Games, or Study?

It's Friday, and the last day of having to be bored in a flat.

I literally stayed inside the whole day. That's not really the kind of thing you'd expect to happen if in a place like Beijing but yes, it did.. :/

Tanya, Charlotte and Ibby went to the police station to register for a form of temporary residence. Actually, they were meant to do that within 24hours of arriving within the country since they were going to live in a building off campus. They were away for much longer than expected. It turned out that they had actually broken the law because they didn't register, so they had to copy out some lengthy paragraph in Chinese, without even knowing what they were writing. And then the police finally gave them the form of temporary residence.

In the mean time, Beth, Ibby's brother, and I were stuck in the apartment because all the keys had been taken by the other three, so had we left the place, we wouldn't have been able to get back in. So Beth sat at the table studying or doing something involving writing Chinese characters, and I attempted to study, but didn't get too far. I ended up playing Fruit Ninja on Ibby's brother's phone, as well as Mario Kart. And then I just slept on the sofa until everyone came home.

In the evening we went out for dinner; went back to the dumpling place where we ate with Adam and Dominic and ordered pretty much the same food as last time because it was so good. We then wandered the streets for a good hour, before taking the subway home.

Fatty Foreigner.

Yet another lazy day. Didn't get up until about 11:00. I decided to have a shower but then noo!! Ibby and her brother came round because Ibby was finally moving her stuff into the apartment. So then I was stuck in the shower and had to wait for her brother to disappear off into Ibby's room before I could come out and get changed. :S I guess it's a good thing they're both Moslems though cos it means they understand the situation and we don't have to bother going through a massive explanation to explain stuff.

Anyway, yea, had to wait for the new cooker to arrive (which came at about 14:00) and then Tanya, Beth, Charlotte and I went out to have lunch at Pizza Hut. I kinda splurged out and had pretty much a three course meal. And earned the name of "Fatty Foreigner". But since it was a late lunch, and quite a big one at that, it meant I wasn't hungry for dinner, so kind of saving money I guess?

Blue Coloured Fizzy Drink

Crispy Fried Squid (Starters)

Seafood Supreme Pizza (Main)

Strawberry Ice Cream Cake Dessert

After Pizza Hut, we went next door to Wu Mart and spent a surprising hour and a half in there. Most of that time was spent looking at a load of children's books, pens, and writing books. I ended up buying the whole set of some children's book - 9 in a set, each book was only 3.8yuan. Bargain me thinks. :D

My Study Books

Got back to the apartment at about 20:00, and it ended up being quite an early night for me. I'm not sure why but I was pretty shattered. I fell asleep at 20:30 on the sofa, but then woke up again at 22:10, to which I was then pretty much wide awake until just gone midnight.

To my surprise/ luckily for me, as I logged into my computer at 00:00, Mumtathil skyped me and I got to see Zayan again. Woohoo~ He wasn't doing much, just slobbing on the sofa staring at the laptop. About three minutes later though, our apartment had a power cut and I lost internet connection. Aaah, talk about bad timing. But it came back again after like 5 minutes which was lucky. So I gotta Skype with Mumtathil and Zayan again for like 20minutes.

That was pretty much the whole day though. Not much happened again... :/

Boooring.

Aaah, so bored. Such a boring day.

Ibby and her brother came today and all we did was stay inside sorting out this darn apartment.

As Charlotte was having problems transferring money over to her Chinese account and getting money out of a travelcard she bought with her, she was stuck on the phone pretty much all day phoning the banks in England and her parents.

The rest of us just had a massive day of cleaning and tidying up the place - although I guess just a quarter of the day for me cos I just slept and lazed around for the most of it. :P

We got on to cleaning up the last sofa though, which I did half of. I would've done more but it was so hot cos I couldn't take off my scarf since Ibby's brother was here.

