Busy Bee

Hello my darlings!

Christmas, China.

Today an update on what's been keeping me busy these days. Thought you might want to know what my time is occupied with when I'm not out exploring.

Recently I've been spending a lot of time with my academic supervisor rehearsing for...a speech competition. Remember that time when Thomas was here and I dragged him to one? Turns out, that was but the first round and I now have to go on to participate in the province-wide competition. Now let me tell you something about speech competitions in China. The word for this kind of contest is 演讲比赛, "act-tell-competition". Meaning that not only do you have to tell a story, you also have to act it out. We'll see how that goes for me. For now, cross your fingers on the 16th.

Apart from that I've also been rehearsing for a concert on the 12th. Yes, you read correctly, a concert. I'm singing again :) Basically, my roommate is an amazing singer and is now leading a little a-capella group. 8 girls, all also amazing. (Just the way they are, you can guess what song we're currently rehearsing) Also, my roommate took part in a singing contest recently, of course a lot of our classmates came to cheer her on. Afterwards we got some beer, some snacks (2,50 Euros per person), and had an awesome room party. Let me at this point just say, that I love Korean drinking games. Also Koreans.

Other than that, I can now borrow books from the university library. Of course I promptly used that ability to get two books on how to teach English. Remember that Bachelor thesis that I have to write at some point in the future? Yeah, me neither. Anyway, I would really like to write it on teaching methods that are used here. Hence the research. So far I've made it through one chapter, hilariously filled with quotes by Marx and on Marx. ("Did you know Marx was great at language learning? Would you like to learn from him?")

What else do I do? Mainly eat. We went to a great Indian restaurant yesterday. I really missed that food. Also sometime last week we went to a restaurant that promised to bring all the food you ordered within 25 minutes. They even had an hourglass there. If it ran out before all the food came, dinner was free. They made it in time.

"We promise to bring you a table full of good food within 25 minutes."

My first semester here is almost over, exams are at the end of December and then it's time to TRAVEL! Hope you're all well and enjoying Christmas. Love to you all!

Chinese Word of the Day: 圣诞树 shengdanshu, Christmas tree.

Also, here are a few strange and wonderful things.

This morning. Beautiful.

Actual trashcan.

Another cool one.

And another one.

We went down to the river anyway.

And it was not there. Like so many rivers in China.

Random? But I do think it frames the tree behind it quite nicely.

Who knew there was a wormhole from Shaolin temple to Estonia...

Sadly, we were not adopted here.

I have a lot of love for English translations on Chinese signs.