The Ming Tombs

Today we visited the Ming Tombs together with Li Xu and the parents of my friend. They picked us up at 10 am and one hour and 50 km later we arrived at the first gate of the tombs.

The Ming Tombs is the cemetery of the 13 emperors of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the whole area is about 80 km² large. After this first gate we walked down the Main Sacred Way of the Ming Tombs, a long avenue with twelve stone-animals on each side, one crouched and one standing. This way it looked like the animals would stand up for the dead emperor while he was carried down the way. After these animals there were also six stone-humans on each side, also for giving farewell to the emperor. „The Ming Tombs“ weiterlesen

Doppelkopf

Today we got up quite late since we had no big plans. After our delicious breakfast we played some computer games and relaxed a bit. Then we went to the Indigo Mall and bought some water, detergent, Nutella and toast. The 1st of May is a free day in China as well, so it was a bit crowded everywhere. But we got what we were looking for and headed back to the school afterwards. For lunch/dinner we had some beloved beef noodles from across the street, cheap and delicious.

We also tried to take a shower, but unfortunately the shower times (meaning when there is water) were not the usual ones for a Friday, but the ones of the weekend. That means between 7 and 9 pm, so we were too early.

One of Lukas friends did invite us to play some Doppelkopf at her flat, so we tried to catch a taxi to get there. Which was more difficult than expected, we tried for more than half a hour without success. Since it was raining it wasn’t the most pleasant thing to do…

IMG_2455 „Doppelkopf“ weiterlesen

Work with surprises

We got up at 7:30 and ate our usual baguette-with-honey-and-nutella breakfast, then we took the bus number 983 to get to our company. We are expected to be there at 10 o’clock, so we took the bus at 8:30, traffic is horribly in Beijing. But we drive along the bird nest and the water cube, the places of the Olympic Games 2008.

IMG_2058For lunch we had some potato stripes with a Chinese sauce as well as rice with chicken in curry style. Again everything was delicious, we also had a yoghourt which tasted quite similar to a normal German yoghourt. Then we were driven to a post office by an employee with a company car (VW Tiguan), because Lukas needed some stamps for his postcards. For only 6 Yuan (1€) you can send a postcard to Germany via air mail.

Lili then met with some other managers of the company to discuss what we will be doing at our time there. And the plan sounds awesome:

„Work with surprises“ weiterlesen

First day of school

On Tuesday was our first day in the Beijing Polytechnic College. We had to get up quite early, because at 8 o’clock was the beginning of the first class. After waking up we went to buy two baguettes (8 Yuan (1,10€) each) and some butter, so we would have some kind of a breakfast. At 8 o’clock we met with Zhu & Li, who told us that we would have breakfast now in the canteen. OK, so double breakfast, no problem. At the canteen we had some dumplings which were quite nice and a „drink“, which was more like soup. But this soup/drink was not very delicious, we had to leave it there when we left.

Afterwards we had English class. There were about 25 students and one teacher, speaking to the teacher was very nice, because her English was very good. We learned that her husband is Canadian and she has two children, and that she doesn’t have a drivers licence for her scooter. Speaking to someone with very good English skills was very relaxing, speaking to Li & Zhu is always a little bit exhausting. In class we did a bit of a question & answer, the teacher and some students asked us various questions, about ourselves as well about Germany. We had the opportunity to ask in return and learned a bit about the Chinese new year festival (Spring festival) and tried to learn some of their names. To be honest, I don’t remember any of them. The English level of the pupils was ranging from quite good with only a little Chinese accent to not very good with a strong Chinese accent. Nevertheless we got around and had two interesting classes of English (each 45 minutes).

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The next two classes were something which Li & Zhu called „Psychology“. Lukas and I think it’s more like social studies. We were in a big hall with about 50 students, in front on a stage was a teacher speaking ~200 Chinese words per minute, supported by a PowerPoint presentation. From some pictures and movies she showed we could guess that the subject of this class was something like „How to make friends“. Although we did not understand much, it was a funny class and we tried our best to participate… „First day of school“ weiterlesen