Da da daaaaaaaa! Welcome to China University of Geosciences Beijing (中国地质大学北京 pronounced Zhongguo dizhi daxue Beijing). I don't think that this photograph quite captures the magnitude of our resident on-campus Mao Zedong, so I took it from another angle:
Ah yes, he really is a sizeable guy! The building behind him (known to its friends as Building 5) houses the photocopy dungeon (here in the bottom left of the photo). I visit there 2 - 3 times a week to prepare material for class. The photocopy man is there all day every day in a windowless room. I have no idea how he stays same! I wouldn't say that we're friends, but we've progressed to the "Hello" and "Goodbye" stage, which is more than I ever managed with the previous photocopy people who were, frankly, frosty much of the time. Too long in such a setting is bound to induce icicles in ones personality! We've also developed our own semi-Chinese semi-sign language mode of communication, and he always gets my requests right first time. Happy days!.JPG)
This shows our Mao's view. If you look carefully you'll see that the campus of the university across the road has an almost (if not completely) identical Mao standing in the same position looking towards ours! Could he have found a better situation than to be looking at himself for the rest of eternity?
Here's an example of the building work currently happening on campus - new buildings are springing up here, there and everywhere!
The main road through campus which I stroll along at least twice a day. The leaves have been falling for the last week or so, which is really rather pleasant. However, around here they're viewed as a mess which needs to be swept up, and a number of sweeping people dedicate hours each day to piling the leaves up and taking them away. Alas. No kicking ones way through the crisp autumnal leaf fall in Beijing!
The campus library. They're not terribly visible here, but a group of people at the top of the steps are swinging swords around. Hurrah!
After a swift stroll to the shops in Wudaokou and a phonecall home, it was time to head to Jasmine's apartment (another British teacher at our uni) for our weekly mahjong session. This is a recent addition to our lives and has become a much anticipated highpoint in the week. Snacks, joviality and confusion abound! These photos are actually from last week's game:
Building our walls just after the 'twittering of the sparrows' (my favourite part of the game in which we move the tiles around the table in order to jumble them up and often push them off the table in the process! Hoo hoo!) Notice Brandon and Jasmine's hats in this photo: all four of us decided to literally put on our 'mahjong hats' for this game ;)
Our constructed, slightly wonky walls, pushed tightly together to prevent evil spirits from entering.
My tiles at the start of the game. Woo hoo!
Eek, I'm running out of time! Here's Monday: the brief version. I opened my eyes to see a cockroach scuttling past: aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhh! Then, whilst my shower worked perfectly well yesterday, it wouldn't work again this morning! Monday morning with no shower = disheartened Bec.
Off I tootled to class by 8am, with my faithful hat hiding my unwashed locks. Classes were reasonably good but, as is my wont, I'd prepared too much and had to carry over to next week content that I wanted to complete this week. Hmm. Today we were discussing stereotypes, generalisations and exceptions, and chapter 5 of The Magician's Nephew (yay Narnia!) which we're reading together. Teaching time always positively flies by as a teacher, so again I forgot to take photographs! Classes finished at 12 and I sped off to meet my language exchange partner, Martha by 12:30. She's fab! This week she'd discovered a new, cosy, reasonably priced cafe near her office (just one subway stop from Wudaokou). So we did lunch, exchanged English and Chinese, and generally chatted about this, that and everything for the next few hours. Here we are:
Eeeeeeeeeee! Okay, now I'm going to beat my shower into submission!
Have a marvellous Monday dear readers! x
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