Anyway at about 19:30 we went off to the shops (Wu Mart again) as they made a long list of things that needed to be bought urgently for the apartment. Since I'm not gonna be staying here, there wasn't really much for me to do. So I was just mega bored the whole time. I'm an adventurous person who needs some excitement in my life!! I was expecting to go to the Summer Palace today but because of the apartment, we stayed inside the whole time. D<

After shopping, we went to the next door Pizza Hut. We got ourselves two medium sized vegetable pizzas, and one cheese pizza between the four of us (Ibby, her brother, Beth and me) and Tanya got spaghetti. We also got a takeaway vegetable pizza for Charlotte as she couldn't come because of the whole money problem.

So yea, that was our day. BORING!!!

One After Another.

Whoaaa, what a day we had. Or rather, what a morning we had. It was ridiculous. Actually, I found the whole thing pretty entertaining and hilarious.

At 13:00, a resident from upstairs came knocking on our flat and started talking a load of Chinese. We had absolutely no idea what she was on about but after a while, in turned out that she was complaining about a load of noise she heard the past few nights, and she thought either we might've been the ones making the noise, or that we might've known where the noise was coming from. It wasn't us and no, we didn't know where it was coming from either, since we too had been hearing loud noises coming from the hallway - around midnight the other day, we got pretty scared as we heard some monster'ish noises coming from outside our door.

Anyway, in the end, the upstairs resident understood we weren't the noisy ones, and instead she started talking about how she had a granddaughter who could speak a tiny bit of English, and asked if we would help look after her, teach her English and cook for her or something. Not too sure what she was on about but we know she mentioned about having a granddaughter in her flat upstairs. So we said we'd help.

The lady went away and about 10minutes later she came back with her 8year old granddaughter.

After hanging around for a bit, the lady wanted to go back as she had stuff to do but unfortunately, the front door wouldn't open. Our flat has two doors, one is just like any other door, and then in front of that is another door which is made of metal (looks a bit like a prison door), and is the safety lock door as it's impossible to try open it without the actual key. Anyway, this metal door somehow jammed, yet we didn't understand why since it was working fine earlier. Tanya and the lady tried to push it open but it just wouldn't budge. The next door neighbours (the old lady and her grandson) came out and tried to help but the door still wouldn't move.

It took around 15minutes before we were set free. In the mean time, I just hanged around with the 8year old girl, who was running around the place saying how our flat was bigger than hers, and then comparing the two. I found out her English name is Angel, and her Chinese name is Lan Yun Yang 兰云扬 (although she said that's meant to be a secret). I also asked if I could take a picture of her, but she was too shy and started hiding. I guess I'll have to try again next time.

So once the door was open, the neighbours started analysing the door which got jammed, trying to figure out what exactly happened earlier. But whilst they were doing that, we got welcomed with another surprise. The new washing machine arrived!! We thought this was gonna be a good thing - it meant we'd be able to wash all our clothes and finally have clean stuff to wear again. But no. Because these people were just Amazon delivery men, they were just there to drop it off. But they did unbox it and put it in the bathroom for us.. Leaving the bathroom in a rather unusual state... :/

As you can see, the old washing machine has been placed directly under the shower, so no shower for us...

Once the delivery men, and all the neighbours left, Ibby and her brother arrived about 2minutes later. They were so lucky that they just missed all the fuss and worry.

We then discovered that there was nowhere to plug the new washing machine in since it was a three-pin plug, and the old one was a two-pin plug. There was only one three-pin plug in the bathroom and that was for the hot water. So Charlotte sent an angry email to the landlady explaining how the state of the apartment was not up to standards, and gave a list of all the things which needed moving or replacing, and that the flat seriously needed a proper clean.

Beth and I then explored off to BNU, as we were going to go to the Bank of China to open up a bank account for her. Unfortunately, we arrived just as the bank had closed. Talk about a day of misfortune.. D: So we decided to wander BNU campus, hoping to figure out how to get to the student accommodation building which we would be staying in. Which we did eventually find in the end. And even discovered that there were a row of small shops just outside it, as well as the Muslim canteen about a two minute walk away.

The variety of shops outside our student accommodation

Whilst venturing the university grounds, we happened to come across the on campus supermarket, which was a lot bigger than expected. They had literally everything, ranging from snack foods and drink, to cooking equipment and sauces, as well as the essential student stationary. There was even a small section of toys.

