November 2010 Archives

    November haul!

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It's about -20c already and it's snowing... It's gonna get even colder next month! But on the bright side, some of the view is quite pretty. Like the snowmen :D



It's pretty hilarious 'cause it's the freshmen's duty to shovel every time it snows, LOL. If only we had this back in Canada. I'd laugh at my sister..


Ok, so the funniest thing happened yesterday. During dinner, I get a random text that led to a 20 minute back-and-forth conversation that went a little something like this....

xx: 干嘛那 (What are you doing?)
Me: 没什么你是谁? (Not much, who are you?)
xx: 猜 (Guess)
Me: 猜不到! 我不可以打那么多汉字 你可以打英语吗?(Can't guess. I can't type a lot of Chinese, can you type in English?)
xx: 为什么不能打汉字啊 (Why can't you type in Chinese?)
Me: 因为我的汉语不流利 (My Chinese isn't fluent)
xx: 哈哈...不能吧 (Haha.. Impossible)
Me: 绝对。我会等你的回答 (It's true. I'll wait for your reply)
xx: 什么回答 (What reply?)
Me: 你的名字!哈哈 (Your name! Haha)
xx: 呵呵...你真的不知道我是谁啊 (Hehe... You really don't know who I am?)
Me: 对 你是学生或者。。。? (Yes. Are you a student or...?)
xx: 我不是学生 但是我已经很久不和你联系了 (I'm not a student. But I haven't communicated with you in a long time)
At this point, I'm like.. Extremely frustrated. So, I asked Dana to call the number pretending to be someone else. We find out that xx is a girl.
Me: 我真的不知道  不好意思 (I really don't know. Sorry)
xx: 哎! 还是告诉你吧 我李x 没想到吧 (Ai! I'll just tell you. I'm XX. You couldn't guess huh?)
Me: English name?
xx:? 不认识我嘛 (? You don't know me?)
Me: Sorry I don't remember Chinese names.
xx: 你不是李东阳嘛 (Aren't you Li Dongyang?)
Me: 你搞错了 我是 Joan,加拿大的外教 (You made a mistake. I'm Joan, a Canadian foreign teacher)
xx: 哦 不好意思 (Oh. Sorry)

So, that whole time, I had thought she was a guy flirting with me.. And her vice versa. How random, and what a waste of money! Hahaha.

Last week I took Katelyn to get our nails done! She got a gorgeous leopard print for 50rmb.


I added a fake tip so mine cost 60rmb. The quality is pretty good!




Last week was also Dana's birthday, so we went to her fave restaurant in the city :D


Pretty birthday cake~


Crappy cellphone pics with friends :D




Also did a lot of shopping these couple of weeks! These, my dear, are lighters. Cute?


A really cute mug! It's the first time I've ever bought a cup/mug.. But it was so cute! C'mon, it has a print of a camera. I had to.


A cute hair tie. When you wear it, it looks as if your hair is wrapped around your ponytail.


A cute lego calendar :) You set it up yourself every month, and the dates are shaped as a heart :)


I'm a huuuuge sucker for cute journals and notepaper.. So naturally I had to get a couple.


Domo-kun camera case! A bit late though, 'cause my camera is all scratched up already...


A cute pair of rainboots I ordered online! Unfortunately they don't fit around my legs, so I'm gonna have to give them to my sister -.-


Two cute cellphone cases a student bought me! I can't use the white case though because of my trypophobia.


A friend had gone to Korea for vacation so I asked her to bring back some Skinfood.. Omg it's so damn expensive in HK/China. She got me goodies from Skinfood & the Face Shop ;) Yay!


Also bought a lot of clothes... of course. A Super Mario hoodie!


An awesome "Math Sucks" shirt.


Saving the best for last... "Atheism, Communism, Free Love".


Remember the scarf from my last entry? Well I finished it :) It's my fave so far!


Currently working on a black version of it... Again, someone's Christmas present probably.






Ever since I came to Changchun, Jacky's been a real darling and has sent me postcards... five of them! So sweet :) Not to mention some ridiculous drawings too.. hahaha.


Pretty bad huh? Hahaha




In terms of school.. This week, I taught my students how to write resumes. Check out this one:


It was American Thanksgiving yesterday, so a bunch of my students sent me texts.. They are soo sweet!


♥♥♥

My students are so so so x1000 awesome. I'm gonna miss them so much! Luckily, I renewed my contract the other day, so I'll be here until June. Gonna travel a bit in January (Shanghai, Xi'an, Hong Kong & Macau!) before heading back to Canada for the winter holiday. So excited!!

Also....... I treated myself to an early birthday/Christmas present. It cost me a fortune, but I'm trying to think of it as an investment. I'll blog about it next time ;) We're gonna have a Thanksgiving potluck today. So excited!!

    A lot of shopping & knitting!

