Beijing Zoo

My little brother came to Beijing for a 2 weeks, as good tourists went to check the Zoo for Pandas etc animals. The Zoo is a huge park, too huge. You have to walk for a long time to find any animals here. Finlands Korkeasaari beats this place by far...less walking.

I found a way out on my roof by going up to the 15th floor and breaking out of a window, this way the roof is accessible! View here is great, only place here with absolutely NO people. Pictures added!

Another weekend

On saturday there was a glamour party at a huge club called Vicks in Beijing, went there with suits and dresses, they even had a biiiiig red carpet and a huge limo by the door. Only bad thing was that the music was so loud that it was only possible to stay inside for 20 minutes at a time, after that we had to go out and take some fresh air...

This sunday i went out eating with a lot chinese, the dinner was really awesome and the restaurant very nice. In chinese tradition the most important person is always sitting in the middle of the table facing the door. The person who has his back to the door is the one who is paying for the dinner, this time i was the one sitting with my back to the door but those rules didn't apply this time. After the dinner we went to have Karaoke in quite a big room and i sang a chinese song about 2 weird tigers. One chinese guy devoted some chinese army song to me, was a great night.

Glad morsdag mamma!! Love you!!

Chinese is hard as nails 最难的语言， 汉语！

Dozens of people from the country side moves into bigger cities like Beijing in hope of a better life. They walk around inside subways, in the street and other unexpected places and sell stuff. Normally it's newspapers or some car appliances like this guy here on the picture. Salary for people on the country side is under 1 euro a day. By selling things on the street in bigger cities they can probably make 10 euros a day. I keep wondering where they all live?

Now 5 reasons why you shouldn't start studying Chinese:

1. They have 4 tones in the language, saying a word can mean 4 different things
2. The characters! They look really damn cool but damn it takes so long to remember them 哎呀，汉字有太多！
3. Some words are spoken the same way but they sometimes means different thing without any further logic
4. Grammar is messed up or at least totally different from english, finnish or swedish....
5. In general chinese people speak very fast and it's hard to understand anything in the first months. And when Beijingnese people speak 北京话 (beijing local dialect) it doesent really make it easier to understand....nöööööup

But if your in for a challenge,chinese is the perfect choice!

Seat stealer

Some jerk got this great idea to steal Hyans seat from her bike, i mean what the f***? Why not just take the whole thing instead？ We usually keep the bike inside the apartment for "extra" safety but i guess this extra safety only works as a disadvantage...哎呀！

Todays exam went really well, i guess i'll pass it, was only a few hundred characters in it...only.

Wodaokou AKA home

Some pictures from home, it's 32 degrees here now and sunny everyday, welcome to China brother!

Regular traffic outside in the morning, forget the hangover driving!

Mondays...

The sauna got busted at the gym, guess the made in Finland oven wasn't that great after all. I also lost my key at the gym, had to get the janitor to cut the lock of with these huge pinchers. This week i have 3 exams, one written, one spoken, one listening. Hope to pass :)

Funny chinese phrase
我常常去长城和尝尝茶和唱歌
In letters: wo chang chang qu cheng chang he chang chang he chang ge
This means: i often go to the great wall to taste some tea and sing a song

Chinese Wedding

Today i attended my first chinese wedding! The wedding ceremonies in China begins at the brides house. The bride is locked in her own room at her parents house with her best friends. The groom has to convince the brides friends that he really loves the her by shouting i love you and other nice things and handeling money into the room to the brides friends. If he performs well he will be let into the room and then he has to find the brides shoes. After some shoe searching it's time to head to the restaurant where a huge dinner is held. A lot of fireworks are used outside the brides home and the restaurant, really loud ones!
In the restaurant there are some ceremonies with pictures of the couple when they were young etc, little similar to Finland and then some jokes. Only this time the jokes were on me also because, suprice suprice i was the only foreigner there. So there i stood with about 200 chinese around me with a microphone talking some random things in chiense and this one guy kept making jokes about me...Was interesting and the food was awesome!