Anyway, we got back to the apartment at about 18:30 to find Charlotte, Tanya, Ibby, and her brother, along with a few extra people. The landlady was there with two cleaning ladies, and her husband. The apartment was finally getting a deep clean, new handles and lights were bought to replace the old, and the whole washing machine dilemma was being sorted out too. Hurray~

The apartment wasn't finished being sorted out until around 21:00, which in the meantime, Beth and I decided to go on an adventure to find a Wu Mart (Chinese Walmart) which Ibby and her brother told us they had found. We set out but half way there, we were thinking of turning back because it felt like we were never going to find it. But we did in the end. It was a half an hour walk away, which was longer than we thought it would take.

We did our shopping, and as we were about to check out at the till and leave, Charlotte texted asking if we could buy her some blu-tack. We thought that we could just go back in the shop and buy it after we had bought our stuff, since we were already at the till. However as we were about to enter the shop again, the two security people on either side of the entrance started shouting "Stop! Stop! No!" We got pretty scared. It turned out though that you weren't allowed to go back into the shop after you had bought something, and had no choice but to exit. So I took Beth's shopping bag and decided to wait outside, and told her to go get the blu-tack.

I came out and sat down, but after a good 10minutes, there was no Beth in sight coming out of the exit. I didn't really know what to do because she shouldn't have taken that long to buy some blu-tack and come out. So I texted Tanya saying I had possibly lost Beth, who replied with a laugh and that she couldn't do anything to help. Which I knew she couldn't since she was all the way in the apartment. A few minutes later, Beth appeared out of the exit, so we no longer had to worry.

We went back to the apartment, and had dinner at BLD Cafe just round the corner with the other lot.By the time the night had ended, I was pretty much dead from tiredness. I could've fallen asleep in the cafe if I could have.

Pot is Hot.

So we had a bit of a lie in today as Ibby was going to come visit with her brother at 12am. When she came, her brother helped sort the flat out by cleaning out the kitchen with Ibby, as well as her room. In the mean time, Charlotte, Tanya and I went out to the bank as we needed to change our mobile numbers to our bank account from the landlady's to or own, since we got Chinese numbers yesterday.

Unsurprisingly, it took us about an hour to do since we had to wait to be called up at the desk for about 40minutes, and then the bank lady took forever scanning and printing stuff. We were successful in the end though.

After the bank we decided to go to McDonald's again as we had researched how to say the names of the food we wanted before hand. So I can now order a Filet-o-Fish burger, french fries, and a vanilla milkshake.  Well actually, they didn't have any vanilla milkshake so I ended up with a mango yoghurt vanilla ice drink or something like that in the end.

We then hung around in the apartment for a few hours. Ibby and her brother went back to the hostel - she confirmed her place in the apartment as the third person who would pay rent to live there. And then Beth came at 20:00 from Hong Kong International Airport after having spent two weeks in the Guangzhou area.

We decided to treat ourselves to hot pot for dinner since we hadn't really eaten proper food since we had arrived, plus all our friends had arrived. We were going to invite Dominic and Adam, but Dominic doesn't yet have a Chinese number, and Adam wasn't replying to his messages (although we figured out later on that it was because today was his last day of his internship).

We had a bit of a time trying to communicate with the waiters in our bad Chinese, but the waiters and waitresses were really nice and helpful. We mentioned that we had two vegetarians with us, and so they helped point out and recommend food for us to try. They were really friendly and after we had had our meal (only 272yuan in total), they all came rushing to us as were about to get the lift and leave, asking if they could have pictures with us, which we then ended up having a 10minute photo session. They even gave us an incense bag as a present.

Sleepy Snoopy.

I'd say so far, today was perhaps the least productive. We did have stuff planned to do, but thanks to some people, we ended up spending the most of the day in our apartment...

As we went to bed late last night from the dinner, none of us really woke up until about 09:00, and then we weren't really up, changed and ready for the day until 11:30. At 12:00 we were meeting up with Ibby again about a 15minute walk away from our apartment. Luckily, it was easy to find our meeting spot since it was literally round the corner and down the road from ours. so we didn't need to be afraid about getting possibly lost on the way.

