inner mongolia- a horror trip.

I should've posted this a week ago, but well, have been to lazy and too busy to update the blog.
The holidays are over and we have the first exam on friday. kinda started living in the Bridge Cafe, spending there 11 hours is not normal, but the place is just too comfy. So if someone ever reads this blog beside my friends and wants to come to Beijing, go to the Bridge Cafe at Wudaokou, one of the best here.

ok, now about my trip to Inner Mongolia.
as the title already says, it has been a horror trip.
we didn't expect it to be so fucking incredibly cold there since our teacher told us to NOT take our wintershoes and winter coats with us.
haha, funny. yes indeed.
after a long and very tiring bus drive, especially since we didn't sleep the night before and spend the time talking with Richi (OH RICHI SARANGHAE!! khm), we arrived at the capital of Inner Mongolia called Hohhot.



the city was surprisingly modern and pretty cool, people seem to dress a bit better than in Beijing. but instead of staying at the nice hotel the next day, they decided it is good for us to make a real mongolian experience, go to the grassland and sleep in a hut.
so we arrived at the grassland, ate something (worst food ever so far) and went to the horse riding. the prizes were way too high so some of us spend half an hour trying to get it lower (thanks to the peeps, but 2 hours would have been more than enough, getting 3 hours was unnecessary). I don't remember how much we paid, but compared to something like this in germany, it was still cheap enough, as anything else here in china.
3 hours on a horse (well, it has been 3 different horses) broke my body and my will to live. I mean if the horse was walking slowly, everything would have been fine..but this mix between running and not..and the horrible saddle made me to a handicap for the next two days where I couldn't walk up the stairs on my own because of the sore body.
but it was kinda fun compared to what followed.
a night in a hut.

I imagine a real mongolian hut with a bit more blankets and pillows and kinda thicker walls, but as you can see on the picture..nothing like this was waiting for us, poor tourists.
the temperature inside the same as outside. to sum it up: COLD.
we could rent some old weird coats (we called them MAO coat) which were really smelly but at least warm and we spend the night trying to cuddle and keep each other from freezing to death.literally.

the next day we went to the desert. yes, from freezing cold to a hot hot summer in one day. it was more relaxing, we could ride on a camel, well, the ones who were still able to sit after the horrible saddle the day before. sitting on a camel didn't hurt that much, but standing up afterwards killed the last little bit of hope of ever being able to walk normally again.

nothing spectacular happened afterwards except for a very long bus drive back to beijing and an embarrassing running into Richi and his Girlfriend in an elevator.

we are allowed to get sick from now on

my first time at a chinese hospital. I survived.
interesting experience, which unfortunately had to be made since my stomach gave up on me yesterday.
I decided against going into an international hospital simply because it would have costed me a fortune. everybody told me to prepare 1000 kuai (100 euro) in advance. and it was a good decision to go to a chinese hospital.
huge hospital, little yue. felt really lost after going in, so I went directly to the information counter. "Ni hui shuo yingyu ma?" (do you speak english?) of course the answer was no, but well. a month here and we already know all important words about stomach problems. yay for poor us!
anyway, not understanding much where to go and what to do I made my puppy look and the girl took on the quest of helping me around. first to one counter to make a card, then to the other to get send to a doc, then the actual doc.
hilarious.
the patient before me had to play the interpreter. nice girl too. after some broken chinese on my part and broken english on her part the doctor send me to take a blood sample and some urine sample. I was afraid I will have to come again in a few days to get the results, but well, in this aspect china just rocks compared to germany. 30 minutes later and voilà I had my results and we were on the way to the doc again, who prescribed me some medicine.
a lot of thanks to the girl who were running with me through the whole hospital (a lot of staring from other patients who have to do the running on their own) and to the doctor and the girl, who helped translating.
for everything I paid altogether ~170 kuai (17 euro) and now I know I am allowed to get sick and I will get super treatment without being a chinese (maybe even better treatment because I am not chinese) and without going to a fancy international hospital.

though I still don't know what my problem is since nobody bothered to tell me.
after googling the medicine I assume it is either an infection because of something I have eaten or mild form of cystitis or both. probably both. but well, at least the medicine seems to be used for treating both cases.

a kingdom for some western food!

oh stomach-ache, oh china!

pictureless

a long long week with so many things happening and me being way to lazy to blog about it.
this post will have no pictures (yes boo at me), but I already uploaded the best pictures on studivz.net

