Home Sweet Hostel

XinNian Kuaile! Happy Chinese New Year! I’ve successfully managed to jump straight from actual New Year to Chinese New Year without a single blog post, so since it is Spring Festival, my office is closed and it’s time and past to update.

So, what have I been doing in January? Well, I moved to Beijing for my new job and since then I’ve been working. Working, working, partying, working a bit more then wondering why I get to Spring Festival ready to collapse! I haven’t found an apartment yet (mostly because I haven’t had much time to look – I work long days) so I’m living in the SanLiTun Youth Hostel. The last time I lived in a hostel was in 2006 the summer I was volunteering in South Africa. It was fun back then and it’s fun now. The hostel is really friendly, reasonably comfortable, reasonably cheap and well placed for walking to the subway for work and the best bar street in Beijing for play. I also know the menu backwards and upside-down by this point. The downsides of living here are the lack of privacy – I’m in a six bed dorm room, my diet is the opposite of healthy, and I’ve thrown myself into a work hard, play hard lifestyle which is not exactly sustainable for my body, soul or wallet. It’s damn good fun though.

Sanlitun Youth Hostel seems to be the unofficial home of every TTC or i-to-i teaching intern in China, both past and present. I’ve seen people come through from my internship; I’ve made friends with someone from the internship before mine who lives here too (Claire, my doppelganger – she’s English, redheaded and loves books too) and a whole load of new recruits from the next internship have been staying here for Chinese New Year. They’ve been eagerly tapping Claire and me for information…we should’ve charged 10yuan a head and put on a lecture!! Ah well, hindsight eh. Actually, ever other person here is a teacher and from the ones who aren’t, most have done some at some point. Everyone else is just travelling. Lucky buggers.

It’s a funny cycle really – there are a few of us who are more or less long-term residents here – and everyone else is passing through. There are upsides and downsides to this. I’ve met loads and loads of really cool people from all over the world, but they leave and I get a completely new friendship group every ten days or so. It’s sad in a way, but liberating in others; the problem comes when I’m hanging out with my friends who do stick around… they’re around for all my adventures and, just like brothers, they take great delight in Remembering Things. Oh well. What happens in Beijing…

Speaking of people, the hostel staff are all really cool. I’ve made friends with Rui Rui (Jane) who teaches me a bit of Chinese every so often, makes a damn good Tequila Sunrise and we gossip about the current crop of guys in the hostel. Rong, Candy and Alice are also nice, but I don’t have as much chat with them. The cleaning ladies I know by sight and to say nihao too – they’ve perfected the art of the dirty look when I stumble along to the bathroom  after a night out, but when I was poorly a couple of weeks ago they were really nice to me. There’s a dog and a cat and a rabbit that live here too. The dog is a spoiled fluffy white footstool, but relatively cute despite that. The staff absolutely love him but as he has a thing for the socks of backpackers we (the residents) are on our guard around him. The rabbit is a bit mean and the cat seems to have disappeared.

It’s not as hard as you might imagine, living in a hostel, although I do rather miss privacy and choice over whether my bedroom window is open or closed. Now I’ve moved into a room with Claire, it’s even more fun and, I assume, just like having a college roommate except on a larger scale. Actually, the hardest thing (except for getting early nights – they don’t exist) is being around people who are travelling. I have a huge green eyed monster on my shoulder all day (no, not Claire!) from work and all the cool things there are to do and see in China, then I come home and people are heading off to or coming from everywhere I want to go. Upside I’m getting so many ideas for when I do get the chance to travel, downside I do feel a bit stuck here in Beijing.

Once the website I work for is launched, I’m hoping to have time and money for weekend trips out of Beijing, and then I can actually put my eponymous blue dress/backpack on and tell you about travelling around China. For the moment, I’m limited to Beijing and my next offering will be the story of Chinese New Year 2011, what we did and what was cool…