We showed Ibby around the apartment, and from the looks of her reactions, it seemed to me that she was about 80% definite about taking up the offer to become the 3rd member of the apartment. However, she'll be returning tomorrow with her brother so they can discuss whether the apartment is worth the rent.

Ibby then left about 20minutes of seeing the apartment and we literally just spent the rest of the day inside. Well, we went to the local shop too to buy a few snacks and drinks but other than that, nothing was done, nowhere was visited.

The plan for the afternoon was that Dominic and Adam were meant to be coming to visit us at our apartment and we were going to go out and eat hotpot together in the nearby restaurant. However Dominic's laptop had a few problems so he went with Adam to get it fixed and then Adam was to text us when they had finished.

With nothing to do, we were all feeling rather sleepy, tired, and lacking energy (the most reasonable explanation for this is likely to be because of our unhealthy, and little food consumption since arriving in Beijing). So lacking of energy in fact, that I even fell asleep for a good hour and a bit.

Apparently, Tanya tried to wake me up to ask if I wanted a yoghurt since I hadn't really eaten all day, apart from ice cream for breakfast this morning. I was told she kept tapping me, but I was in such a deep sleep that I didn't notice. However, when she attempted to call my name down my ear, I jumped up in surprise. I think I might have hit her in the process, but I'm not too sure. Anyway, I had my yoghurt and felt a bit more awake.

We then received news that Dominic and Adam had finished doing what they were doing, and were making their way back to their BNU accommodation room. Guess what this meant. Dinner was cancelled... And because we were feeling rather lazy, we decided that even though we could just go out as us 3 girls, we couldn't be bothered and would just eat ramyun or something instead.

We then turned on the TV for a bit to see what was on. Everything was in Chinese though. But we did end up watching a drama, not sure what about, but it was extremely dramatic. From what we saw, there was a man who was always deep in thought every time he was on camera, a girl who was in love with him yet got rejected and then attempted to leave the country due to depression but stayed back because she still loved the thinking man (who also ran to the airport to prevent her from boarding the plane), there was a chef who's father was in hospital and his mum was possibly having money trouble, a woman whom the chef was in love with and vice verse except she was in hospital because she was blind or something, and another woman who was also in love with the chef. In the end, the two men married the ones they were in love with, and the last woman... well I'm not sure what happened to her, but she seemed happy.

Selina (who unfortunately didn't pass first year) came on Skype and we Skyped for a bit, although the connection wasn't too good so we just ended up Facebook chatting. It was nice to see her again since it'll be a while until the next time we see her in person, and it's also been a while since we had last met her.

Next, something rather dumb happened. The air conditioner was on 24C and because I was feeling cold, I decided to turn the temperature down. Not thinking properly, I thought turning the temperature down meant turning the number down, so I put it down to 17C. This was left on for a quite a while until it was turned off by Charlotte because she was feeling quite cold. About 20minutes later, Tanya turned the air conditioner on again because she was feeling a bit hot, and was wondering why the air conditioner had been set to 17C. I explained I did it because it was too cold, and then it triggered. I had been a bit of an idiot and made the room colder rather than warmer, and then Charlotte and Tanya said how they thought it was unusually colder than normal just before Charlotte turned the air conditioner off earlier. Woops.

The time now was about 19:00 and we just spent the rest of the day (up until about half an hour ago) just watching TV. Tanya fell asleep on the sofa around 22:00, but Charlotte and I stayed up watching some Chinese show about a group of Chinese kids having an entertainment battle against Americans. In the end, America won, which was kinda annoying seeing how some of the Chinese acts were better than the American ones. It was quite fun and hilarious to watch though as the American tried too hard, and one man who was singing Beyonce's Halo song went a bit crazy with the lyrics and even though his voice went all over the place, he won his battle. This was probably because he was trying to reach notes higher than you'd expect from a man. His mouth was pretty huge too, and he kept making weird faces. Not that that has anything to do with anything. But still.