Chengde and The Great Wall:
the trip to chengde was awesome! first we went to climb the great wall and I have to say that it really is Great. and tiresome.
well, chengde itself is not so interesting, the town looks really poor and deserted. to tell the truth, we were prepared for everything, even took toilet paper with us. but the hotel was really nice, even better than some of our apartments so we thought we don't want to go back to beijing!
the next day we went to see some temples and the summer palace. beautiful places, though very tiresome sometimes. to many stairs there!
and on sunday we went to see the "cockrock". well, it's a mountain which looks kinda like a morning wood haha, but well, don't know it's proper name...

well, the week afterwards was less exciting at first. got a try on an old hsk test and lost all our hope of ever passing it. ever.

and got to know richard-sshi haha. oh why oh why do you have a girlfriend?...have to work on this one haha
anyway, went to karaoke again yesterday and spend the whole night in a cafe talking. interesting to talk to a korean who lived here for so long. kudos to him for enduring 4 drunk girls a whole night. and people, soju is a scary thing! me became to open and to direct. well, nothing to loose anyway.
and why are so many asian so good at karaoke? it was so embarrassing to sing in front of him since he is so damn good.

oh, and I had my had cut. the hairstylist was korean so my friend could translate for me. am super happy, the cut really looks asian, so different from german style and yet it is similar to the one I had before. only much better. love it. and the way he was cutting my hair was also pretty different. my first time a hairstylist didn't scratch my ears with the hairbrush.

then it comes to smogginess, today was the worst so far.
we had blue sky the whole week but today it suddenly turned grey. you could look at the sun without covering your eyes.
and to end the "perfect" day, me and Vali decided it was time to try the Durian fruit. you know this horrible smell you sometimes smell at the asian supermarkets? I am glad we decided to eat it on the street and not take to our apartment. this smell is on my cloths, in my nose, I still have the taste in my mouth. and yes, it tastes as bad as it smells. NEVER AGAIN!
one of the ickiest fruits ever.

chinese airforce at the summer palace

first a few more pictures of the Beijing opera excusrion, since Jenny's cam made better pictures




on this street was the first time I got a feeling of really being in china.





now about yesterday!
Mr. Rugby said they won the match!!! khm, ok, not this..

Yesterday we went to the Summer Palace since it is near our university and is supposed to be a good tourists spot. and it really is!
the place is piaoliang (漂亮 beautiful), but the best thing is....
YOU CAN RENT A BOAT!
so this is what we did! and it was really fun, especially the first half of an hour where our friends were pedaling hard hehe...the second half I had to pedal myself, less fun there..but still a really nice ride.
I think I don't need to comment on the pictures since they pretty much

speak for themselves:








and on the way back home Jenny was attacked by chinese airforce:

we counted about 30 wounds she carried..
I wasn't bitten even once hehe..I am happy my friends are more delicious


and to end this post some recently discovered chinglish on our bus

So many things happened and I totally had no time to blog about it and yeah, we had a small problem with not being able to go online for a few days already. internet suddenly turned off here..
well, once without internet one realizes how much free time there is. we spend the days sleeping and cooking. a few more days without internet and we would have started learning -.-#
a bunch of nerdy looking loud chinese guys just came and fixed it...YAAAY!

yesterday we managed to flood our living room. you don't even want to know how..


ok, now about the last week.

I've met up with my language partner, who is a super nice guy and really wants to help me with chinese. we went to Tian'an men and I finnaly could see this famous Mao poster...Tian'an men is huge, like really HUGE! and very..how do I put it...communistic!


well, the next day we went to see the new national theater.

it is also huge (everything in beijing seems to be huge, srly) and very modern and just simply amazing. afterwards we've seen some Hutongs (less fascinating I have to admit) and Laoshe's house:


Went to some chinese bars and a club. very nice indeed, even though pretty small..well, met Mr. Rugby there, can't complain.though he keeps calling me, I hate talking to chinese on the phone...not understanding nada.

The most beautiful thing so far was the Beijing Oper!
It is very loud, you don't understand much and it gets a bit boring a few times, but the costumes and make up a really worth watching it. especially the second part with acrobatics impressed us all. definitely a must for every tourist.








got a cold these days and had to buy some chinese medicine agains coughs.good thing, they should sell it in germany too.