and shopping complexes we are close to. I've been randomly allocated a room with this Swedish guy called Love (pronounced Loo - vey) and he is awesome. He's very... Swedish, but also chilled and an interesting guy and we get along well. In particular we love a lot of the same tv shows - he seems to only watch English and American stuff. Luckily he bought a Wii and laptop with him which has saved us. So much free time and nowhere to go.

Just can't wait to start the TEFL course and get to the uni campus!

View from hotel window