We then watched the Chinese version of Take Me Out, which had a girl with a ridiculously high, babyish voice with another, ridiculously dramatic life story to tell. She ended up being picked as the girl to be taken out by the 31 year old single man. She was 21...

Anyway, that was pretty much it. Seriously. We did absolutely nothing. But tomorrow should be more interesting since Ibby will be visiting with her brother, Beth will be arriving and coming to the apartment, and maybe Dominic and Adam will come visit the flat. So a lot more should be happening than today.

As Clean as the Queen.

The focus of the day today was cleaning. That's right, we came to China to clean... :/

You wouldn't believe how dirty this apartment was. I would post up pictures of it but unfortunately, my camera made the place look clean. Which it seriously wasn't! We got up at 07:00 but because we really didn't want to make a start, the cleaning got delayed until 09:20. From then on, it was just 4hours straight of cleaning, complaining, and cringing. How is it possible to get weird brown stuff on the kitchen ceiling? Who in their right mind thinks that leaving their old, used shower scrub puff behind in the bathroom for two months for the next renters to see is acceptable? Exactly what were the people here last thinking when they left their dirty towels and toothbrushes behind? Were we meant to reuse them or something? Ew, no thanks. *disgusted face*

Anyway, we kind of needed to make a move on the cleaning anyway since the 3bedroom apartment needed a third person (since I'm not to be staying here for long) otherwise the rent is just too much for two people, and there was supposed to be a potential visitor to look at the apartment; she's a SOAS student so we kind of know her. Well, that's what was supposed to have happened but it turned out that she didn't actually come see the flat in the end because she waited at the wrong place to the decided meet-up spot. Oh well, at least the apartment got cleaned.

Just before we were supposed to go out and meet Ibby though, we all had a quick shower before because of all the cleaning we had done. Embarrassingly though, I managed to lock myself in the bedroom. Although this wasn't really my fault. The bedroom doors don't have a handle on the inside but it has a button to lock it, which I pushed by accident. So I was standing there struggling to somehow open the door from the inside, and Charlotte and Tanya on the outside couldn't do anything to help because I had locked the room from the inside. After a good few minutes, I managed to somehow unlock the door and free myself, but boy was that scary. D:

We then rearranged a different day for her to come look around the apartment, and instead, we met up with Charlotte's Beijing friend Dong Hao (董浩) or also just 'Scott', as he offered to show us around our area and sort a few things out. For example, he helped us buy Chinese phones and SIM cards for 500yuan (but just the SIM card for me for 100yuan since I'm planning on buying the Xiaomi M2 in October) where we have enough credit until December 2013 and don't have to top up at all. Pretty good deal eh. :D

After that, he helped us sort out how to top up the apartment electricity at the bank, and then treated us to a drink at the nearby cafe 巴里岛 to our apartment as he annotated a map of Beijing for us, pointing out all the hotspots for shopping, sightseeing, and the important subway stations.

Scott left at around 18:00 and then we stayed around in our apartment until 20:00 where we had planned to go out and have dinner with Dominic and Adam since we hadn't met up since the Thorpe Park trip at the end of exams.

We had to make our way to BNU campus as we were meeting outside the McDonald's we ate from - their apartment is attached to McDonald's. We then made our way to the subway station to get to the eating place, thus experiencing our first journey on the subway. It was actually pretty nice. Amazing in fact. The subway is surprisingly clean, bright, and white. And the actual subway train was just as good too - air conditioned, smooth and sturdy tracks, and it wasn't as crowded. Although maybe that's because of the time we took it. I'd say the only bad thing about it is that people really don't care about anything when they get on or off the train. They will push you, nudge you, jam their elbows into you, and it seems like that's perfectly normal. Although one guy did accidentally step on my foot and then repeatedly said "对不起" about three times.

So we had dinner at a small restaurant, along with some of Adam's friends who were also SOAS students who had just finished their second year (since he had been doing an internship in Beijing for about a month before we arrived). We ordered Coca Cola, the custom bowls of rice, and vegetarian side dishes of egg dumplings, some asparagus/ chilli/ corn pepper dish, a potato/ aubergine/ pepper dish, a lettuce dish, as well as meat dumplings and some vegetables with meat dish. The food was pretty good and flavoursome, which was a nice change to the ramyun and drinks we had been eating to keep us alive in Beijing.

