Saaga

There is a village between school and home that I ride my bike through in the morning and afternoon every day. The village is not only a shortcut to work, but also a source of beer, bike parts, bad smells and scarring experiences. So on to the scarring experiences.

Friday after work I attended swillage in the village which takes place at one of the ‘bars’ in the village and is basically just an excuse for teachers to have a few beers and debrief. I don’t know what the name of the place is and there is no sign to identify it as a pub, but they sell beer and serve food, so they clearly have us thinking it’s a pub. The outdoor area we were seated in is a concrete slab that is also the front porch of the building next door, so it wasn’t noteworthy when three little girls came giggling up to the other end (about 5 m away) and sat down, but when they took off their knickers and had a competition to see who could piss the furthest it seemed very strange…but only to me. My colleagues were not phased at all and the locals didn’t even notice

The following story should not be read by anyone that does not like cruelty to animals. I’m serious. I am going to write about what I saw as my way of dealing with it, so don’t complain to me if you don’t like it. Here goes: M and I headed down to the village to get the back tire on Alex’s bike repaired. I hung around and watched the guy replace the inner tube while M charmed everyone within sight. It was then that I heard a dog yelp and looked up and along the main road to see a man beating a young spaniely looking dog with a bloody big stick. It didn’t last long, but he did manage to hit the poor thing a lot and the face was one of his main targets. He stopped after it squealed and hid under some junk on his porch, but he continued poking at it and speaking angrily. Running down there and taking the stick off him crossed my mind, but I would have been too late and seeing as how everyone else seemed to think the man’s outrageous behaviour was normal, I would have been on my own, as a blundering, crazy, white man with no ability to get myself out of the situation. I was just happy that M was busy receiving gifts from the family of the bike man and missed the horrid treatment of the little dog.

I am absolutely flat out with the new job and it seems like I haven’t had a moment to myself in ages. Anyway I was sorting photos of my class and thought I might take 45 seconds to post about how awesome my school is. We have a freakin’ hedge maze!

I watched an annoying brat of about 5 years old at the pool today. He was spraying water from his super-soaker all over the place and ignoring his Ayi who was telling him to stop it. He managed to wet some people that were dining at the tables nearby and when they asked him to stop, he complied for a few minutes, but then went right back to the game again. After having the water go over them for about the fifth time, a young guy got up from the table, wrenched the super-soaker from the boy’s meaty little fingers and threw it into the deep end. The beauty was that the arrogant little shit didn’t even see it coming as the guy walked right up to him. He was shocked at first, it seemed like for the first time he had discovered a boundary…then he burst into tears, through which he cursed at his Ayi as she scrambled to fish the toy out of the water without falling in.

I hope Emily doesn’t treat Xiao Xiang (our Ayi) like that.

There was a security guard standing a few meters from this sign which is about 10 minutes walk in the real world from our place.

you use the internet.

On our third day here in Beijing we decided to take a taxi to one of the local western style malls. Unfortunately our taxi driver was confused and took us to another one that was further away and in no way western. We had a walk around it and my experience of the meat section had me convinced to become a vegetarian. However we did get out safely and started our quest for a new taxi.

The next taxi driver was even more confused and took us further away still and after about 40 minutes he managed to get directions to get us back to our gate. As we got out of the taxi looking flustered and hot, the director of my school came running over to say hello. We told him what had happened and he decided to take us to the shopping mall we had originally aimed for and spent an hour wandering around with us. It’s safe to say the boss made a good impression upon us.

A couple of days ago we went to the local shop to buy some barrels of water for our cooler. No problem. 15 kwai each bought us 3 20 litre barrels that would be delivered. 10 minutes later they turned up at our door and after lugging the heavy things in, we spent 10 minutes trying to work out what the delivery woman wanted. It was clearly something to do with money, but it took us a while to work out that it was a deposit on the barrels.

We have a friend living in out upstairs bathroom.

Here is one of the local beers. This 600ml bottle cost around 45 cents.

I hope to post a video tour of our new house soon, but for the moment here are my initial thoughts on our new house in Beijing:

- more storage than I ever thought possible! A kitchen with more than 2 drawers! A basement lined with cupboards. 2 huge wardrobes in our room and another in Em’s room.
- we’ve gone from 3 adults and 1 toilet to 2 adults and 3 toilets!
- Germany is seriously deficient in the supermarket area - even the small ‘crappy’ supermarket here has a wider range than the Edeka in Oberbilk. Including Vintage Cheddar cheese, peanut butter (numerous brands), Ritter Sport chocolate bars, lots of different imported cereals etc.
- this is a gated community. Literally. I didn’t actually expect that. I don’t know if it makes me feel safe or just arrogant.
- gas stove!!
- the ‘Clubhouse’ is a 3 minute walk away and has a restaurant and both indoor and outdoor pools.

That’s it for the moment. It’s all good and I’m pretty happy provided I don’t think too much about all the people that we’ve left behind, now both in Sydney and in Düsseldorf… we wish we could share this with you - come and visit!!

We made it despite M’s best efforts to get us lynched on the plane; travelling with a toddler aint pretty. The house is bloody huge, except in vertical basement height where I have to stoop to avoid head trauma.

We are very tired and a bit too stunned from the journey to assess how we feel yet, but So far it seems pretty good.

Our year in Germany managed to stretch to four years and now it is finished. If things go smoothly we will be in Beijing in 21 hours time. Hopefully we pass through the quarantine net with no problems and will be in contact not long after we are in our new house.