Again a week has passed before I even noticed. So many things to write about, will do my best to describe at least a few of the things that happened over the past seven days. Now that my evening classes are on tuesdays and wednesdays, mondays are my precious days just about all to myself, with just a two-hour class in the morning and Chinese class in the afternoon, the rest of it is Elina-time :)

But I'll start with the weekend... On friday, after a busy day and too little sleep, I met up with one of my evening class students, Vivian (or Shuan-shuan [sp?] or Wei-wei...many names for the girl) and a classmate of hers Yuan-yuan, to take the train the Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province where I was invited to spend the weekend with her family. The train ride takes about an hour and twenty minutes, with cheesy Chinese music playing in the background all the way. We got there around 8 p.m. and walked to a hotel near the train station. Vivian's family is seriously rich, her dad works for the provincial government and her mum is a departmental manager in the Agricultual Bank of China in Shijiazhuang, and the treatment was equal to their wealth, I suppose. First of all, they wouldn't hear of me staying at their flat (which is big enough but doesn't have enough beds for everyone...) so all of us three girls were put up at this 4-star hotel for the weekend, I had a room to myself and the other two shared one between them. This thing alone cost them more than 2000 yuan! Just in comparison, my monthly salary is 3500 yuan, without the pay for extra classes...

Anyway, that first night we had dinner at the hotel restaurant with the parents and an uncle, the mother's brother, and his daughter, another Yuan-yuan (or Cindy...her English name). After dinner, we went over to the family's flat, to eat more (as you do) and just to sit down and chat for a while. Of course, none of the adults in the family speak any English, but I had good translators.

On saturday morning, after breakfast at the hotel, we headed out to the country side with the girls, the parents and the uncle. We had two cars, and chauffeurs for them both...travelling in style. The destination was the Cangyan mountain about an hour and twenty minutes' drive away. This was the first time that I actually had the chance to see the countryside close-up, with the little villages and mountains and fields of winter wheat (growing green at the moment), so although I was dead tired, I had my nose glued to the car window. To get to the top of the mountain, we took this didgy cable car, with tiny little cars that fit two people, I have to admit that it was rather scary, especially as they just started the whole thing for us, as it's not the tourist season so nobody else was around. But we made it to the top alive and what a place it was!! First of all, the air was sooo clean, just breathing it I swear it tasted like honey! After being in the polluted cities for over a month, I guess I had gotten used to the continuous pollution to a degree, but it's only when we first got out of the car at Cangyan that I realised how bad it had been! All the cities seem to be covered in this constant white fog, being in Baoding I really haven't seen a clear sky once.

Anyway, this mountain had quite a few Buddhist temples, some of them well over a thousand years old. The scope of Chinese history still blows my mind sometimes, all these ancient buildings around *everywhere*. The buildings themselves were beautiful, with statues and paintings and everything, and of course the architechture in itself is amazing, combined with this gorgeous landscape, it's hard to describe it all. And what's best, it was quiet and peaceful, no other people around... If any of you have seen the film 'Crouching tiger, Hidden dragon', remember the bit where the girl jumps over this bridge that's spread over a gorge, between two mountains? That's where we went, except that in reality there's a little temple just behind that bridge, which must have been digitally edited out of the film. We walked all the way down the mountain, little paths and stairs, hearing stories of the places and the rocks and the trees, it was really something.

Lunch was back in Shijiazhuang, and not just any lunch, a huuuuge big lunch, though I was still stuffed from breakfast. The most special dish was these huge fish heads, cooked with chili and herbs, apparently a real speciality. Other than that, it was various vegetable dishes, great great yummy stuff. And some other weirder stuff like 'fish lungs', as I was told, though I thought fish didn't even have lungs...

In the afternoon, we visited another big Buddhist temple, the Longxing temple in a nearby county. This place had the most incredible statues of Buddha, apparently the biggest in china in fact, or so I'm told anyway. I guess all this is something that really can't be described here, it wouldn't do it justice if I tried. On the way back, we went to this pingpong training centre, which I hear is famous for training various Chinese and world champions, they even told me that the Finnish national team comes to train there. The highlight of this visit was that when we were watching some of the people play, I was actually hit by a pingpong ball right in the middle of my head. I bet they aimed at me on purpose.

And then, dinner. Basically, the whole weekend was about food food food and more food. This time we had more people and even more food than before. At this point I was really struggling as I still felt the breakfast and lunch, like I had just had them 5 minutes before, but I have to admit that once again it was great. And once again everyone kept telling me how impressed they were by my chopstick skills, haha.