After this was over, we got the subway back to near BNU and then parted ways. Us three girls didn't get back to the apartment until about 23:00, to which we were quite tired by then so just sat around on our laptops until we fell asleep.

BoC.

I had a bit of a nightmare last night, if it could be called that. I woke up in the middle of the night (it must’ve been about 3ish), looked up at the ceiling and thought I saw this black spidery looking creature about 2 inches big crawling along the ceiling, and then falling down on top of me. I immediately shrieked, as you do, and ran across to the other side of the room. Tanya, who slept on the sofa on the side of the room I ran to, woke up and asked me what the matter was. However as I was still in a bit of a fazed state, I somehow forgot I was China, I didn’t know where I was, and didn’t know who this girl was that was talking to me. I took a closer look at my friend but couldn’t figure out who she was and so I kept asking over and over “who are you?!” to which she replied with her name yet I still could not comprehend. I must’ve asked who she was about 10 times before I suddenly realised that she was indeed Tanya. I then explained about the scary spider, and then fell back asleep atop the sofa I came from.

A few hours later and I found I managed to wake up at 06:00 on the dot. That’s pretty amazing coming from someone like me who tends to sleep in quite late. Perhaps this was thanks to all the babysitting of Zayan for a month, so I had become accustomed to waking up at such early times in the morning.

Anyway, as my two friends were still asleep, I decided to lie back down and just daydream for a few minutes before deciding to spend my time doing better things such as studying. An hour later, Charlotte then Tanya woke up and we just sat around for a while planning our day, to which we decided that we should open up a bank account to deposit money so that the two could pay the landlady the rent.

At about 09:50 we left the apartment to make our way to the BNU campus since that is where a Bank of China branch lies. When we asked to open a bank account, we had a bit of a problem since none of us yet had Chinese phone numbers. Luckily, after about 10minutes trying to figure out what to do, the staff accepted our suggestion of using the landlady’s number. And then we were on our way to opening up some bank accounts. We had arrived at the bank at around 11:00 after exploring the roads of Beijing to find the University, but didn’t actually leave until about 13:40. Why? Well Charlotte missed her number being called out by the till people and so had to retrieve a new number and wait for 30people to be served first before her number was called out again.

In the meantime, I attempted to deposit some money into my bank account I had just opened using the ATM machine in the bank. I had 9000RMB on me to deposit. However, as I deposited the money and the machine counted the notes, I received a message a number of times saying that some of the notes I had were fake. Rest assured however, as a few minutes later I realised that it was because I was just scrappily putting the money into the machine rather than placing them in all neat and tidy.

It was then lunch time since we hadn’t really eaten breakfast, so we decided to check out the McDonalds on the road opposite. Now believe it or not, but we actually managed to buy food without any problem. I guess you could argue that this was because most of the food we wanted were in the adverts above the counters and labelled with numbers, so we only had to do a bit of sign language and say “我要这个.” Pretty simple right? So I ordered the best burger you could get (the Fillet-o-Fish) and some bubble tea.

After lunch, we went to buy some cleaning products as we decided to deep clean the apartment seeing how the previous people living here don’t understand the meaning of the word “clean”. That said, we didn’t actually get back to the apartment until about 17:00ish. By this time, we were much too tired to do anything. Just wanted to go to sleep.

Welcome to Beijing!

Got off at Hong Kong, and then had to go through customs again so we could board the next plane. Little did we know though, we had to pick up another boarding pass. We actually asked the guy at the desk about this when we checked-on our suitcases but he said we just had to follow the signs saying “Transit” at Hong Kong airport which came before the “Immigration” signs. And then after being turned away and told to go the Air China desk to pick up our new boarding passes (since they were operating the second plane journey) we didn’t realise that the Air China desk was literally on the complete opposite side of the building, and so had to go on a pretty lengthy brisk walk of about 8minutes to the other end of the airport. I guess it was a good workout after sitting around on a plane for almost 11hours.

