It's been a while... Since I last signed on, a few things have happened. From Hangzhou, Olli & I took the train back up to Beijing and yes, it was more than 16 hours... I was glad that Olli had given me a pair of earplugs earlier, as once again I was lucky enough to have a big-time snorer sleeping nearby. Other than that, the trip for me wasn't too bad and went quite quickly. We had stoked up on fatty snacks (enough to feed a family of 6 for a week) so when i wasn't sleeping, i entertained myself by eating. Olli, on the other hand, wasn't doing all that well. He still had an upset stomach, was coughing, and his fever was getting higher. So, we scrapped the original plan of staying in Beijing for a few days to see the sights, and instead took the taxi from the central train station where we arrived across town to the west station, and bought tickets for the next train to Baoding.

Once in Baoding, Olli's fever was still getting higher, but I didn't realize quite how much higher. I was almost ready to send him off to bed to sleep it off, but though that I should call someone to let them know that we're back and that he's ill, and take us to the doctor if it was needed. Finally, I managed to get hold of Gu Jun Tao, a sweet & helpful student of mine who originally helped us with the travel arrangements, and he told me to take Olli's temperature. Turned out it was 39,7C, which meant that we were off immediately to the little campus hospital. There, they put him on IV (as he'd thrown up and they were worried any medication given orally might not stay in), which lasted through the night. My job was to stay up and keep an eye on the drip-drip-drip, and let the nurse know when it was time to change to a new bottle so I made a quick dash home to grab a thermos of coffee and some magazines and with those I made it through the night, and so did Olli. In the morning, his fever was down though I guess the illness itself was still there. We don't even know what they gave him, but it might have just been glucose or something, with no actual medicinal effects.

So, we hung out in Baoding for a couple of more days, and then made our way up to Beijing for one day. We didn't get to see everything we'd planned, but we did get to go to the Forbidden City on a wonderfully bright, sunny day - and of course do some shopping and eat some good food. Being in Beijing really is like being abroad, there is such a variety of things (compared to Baoding anyhow...) and just such a nice feel to the city overall. I really felt the difference to Shanghai. I don't even know what it is about Beijing that I like so much, I normally would not be attracted to place like that : a huge place with people, people, people, long distances to justabout anywhere, wide roads all across the city, everything scattered around... But still, there is something about the place - can't wait to get back again :)

After Olli hopped in a taxi to the airport, I met up with Audrey Swift, an American woman who is working as a regional delegate at the Red Cross Red Crescent in Beijing, on HIV/AIDS. She had a lot of interesting things to tell about the work they are doing and on the HIV/AIDS situation in China in general and the people's attitudes. God, I really wish I could somehow land a job in that field, it's something that I really do feel passionate about. Teaching has not been too bad, I definitely made the right choice by coming here this year, but it's not something I want to continue forever. I just should kick myself into really actively starting to look for something for next autumn. In the international organisations, it can easily take a year from your application until you even get the job -- that is if you are incredibly lucky.

But for now it's a wonderfully easy life back in Baoding. Griselle has been ill as well, and the trains (and especially the train stations!!) are an absolute chaos anyway, as literally everyone in the country is travelling somewhere, so we decided to postpone our travelling until February. And even then, I think we are going to Beijing instead of Dalian for a couple of reasons. Really looking forward to that, actually :) But right now I'm totally content filling my days with DVDs, lunches with students, shopping, long walks and so on... The weather has been gorgeous and the air actually breathable for a few days now. Today, Griselle and me spent the whole day out in the town, shopping, getting her hair done, eating lunch & dinner... I could get used to this kind of life!! Tomorrow I'm meeting Gu Jun Tao (and his wife, I think) for some more shopping and lunching, and will probably be going out to Nongfu at night with some people. This will go on until the 20th, when I'm off to Shijiazhuan for the Spring Festival.

I know I've really been feeling so incredibly lazy that I've fallen rather behind on my e-mails though you might expect me to be catching up on them now that I have nothing much to do - but I guess that's it's just making me sooo lazy that I don't even feel like swithing my computer on every day (and that's saying a lot for a geek like me). But I promise to be a good girl and do something about that *very* soon. At the same time, I'll make an effort to stop just listing all the things I've done and actually write something more interesting soon, start better observing what's going on around me.

I hope everyone's been enjoying the holidays and has had a good start to the new year.

Funny actually, that after paying attention to the absense of net cafes in all the cities that we went to during the trip, coming back to Baoding reminded of the three net cafes that are there on my street alone (and it's really not a long one!).

Oh, and one more thing: I bought a digital camera a couple of days ago, a Minolta Dimage X20 , (ok, I can't see if that link actually will come up or not...) so expect to get a picure-book version of the blog in the future, I don't think I can actually post pics on this site but I'll set up a photo gallery and give a link to it in the blog whenever I add some picture. Yahey for technology!!