Yesterday, on sunday, we got up early again (Chinese people have a habit of doing that..) and this time headed over to Vivian's family's home for breakfast. The most interesting item in the menu this time was bugs. And I'm not talking about some tiny little worms, no, these ones were the size of my thumb. I don't know what they are exactly, but they told me that they hatch in the ground and live there for a few months before crawling out and up to the trees, and that they go dif for them when they are in the ground. I tried one, but that was it, the taste was quite good actually, but just the thought....ewww...and the way they looked... thankfully, there were ten other dished too... One thing that Chinese people have at most meals, including breakfast, is soup, which is something that is different from our Western ways. And the soup always comes at the end of the meal, at this particular breakfast it was corn soup with sweet potatoes. The funny thing is that everything else is always really tasty, but they soup is like water, with no salt or anything else.

After breakfast, we has time to go to a shopping centre for about an hour, just walking around looking at all sorts of girly things, before we went over to Vivian's grandparents' apartment for lunch (i know..eateateat). I had told them that I'd love to learn to make dumplings so this was on the menu (as they were at all the other meals that weakend, actually, but this time home-made). And yeah, I learned how to make them, at least I started to learn, kneading the dough into small round bits and then filling them up and pinching them closed, just that the ones that I made didn't quite come out looking right, but what the heck, they tasted the same, I'll keep on practising. In fact, the family invited me over for Spring Festival (i.e. the Chinese New Year), and I said I'd be happy to go, so it'll be a full night of making dumplings before that, plenty of time to practise...

All in all the weekend was great, the family was being amazingly nice and waay too generous, they showered me in presents and compliments, and I only brought them a little box of chocolates... but i think they were being genuine and I'll be happy to go back for the festival. But I have to say I definitely ate more than a week's worth in two days... they even gave us a huge bag of snacks for the one-hour train ride back...

Last thursday, I finally had the chance to stay all the way through for my PhD students' weekly thursday dinner party, as I had no class, and I had a great time. We went to this restaurant in Baoding called 'The Golden Chopsticks', had a big fat dinner, dranks lots of beer, played drinking games, especially with this bloke 'Bruce' (who my students say should now be called Lose, as he kept on losing, maybe on purpose, to be able to drink more...). Made my way back on the bicycle anyway... had Bruce call and check up on me later, though. However, he didn't make it to class the following day, which gave the rest of us a good laugh.

The chinese restaurants in themselves are interesting in the way that they are laid out. All of them have many rooms of different sizes, so instead of actually eating out in the main dining room or hall (which they also have), most people get one of these rooms, the size depending on the number of the people, and have their dinner in private. This is what we've been doing in most of the restaurants I've been to.

On friday morning, I went over to the West campus of the university, to give a little speech to the English majors there. The AUH Baoding is divided into two parts, the main campus, where I'm based, and the West campus, about 10 minutes on the bus from here. I had promised Alan that I'd come and talk to some students about learning English, and in the end it turned out to be this big occasion with more than 200 students there, all applouding me after everything I said (just popping my head in the door at first they gave me this huge applause, kinda scared me at first!!). But it wasn't as bad as I though it might be, though I was dead tired from the night before, but having all those people and performing my English teacher act for them really woke me up!

Another thing that I have to mention is the class that I had on wednesday, as it was quite funny, really. In the morning class we watched the film 'Erin Brockowich' and I was prepared to use the afternoon classes to talk about the new words and expressions and discuss the themes of the film, but ended up having my students asking me to explain to them all the swear words and dirty expressions that they keep hearing in English speaking films, and as they are all adults (in fact I think I'm the youngest in the class), I said that if they really want to then that's what they shall get. So one by one, we went over varioud swear words, and they were being good students as ever, writing it all down and asking me further questions. I won't write all the stuff I taught them here but you can use your imagination...

One last thing to mention, at the end of this long ramble, is the cabbage. Apparently, this time of year is when people in northern China stock up on Chinese cabbage for the winter. In the old days, this was just about the only vegetable people had available over the winter, as the climate here is pretty much like Northern Europe. And still, even though these days the markets sell a variety of vegetables all year around, the cabbage sellers are now going around, farmers on their donkey-pulled carts or little three-wheeled vehicles, with stacks of cabbage piled behind them. And people buy them in stacks, too, and leave them in neat rows outside of their houses. I'm not actually sure how they are supposed to stay good over the winter, I asked if they are drying them, but was told that they'll just leave them outside. And true enough, also the building in the Zhuguang district are now lined with rows of Chinese cabbage, including just outside my front door. I'm wondering how long thay will stay there...we'll see if it will really be all through the winter. But I must admit I like wathing those little old men going around on the carts, with the donkeys, taking cabbage to the whole of Baoding.

But now, time to figure out something to do for tomorrow morning's class...