Anyway it all turned out fine in the end and we managed to complete the getting of the new pass and going through customs with about 40minutes to spare, which was good, considering how we did have to wait about 10minutes for the lady to give us our new boarding passes…

We left Hong Kong at 08:30 and finally arrived in Beijing at 11:40. WHAT a journey that had been.

However, the first thing we experienced as we got off the little bus to take us from the plane to the airport was mouthful of pollution. Eurgh, you just breathed pollution as you got out and it wasn’t nice. Not at all. On the other hand, the floors in the airport were pretty damn shiny. Even more so than at Hong Kong airport, which we thought were pretty darn clean. Beijing Airport’s floors were so clean, you could literally see people’s reflections, and even a clear reflection of the ceiling off it. Nice.

We got ourselves checked through immigration, had our passports stamped (ohh yeaaa!!) and then claimed our baggage. To do so, we had to ride a tube train to take us there. It’s amazing how the train was firstly clean, secondly wider than London’s underground trains, and thirdly had air conditioning. The latter is probably the best thing you could ask for, and one thing which London seriously needs to start considering. Oh how I hate the London tubes in summer… D<

In order to make our way from the airport to the university area, and the area where Tanya and Charlotte’s apartment is, we had to take a taxi. We were pretty shocked with what we were presented with. One of the men in charge of the taxis, and a taxi driver himself, told us that it would cost between 880-1100RMB altogether. We only paid 900RMB though, a rough price of £78. Split up between us, this is £36 each which seems like a lot but I guess was kinda worth it since it took an hour to drive to the apartment and because of the huge amount of luggage between the three of us, we required a larger taxi – one of the shuttle bus sized ones. I guess we probably got ripped off but I don't think this really mattered. Thank goodness I can claim this money back at the end of the year. Phew. Will definitely just be sticking to public transport in the future.

As we drew closer to the area we were to be staying, it seemed like Beijing was not what we had expected. The area we’re in reminds me of a cross between Bangladesh and Brunei. I thought Beijing would be a bit more modernised than that.. Maybe that’s just this particular area though?. Well, at least I hope so. Who knows? :S

Luckily, there are a good number of shops near us. More importantly though, there is a big shopping mall called Feng Lan Guo Ji (枫蓝国际)just a 5minute walk down the road where everything is so cheap, it’s unbelievable. Normal sized bottle of drinks like you get in the UK are only about 30p each or less. There was a 5litre bottle of water being sold for approximately £1.50. There were even rice cookers being sold for a mere £15 – this particular one I had actually found on a UK website being on sale for about £40. What a bargain eh.

We didn’t really do much today since all the focus was on getting to the apartment, buying something to eat, and getting some rest. The landlady to the apartment came along, a few contracts were signed between her and Tanya and Charlotte, she showed us a bit around the area and that was pretty much it. No thanks to jet lag, we were all pretty darn tired and sleepy. So sleepy in fact that we just couldn’t be bothered to go to an actual bed but just fell dead asleep on the spot.

I'm Flying in the Air~

What day is it? That’s right, today’s the day we left for China. The journey was comprised of a 10hour 40minute flight from London to Hong Kong, a 2hour stopover in Hong Kong to transit, and a 3hour 10minute flight from Hong Kong to Bejing. Considering how I didn’t sleep at all Tuesday night (as I was afraid that I might over sleep and end up at Heathrow airport late, and probably missing the flight or something) I have to say, boy am I knackered.

I left the house in Leytonstone at around 06:00, and surprisingly, arrived at Heathrow and ready at the check-in place to wait for the other two (Tanya and Charlotte) at 07:45. To be honest, I was expecting the tube journey to take about 2hours since I had to lug a 25kg suitcase up and down a number of flights of stairs. Luckily for me, I managed to get some help carrying my suitcase up the Leytonstone Underground Station stairs up to the platform from some random nice man. And also, it seemed I was further lucky as when I got off the Central Line and had to go up some stairs to change to the Piccadilly Line, there was nobody there. Not a soul in sight. Although I did purposefully walk slow behind the rushing Londoners so that I was last to go up the stairs.. But anyway, thanks to that, my efforts to heave my suitcase up the stairs were only witnessed by me. And the camera. But that’s nothing to worry about.

