Ok, half way mark has been hit so it’s time to start thinking seriously about what to do once January 15th hits and this internship is over. Here are the options that I’m running over in my head:
- Go straight home.
- Travel around China until my visa runs out (5th Feb) then fly home.
- Travel around China until my visa runs out then explore South East Asia until my money runs out or I think of something better to do.
- Do a second semester at Lilac, if they’ll have me, then either travel or go home.
- Try and find another job somewhere else in China – Beijing or Shanghai maybe for a semester (preferably with a short visit home?)
- Get a job in another country.
Number one is out. Boring! I’m leaning towards 4 and 5 at the moment, but there are so many things to think about that I’m going to continue to muse.
Not that much has happened since I last posted – I’m waiting on mountain climbing, wedding dress modelling and a private student to materialise, but we did go to Beijing for the Halloween weekend. We caught a D train on Friday night (I love D trains: it was fast, quite clean, not crowded and reasonably comfy. Henceforth no other letter will do! Well. Until I need to save money anyway…) we arrived at about 11.15pm, queued for a taxi for 45mins, drove to our hostel, dumped our bags and went straight out and experienced Sanlitun bar street. Brilliant! I haven’t danced so much in WEEKS. Everyone else had a bit of a tumultuous night, but I loved it. Saturday’s plan was Happy Valley (a theme park) which we managed to get to mid afternoon once everyone had opened bleary eyes, showered and begun feeling human again. Hostel showers are my favourite thing about going away – proper, unlimited hot water! Decent pressure! Jinglebells shower, eat your heart out.
I’m not a fan of rides where you swing or just drop, going fast and upside-down is much more fun, so I only did half the rides the others did at Happy Valley. I screamed like a banshee on the ones I did go on, so I don’t think I’ll be taking up a career of daredevilry any time soon! We went to a KTV (karaoke) place on Saturday night as it was Will’s birthday. There were twelve of us in a room which was available to us until 6.30am. We arrived at about 11. I left about 4. Will didn’t get back until 7. I enjoyed the first three hours or so, but I really much prefer dancing to singing and after the initial novelty had worn off I found it massively frustrating. I hope I didn’t show it too obviously, but unfortunately my face isn’t very subtle.
On Sunday we hired a bus and went about an hour and a half north of Beijing to the Qinglongxia Gorge Tourism District where everyone (except yours truly) did a bungee jump. I just don’t do drops, alright?! Skydive, that would be a different story but a bungee jump? Sod that. So, again, I played camera woman. Qinglongxia Gorge is a valley with a dam half way up and bits of the Great Wall peppering the mountain tops. The bungee jump is off a tower over the lake, a couple of hundred metres behind the damn. Beautiful views – I’m glad I saw them all the right way up! A controlled river runs down below the damn and you can hire bamboo rafts to pole about on, or, as we did – play in giant inflatable balls on the surface! Two people go in a ball, and you get ten hilarious minutes of falling over and into each other and trying in vain to chase people in other balls.
We were cutting it a bit fine traffic wise to get back for our return train, so we drove back after that though there was much more we could have seen and done. The bus driver dropped us off by Tiananmen Square, just after the sunset flag lowering ceremony, and we got a taxi to the station. It was a T train home, but never mind.
Since then I have been nursing my THIRD cold, perfecting my leek and potato soup (leeks are suddenly EVERYWHERE and soup is like a hug from the inside) and, as I said at the beginning, starting to think about the future. There’s so much to do in the world; I keep hearing awesome suggestions – South East Asia, rugby world cup in New Zealand, being a passenger on a cargo ship… right now though I’m going to retreat to my bed with a mug of ginger, honey and lemon. Lousy damn immune system…
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