I had crab for lunch today.  it's not the easiest thing to eat with chopsticks,  especially when it's still in the shell.  I think it's given me the shits,  which serves me right for saying hello to my meal and giving it a voice before they cooked it.

beijing was fun.  I was supposed to get there for midday to meet Jessica to go shopping.  I woke up to a text from her at 11am - 'hi,  are you nearly here yet?'.  obviously I wasn't,  so after dragging my ass out of bed I started out on the quest to the capital.

tangshan bus/train station is not too far from my school,  but for some reason I decided I'd take the bus - mainly because I was just up and feeling lazy and a ticket is 10p.

this is where the hilarity started.

I'm used to people staring at me,  especially here where I've only ever seen one other westerner (that was in mcdonalds,  and I stared too).  I'm used to people giggling and whispering 'lǎowài' (alien) when they see me.  I hate it,  but I'm almost used to having my photo taken constantly.

at the bus-stop,  I got all of this from one rather camp and extremely excited young man.  after trying to speak to me,  and me saying 'wǒ bùnéng shuō hànyǔ' (I don't speak chinese - quite an ironic phrase to be saying in chinese) a lot of times,  he just cracked open his camera and the photoshoot began.  then,  giving his camera over to his friend,  he proceeded to pose around me - lots of thumbs-upping,  peace-signing and stroking of my arm hair.  I was close to screaming at him to fuck off,  but the bizzareness of the whole situation and the sheer joy it was giving to him and the other people at the bus stop softened me up slightly.

then,  thankfully the bus came.  saved by the 119!  not so,  because photoboy and his friend got on the bus too.  he'd seen me using my phone to text jessica,  and was miming at me to give him my number (sometimes not speaking the language is so useful for pleading pure ignorance about everything).  I was horrified when he got off the same stop as me,  showed me his train ticket to beijing,  and tried to get me to follow him.  luckily for me,  the bus that goes to beijing was outside the station - so I made a break for it.

the bus was uneventful,  apart from the guy next to me who kept farting.  but everything smells bad here,  so it didn't really make too much difference.

then beijing.  the bus drops me off at some random road which is quite near to beijing railway station,  so I thought I'd buy my train ticket while I was in the area.  might as well quickly sort out my return transportation.

'quickly'.  ha.

beijing central train station is HUGE.  properly big.  you get a crick in your neck if you try to look at the top of it,  even from a distance.  beijing west train station is even bigger.  I don't think I've seen it,  but then it's so big I must've done - my brain just probably couldn't process the amount of information that the image would have.

I love the woman at the information desk in beijing central train station.  both times I've been there,  it's been the same woman.  she sits behind a desk,  but not a glass partition - she's literally a foot away,  so you could touch her if you wanted to - not that you would.  she doesn't look at you,  ever - so you're never sure if it's okay to ask her a question.  when you finally do,  she still doesn't look at you,  but pushes a button on the desk and speaks into a microphone - which is connected to a speaker next to her head.  you get her voice in stereo - one side actually out her mouth,  the other side from the speaker.  genius.

this time when I asked her where I should go to get my ticket,  she rolled her eyes,  pushed the button on the desk - and pointed.  I could hear the click of the button through the speaker.

so I followed the direction of her finger,  and found myself at 'train ticket office'.  after a lot of confusion,  I figured out that 'train ticket office' is not the office where you go to buy train tickets - but the office you take your train ticket back to if it turns out to be wrong.  I was then pointed to the 'train tickets for the tianjin area' booth - only to find that they didn't sell tickets either.

now,  this is the best part about china - if you stand about and look confused enough for long enough,  someone will offer to help you.  my knight in shining polyester rocked up,  introduced himself as 'tiger',  and led me down to the ticket office that actually sells tickets.  what a dreamboat.

then off to dongsishitiao to meet jessica.  we checked into our hostel room (which had a fake wall along one side so they could put a window in,  looking out onto...a wall,  random),  went to the candy cafe ('hum sandwich - 25RMB'),  then went back to the room to drink cheap tins of lager and wait for the others.  by 9pm the others hadn't turned up,  so we headed out to sanlitun,  bumped into a few people,  then headed over to houhai to play table football in the manchester bar and drink 10RMB rum and cokes.  nice.

this is where things get a bit blurry.  we ended up back in sanlitun,  and back in bar blue - where,  again,  'YMCA' was played twice - back to back.  apparently by this point I kept telling people I was a 'walking boner',  and not to talk to me because they were giving me a 'raging stauner'.  eek.

and then back to the hostel.  saturday was a bit of a write off,  but it was fun to hang about and not really do anything until my train back to tangshan.  kinda gutted I had to leave,  but never mind.

then the four hour class today.  I was so nervous about sleeping in that I didn't nod off until 4am,  and woke up at 715am - that annoying situation when it's too late to get ready properly,  but not late enough to not bother getting ready at all.  when I got to my classroom they were already there,  sitting waiting for me.  they didn't even ask me how beijing was,  bastards.  I'm glad I didn't buy them presents now.

but luckily they had a reading exam which no-one told me about,  and I gave them 45 minutes worth of breaks in total,  so I only really saw them for an hour and a half.  they don't remember anything,  it is a nightmare.  ella gave me an orange,  which was nice of her - I didn't have the heart to tell her that I am terrified of pith.

I ♥ BJ!  and I ♥ my new tshirt!  (I also ♥ that by coincidence it's photo69 from my camera.)  it's not quite as good as jessica's 'take off your shiny tights' tshirt,  but they didn't have it in my size.  boo.

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