Damn you Shanghai rainy season
The last push!
It was like China kicked me in the face yesterday. We all have those days but yesterday was exceptional. And to top it off my fried rice dinner was disappointing. If I'm gonna eat the oiliest thing China produces then I want the oil to be gooooood. But speaking of other culinary delights, Maddie from Oz sent me my birthday present (ahem) , which mainly consisted of chocolate with cute little pictures of Aussie animals. This is not a real picture from me because the wrappers are all in the bin, but it's just the same!
How cool is that? I love Australia's animals, they're sooo random (another Aussie quote from S.H.H!) I am loving Australia right now, reading Bill Bryson's travel writing there called Down Under.
Here is my version of a patriotic UK style cadburys:
YAY! This would be funny.
The interesting thing is that it actually tastes really different to cadburys in the UK (The Aussie choc, not the queen choc) but still went down very good and ten times better than any choc here in China ie. Dove chocolate! So was very grateful for Maddie's parcel. Good to know if I go to Aus then I can still eat lots of choc. I've heard the taste is to do with the heat or something?
Anyway, should stop googling chocolate facts and get on with this work. Procrastination is soo much fun! When you don't have facebook you have to find other ways, and trust me, it's not hard. Speaking more about chocolate, me and Issy are going to whisk tonight to celebrate end of essays! Here is what I had there last time...
nom.
Lots of love!! J xx
For those you are coming to visit us here...
Jess xx
A royal wedding
Me and Chris with our super cool flag!
The crowds at O'Malleys
A bit later on..
Leeds Students ♥
On Saturday, I met up with Ben and we had some amazing XiaoLongBao (traditional Shanghaiese dumplings) near People's Square. Then we went to the pet market (his fave place!) and he purchased several cool little fishies. Opposite the market is an antiques/general chinese crap market, which looked interesting, so we went to check it out. It had lots of cool stuff which I don't need, but really wanted.
Like this cool buddha, who wouldn't want that!?
And Ben buying fishies
Lonely Kitty Cat
Jess xxxxx
A little moan about..
I'm stuck in while Issy and co. are headed to Bar Rouge for a night out. I'm revising words such as:
泡沫- bubbles, suds
脑门- forehead
脉搏- someone's pulse
秧苗- rice shoot/seedling
半球- hemisphere
长势- crop growth
顺口溜- a jingle
峡谷- canyon
表妹- younger cousin on mother's side of the family
树丛- a grove, thicket
荧光屏- some kind of flourecent screen used for Xrays
One day these words might become useful, but for now I just wanna ask where the toilet is...
2. I wish that PRC would simplify some words like: 藏 （to hide), 警察 （policeman）, 旅游， （travel), 餐（food） as these are all pretty difficult to draw.
I would like to ask why they simplified characters such as 满 (full) and 来 (come), since the traditional versions are practically the same. But nevermind, this isn't really that important, just kinda interesting (to me anyway!)
3. Here is an interesting quote from an article online (written by David Moser):
"I have seen highly literate Chinese people forget how to write certain characters in common words like "tin can", "knee", "screwdriver", "snap" (as in "to snap one's fingers"), "elbow", "ginger", "cushion", "firecracker", and so on. And when I say "forget", I mean that they often cannot even put the first stroke down on the paper.
...I found that I couldn't remember how to write the character 嚔, as in da penti 打喷嚔 "to sneeze". I asked my three friends how to write the character, and to my surprise, all three of them simply shrugged in sheepish embarrassment. Not one of them could correctly produce the character. Now, Peking University is usually considered the "Harvard of China". Can you imagine three Ph.D. students in English at Harvard forgetting how to write the English word "sneeze"?? Yet this state of affairs is by no means uncommon in China."
(http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html)
4. Although one thing is making my days brighter learning chinese, and that is my new translator. Translations like this make my classes a litttle more entertaining:
他的儿子弱不禁风，应该多运动运动. His son is a cream puff, he should exercise more.
她母亲不赞成她穿透明的内衣- Her mother disapproves of her wearing transparent underwear.
指冲喜- To arrange a wedding for a young man who is mortally ill, in the hope that he joyous occasion will ward off imminent death.
5. Here are some mental Chinese characters with the most strokes (supposedly). Although many are just made up for fun and not in common use (luckily).
