Horrayy the week is over!

This is the first time I’ve had a 7 day week of classes in my life time and I’m hoping it’ll be the last!! I don’t even know why I’m complaining…I only do about 20hrs in a 4day week here at BLCU whereas some other people do up to 30hours! 20hrs is heaps compared to the 14-15hr weeks I’m used to in Perth!

October is going to be such a busy month! From the 1st to the 7th is the week off for BLCU (Beijing Language and Culture Uni) Students and I’m still not exactly sure what I’ll be doing during this time. I’m most likely going to be shopping and seeing some sites but some of this depends on how the weather holds up here. Then in a couple of weeks my parents are coming to visit me, a couple of friends might be coming and other relatives dropping by Beijing too!!

The weather here has been getting cooler now, which sucks because I wanted to experience as many sunny days as I can before I freeze my ass off. Which reminds me, those fuyuan’s in our dorm building took away our a/c remote!! Boo! I can’t even regulate my room temperature anymore.

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Now, let’s get down to business.

Most people come to Beijing and go looking for the
Silk Market (Silk Street) which is a touristy multi-storey building full of stalls selling whatever you want. The stall owners know phrases in multiple languages such as “hey pretty lady” “come look” “I give you a good deal” etc. in Mandarin, English and Russian.

Because it’s such a touristy place to go to (they even have parking space for the tourist coaches), the stall owners can be quite aggressive and they always start at OUTRAGEOUS prices. Expect 500% increase!

I went to the Silk Market once and I wouldn’t go back there to buy anything, I’ld rather go shopping at the 五道口服争市场 near our campus on 学院路. The stall owners there are much nicer and most of them are quite reasonable because there are a lot of students around the area.

So anyway, today I made my way to 西单. I was looking for the street market and instead I found this unknown alleyway markets which led me to a multi-storey building packed with everything you would want. It’s much bigger than the Silk Market and packed full of locals…and I’ve always figured, if you see locals around buying stuff it means that the prices are fairly reasonable.

After splurging most of the money I had on me, I got lost trying to get out of the building (I swear they purposely don’t have any escalators going down!). The train ride home was interesting, I had to literally throw myself into the crowd whilst keeping a tight hold on all my bags. And of course, I forgot to get off at my stop to change lines and so had to squish into another train.

Nothing brings a country together better than these packed train rides which force us to get up close and personal.