My Weekend

I had a really fun weekend, probably the best weekend I have had in Beijing yet, and it s a good thing because after coming back from my wonderful trip to Hong Kong I have had a hard time readjusting to my student lifestyle in Beijing. On Friday, I was really craving pizza so I went to a restuarant called "Big Pizza" with my friends Lucy, Liam and Johannes. It was an all you can eat place, sort of like a Chinese version of Souplantation. It was...interesting. The pizza was NOT like what I had been envisioning. The crust was soft and doughy even on the bottom. They did have an interesting sweet pizza with cream brushed on top of the pizza crust and sliced pears on top of that. It was good only because the crust was so soft and dougy that it was like a cake almost. There was also a salad bar and a soft ice cream machine, just like a souplantation. It cost 38 rmb, which is about 5 bucks and is very expensive by Chinese standards, but we had a lot of fun and stayed for 4 hours! Eventually they told us to leave.

Saturday night I went to a party that my friend Johannes had gotten a flyer for. Foreigners could go for free but Chinese people had to pay. We walked in and there was loud music blaring and a bunch of Chinese girls sitting in chairs in a ring around a dance floor. The lights were out and there was a colored disco ball going. It was hilarious! All of us foreigners were separtated and as soon as I sat down there was an eager cluster of Chinese girls around me. Two of them were very nice and I am supposed to meet them for dumplings on Tuesday night. They were pretty funny, and kept telling me I was "hen piaoliang" (very pretty). From there I went out to some clubs with a few people from my class but my previous suspicions were confirmed: the nightlife in Beijing is not good. There are huge clubs but they play cheesy music and no one there quite knows what to do. It is like they are excited to have clubs and nightlife, but it is very new to them maybe and they haven't exactly figured out how to have a more sophisticated, subtle bar and club scene. I am not sure if that makes sense...Anyway, I have decided that I will save the nightlife for Hong Kong and enjoy the other aspects of Beijing. For instance, the funny party I went to with all the Chinese girls. Anyway, life in China is just on an earlier schedule than other places. People get up early and go to sleep early, even on the weekends. People are done with dinner by six and everything is quiet by 9.

Sunday morning I taught English to the little girls at the Haidian Children's School. Every weekend I say I am going to quit, but every Sunday I enjoy it so much that I say I will just do one more week. I love it, it is so much fun! The students are attentive and interested, and we read passages from books and discuss them. I am surprised by how much I enjoy it. The thing I don't like is the school administration, they are completely unorganized and they frustrate me. Plus, I don't like waking up early on Sunday mornings. If Matt and I come back to Beijing, I think I will try to teach full time.