Jess
The sun is shining, the weather is sweet
Issy and Pauline are off to Beijing over the weekend to do some sightseeing so I'm home alone, although there's so much going on and so many BBQs and parties here. It's also the Royal wedding tomorrow back in Blighty (which I am MEGA excited about and so sad to be missing!) so I think a few of us are gonna head down to the Irish Pub O'Malleys to watch it. I love how whatever country you go to in the world there's always some Irish there, in a pub.
The weather is getting so nice here now, it's just perfect. Except we had crazy thunder storms and lightning the other night which was pretty loud and lit up the city.
The yummy easter eggs Pauline brought us from Sweden!
Having BBQ and beer outside
On Saturday, we spent a beautiful day in People's Park. They have a Matchmaking market too which we thought would be so interesting to see. It's basically just everyones parents trying to marry them off. Most of them are born around the late 70's or early 80's. It was so interesting to see all the parents chatting, to me it just seemed like one big mothers meeting! Everyone's comparing photos of the eligible bachelors and bacheloretes, and there were just hundreds of signs. The actual marriage candidates aren't even there. The posters mostly include date of birth, height, salary + job, and what they're looking for in a partner, including height, age and all that. We got a lot of interest and some men obviously trying to set us up, the three western girls were very popular...
The adverts with information of potential partners
Chilling in the park
A woman showing another a picture of her son.
All the women available!
Beautiful people's park
Pauline at the tailors
So apart from all the going out and matchmaking, Pauline bought a new camera which has an amazing fish eye function. So we've been killing ourselves laughing all day at these legendary photos :D
I'm sure we'll be producing way more of these soon...
xXXx
Just one more thing...
hehe
一口吃不成了胖子！
Hey everyone! So this blog is all about food... yummy Chinese and western food! We've been doing a lot of cooking lately so here's us documenting it for you :D This blog is appropriatley called 'One taste doesn't turn you into a fatty...
Cooking at 王书Wang Shu's house
Isabelle and our friend Sue, and her big crazy bear!
Some ingredients, tomatoes, chillis and fish
Isabelle cooking some tofu
Our fave food, Fried rice!!
Issy, Me and Sue
Issy and Sue cooking tofu!
PIE TIME at Nan Dan
So and Jacob cooked for us months ago, and we still hadn't returned the favour, so we made a chicken pie and white choc brownies for them last Sunday. Yum!
Unfortunatley we had a few, err, shall we say 'culinary' mistakes, such as cutting the chickens head off and cooking the brownies properly, but it was all yummy in the end.
Pie steps one, two and three.
(I thought this chicken had no head which is why I bought it, only to find it's head tucked behind a wing (ewww). As I'm ridiculously squeamish, Isabelle had to cut the head off. You may think this sounds easy to do, but after several google searches 'of how to cut chickens head off' and only finding stupid youtube videos of headless chickens running around, we just went for it with a pretty blunt, but big, knife. The chopping was followed by lots of screaming and Isabelle chasing me around the apartment with a chickens head.
But we had a lovely night, Ben, Jacob and their new flatmate Chenyi brought some wine and nice crisps and we then watched Summer Heights high. Such a great time
(Oh yeah the chickens name was Henry!)
xxx
Everybody wants to be loved.
But then became pretty elated when I read this one!: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-13096519
Jess
Scared to leave..
Here's some photos and a little about what's going on-->
Flower Power night at Bar Rouge
Anna, me and Ben on my birthday
Singing KTV!! Issy, Tiago and Vicky
US! We miss you all.
We have just done a Leeds University Exam last week so we were revising non-stop for it. (by this I mean cramming..) and last night we had a meal with our professor from the UK, Dave, which was really nice. We had soo much food at one our fave chinese places, and then a few of us went for a haagen daz afterwards.
Apart from that, I've been teaching a lot lately and we have been off this week from uni which is a nice break from revision. We have cooked Chinese food with a Chinese friend, been out for food a lot, and chilled at home really. I met up with a friend and went to a vintage market which me and Issy will go back to although it doesn't compare with ones at home!
The weather is just getting warm here which is soooo nice!! I'm looking forward to lots more trips to Haggan Daz and walks around French Concession tree lined avenues.
An older photo but still cute
Isabelles really been getting into Chinese films as of late, I haven't watched many but I have been really into Chinese 电视剧 which are Chinese Soap Operas. I love the drama of the Dynasty ones, with the concubines and the very handsome (although unlikely) emperor!