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I'm behind yet again, so this is gonna be a loaded post. A lot has happened this past month or so, but I'll try to be brief :D Anyway, so I used to love keitai, so I had a Toshiba 908A. It used to be a really pretty mirror phone but it died after two freakin' years (longest time I've ever had a phone). I tried covering up with bling but it looked worse.


I've been staving off the whole smart phone thing for as long as I can, but I needed a new phone and I didn't want an iPhone or Blackberry.. So, I got a Nokia E72i. I love it, it's so pretty!  It cost me $400, which is decent.


Since September, I had been tutoring two students, Julia and Steve. They had needed help in preparing for the in-school English speech contest, which took place last month.


Steve won first prize and represented our school in the provincial competition! :D


He didn't win the provincials, but we were all really proud of him :D It was his first speech contest and he did amazing!


Last month we also had a Halloween potluck at Ahmed's. It was awesome.. Amazing food!


Steve, Celeste & I made mashed potatoes.. Mmmm. I attempted to make instant curry but it did NOT turn out right at all so I scrapped it D:


A cute pumpkin that Ahmed carved LOL... and Dana cooking her 3rd dish of the night?


Ford, Whitley, Desiree, me & Taide :D


Ahmed & Ford with his beloved jack-o-lantern.


Ryan & Whitley... Love this pic!


Last week I took Katelyn to get eyelash extensions! It cost 120rmb and it includes a free refill. They claim it lasts up to a month.. We'll see about that.


A photo of me before the extensions.. Man, I haven't camwhored in a looong time.


Eyelashes after the extensions. No makeup and no Photoshop. I love it!


Photo of me after the extensions.. Excuse the bright flash.


Also got my nails diddd :) 60rmb.. The quality is just so-so though.


Annnnnnnnnnnd Steve & I got two hammies!!!! We were passing by a pet stall on campus and I randomly decided to get a pet. Anyway, meet Penny!! 


...and Lenny!! Guess who we named them after....?


Steve playing with them :D We sort of agreed to a joint custody kinda thing... Sort of....


Remember the scarf I started last last entry? Well here's the finished product... Excuse my face, too lazy to blur it out.


I also started a couple other ones. I'm INSANE. I've completed 4 scarves already this past month.


This one took me only 3 days... I'm crazy. Anyway, I like it a lot, but I think I'm gonna give it away for Christmas or something.


A new pattern I'm working with.


Another cable scarf :)


Whee, that wasn't so bad. Another update soon, I promise!

    "That's totally going in my blog!"

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So, I've been here for a good 3ish months now. During my time here so far, I've noticed some things that I've never seen back home as a student. These things might only apply to the city I'm in right now, but nevertheless I find some things really amusing. I feel a lot like Barney Stinson 'cause I'd see something amazing, take a photo and go.. "That's totally going in my blog!" Well, without further ado...

1. Cutely packaged everything
Seriously! I've seen cutlery wrapped in plastic at least 5 times already. I don't get it.. Why? Aside from it looking.. cute? It's so bad for the environment! :(


This is milk, in a plastic-ish bag! I finally found a place outside Ontario that sells milk in plastic bags!


Heinz ketchup :D Katelyn loves ketchup and when we actually found legitimate ketchup (pretty rare I tell ya), she was so excited! We found it in a really cute squeeze-me bottle.


2. Using tape as white-out
Most of my students use regular tape as white-out. You basically apply the tape and then rip it off the paper quickly... It's pretty creative, though I personally prefer using the regular kind we have back home.


3. Girls holding hands everywhere all the time
Call me ignorant, but I was pretty taken back when I saw girls holding hands everywhere... To classes, back to their dorms, on the street. Back home, it's common to see girls linking arms, but holding hands is usually off-limits. Apparently it's pretty normal here as a sign of friendship. I've done it a couple times and it's feeling more and more natural now, haha.


5. Interesting delicacies
I thought eating dog meat was just a stereotype that people have of Chinese people. However, in the city I'm at now, it is actually really common. Mind you, not everyone eats it, but I have seen dog meat shops downtown. The Korean restaurant on campus sells dog meat too.

Our boss took Ahmed & I to a restaurant where you can choose whatever "seafood" you wanted to have. We saw turtles and huuuge toads...


...and whatever these are. These things remind me of the Worms video game... Our boss asked us if we wanted to try it. We kindly refused. Maybe next time!

6. Seat warmers
I find this really cute too. A lot of my female students would bring these little seat warmers to all their classes.


7. Take-out in plastic bags!
Back home, we have take-out in white styrofoam boxes. But here, no matter what you order, they give it to you in little plastic bags.


Well, that's it for now! I hope you found these as interesting as I did. I do get easily amused though, I admit ;) I've been pretty these days.. My boss gave me two extra classes to teach, so I teach a total of 17 classes each week now. It's double the workload of most foreign language teachers, so it's not easy. But I'm a workaholic, so... We'll see how it goes!