After falling asleep for two hours waiting for my friends to arrive,  I was then treated to some food by Tanya’s mum at one of the Heathrow restaurants. We decided to go to Leon’s after wandering around, unable to decide where to eat. There wasn’t too much choice on the menu – it was either a yoghurt mix, a smoothie, or sandwiches with sausages in. My choice was to go for a yoghurt – strawberries and muesli in greek yoghurt. It was actually pretty good.

The two then bid farewell to their parents and we finally began our trip to China. The first hurdle was customs. And guess who set the alarms off… :/ It didn’t make any sense really – Charlotte walked through with a load of bracelets and bangles on her wrists and there was silence, I walk through with absolutely no metal on me apart from a mere pin in my scarf and off the alarms went. So I had to get searched.

The lady started patting me down but as we all know, I’m quite a ticklish person. When it came to her searching the chest area, I jumped backwards a good few centimetres, which I guess made me look more suspicious than I probably already was. I told the lady I was ticklish though, so she said “brace yourself” and then asked me to lift my top up… o.O Not completely, but she stuck her hands under my top to search around the waist. Ew. In the end though, it was all fine because she couldn’t find anything on me. Not that I did have anything anyway.

As everyone experiences, we then had to wait around in the waiting lounge waiting to be called to the doors so we could board the plane, then wait some more inside the plane until we reached Hong Kong. The time on the plane went by quite well – Cathay Pacific seemed to have a pretty good selection of entertainment. I watched a TV show about magic featuring the famous Chinese magician Lu, a film with Jay Chou and Nicholas Tse in called 'The Viral Factor', some film about a Cantonese band called 'Mister' and the struggles they went through to achieve continuing success as a team, and managed to listen to what I think is probably Jam Hsiao’s best album. Oh, and listened to a bit of Eason Chan too.

Too Much Maoney.

Hello Mr. Mao. Or should I say 毛主席你好。Yes, today I exchanged my moneys into RMB. How much though, that's for you to guess. :)

Also, my luggage is complete. The weight limit for hold-luggage is 20kg but mine has ended up being 22kg - hopefully the airline people will be lenient about it. Is there really much point in getting all stingy over 2kg? I'm sure loads of people go over the weight limit anyway. As for hand luggage, well, that's a completely different story. Weight limit is 7kg, my bag is but a mere 5kg. Oh yes.

What else did I do on my last day in London for a while? Just went on a small trip to have an eye test, get rid of some books at the SOAS library and print some stuff out, and rolled into Tescos to buy some new batteries cos someone's luggage scale ran out of battery. D: Speaking of which though, I managed to make a pretty good save at Tescos. My shopping total came up to just over £17 but thanks to good old Clubcard vouchers and having an eye for deals, I ended up only having to pay just under £9. :D

Oh, and I decided to fast. I thought it was a good day to get one day of fasting done but it seemed that wasn't the case as I set foot onto the tube. Swelter. And swelter some more. Too hot, man!! 热死了！

Although on my journey, as I stopped off at Waterloo to make my transition to London Bridge Underground Station to get to the Bureau de Change place, it seemed like Waterloo Underground Station had been renovated. It now has one of those moving walkway things which you get at airports. How cool is that!! Actually, you probably wouldn't think it is, but I do. And that's all that matters. :)

And then tonight I realised something. I had an urge to go picking flowers in the woods, surrounded by a swamp. Not sure if it was really a good time, especially for someone who's about to depart on a 17hour long journey.. :S I guess that's just the way it is though.

Plus I've just discovered I've got quite a big of a hole in my trousers. Woops. Oh well, I don't think anyone would have noticed since it's on the inside of my leg.. :/

Anyway, that's the update for now. For the next two days even. Flight leaves demain at 12:30am. And I need to ready myself for a 5am start - don't particularly wanna get caught in the morning rush hour, where I'm exposed to being seen by all these Londoners, struggling to climb up the underground stairs with such heavy luggage. No thanks.

Type to you in Beijing. Haha.