七月一号，妈妈爸爸哥哥来中国！
Am gonna get back to doing Leeds work that should be done by now!
Lots of love from today!
xxxx
三亚照片 February
Ok, so it's along while since we went to Sanya, but we never gave you any photos. And the place (by this I mean the beaches) was way too beautiful to not show you any.
Me sat in a Hammock outside our hostel, situated on the beach.
We stayed in a really small rural village right by the sea. There were dogs and puppies everywhere! And roosters, who I hate.
Isabelles Dad, Mum, sexy topless waiter and Issy, all happily having dinner on the beach
One of our favourite little eateries, nicknamed ‘Rat place’ because of course, we only saw a rat the size of hippo there once. And continued to go there..
Issy's ma on the local bus next to someone's 奶奶 (Granny)
xx
By Isabelle
Life is great, the spring is here, the sky is blue and shanghai is better than ever.
It´s been forever since I wrote here (Jess has done a better job) Since January I have been to Hong Kong where I went shopping, went to ocean park and also met up with my friend ping, macau where I met up with my friend David, Sanya with Jess and my parents, Beijing (twice), and Harbin where we went to the famous ice-festival.
At home school has started again and I am more than happy with my class and teachers. I speak much more and understand more. I have gotten a private tutor, quit one of my students so that I now only teach weekdays lunchtime at starbucks.
I got a translating job from Eng-Swe that was for a fitness video, and also did a voce-over recording for it after. Yesterday I went for great tappenyaki with Vicky and her friends and out to a club after. And tonight, besides hanging, I have cleaned the apartment and my room and watched a really bad film called Shanghai Baby. Tonight
I am leaving home 3:30 am to be in a commercial for a major airline company. I am going to "play" a stylist and Rowan a designer. Should be fun although tiring. Our internet isn’t working at the moment but the company are supposed to come and fix it tomorrow morning.
Oh, and I´m with house in leeds for next year, yay! (thanks to my fabulous friends who are managing everything in Leeds).
My big sis is coming to Shanghai in like a month and I very much look forward to that. But before then we have a big Leeds Uni-exam where we are expected to read and understand both simplified and traditional Chinese characters, and then mid-term exams for our Chinese classes at Jiao da.that´s what I wrote a couple of weeks ago but never got around to actually post on here.
after that we all pretty much locked ourself inside (starbucks most of the time though, haha) to revise for the leeds exam. I guess it went alright, but i always forget that I am worst at translating from chinese to english which always is what makes my mark much lower, and I forgot that this time too so did not remember many of the words used in the eng-chin. translation. oh well. Me, Jess, Mu and T went to a really really nice lounge after the exam and had some drinks, then ordered pizza, went to the apartment, then a quick visit to Studio. yesterday we went for Korean bbq (korean food is my new favourite food) which was amazing, then we went to windows for cheap drinks and then to Mint wher we stayed til 4 or so. Me vicky and her friend C who just moved back to Shanghai ended up calling the magic number to find out the location of the Cantonese style restaurant that is open 24/7 and had some great food there (that restaurant is pretty much fully seated around this time in the morning)...
we now have 1 week of because there´s a school trip to Xian.. which I am not going to because I need to study, and start some of the leeds essays and diary entries we´re supposed to have done by may.
oh and I think I will be going back home ´so that I am back in Sweden by 10th of August at least, in time for way out west!
hope everyone is well.
xx
Oh England
But the other way around <-->
Jess xx
Capital 首都
So for the first part of the holiday, me and Issy headed to Beijing and Haerbin, (in Heilongjiang province which borders Russia) with some other Leeds students, Tizzy, Adam and Chris, for a week and a half. Beijing and Haerbin were both pretty freezing but their heating systems are much better than Shanghai so it was pretty nice being there. We stayed near Tian'an men square and did a couple touristy things like The Summer Palace, which was very unsummery, and completley frozen over! And of course ate ice cream in Sanlitun with Kate and Steph, and met up with loads of other Leeds friends studying in Beijing. We also had a great night out with them at Lush and Propaganda, their fave Beijing spots!
Here's a couple photos from the capital:
Even though my I knew my mummy would never let me and would disapprove when I told her (which she did), at the Summer Palace (The old Chinese Emperor's summer holiday hangout) we clambered onto the ice and danced about a bit. I love ice
Travelling buds- Adam, Chris, Issy and Tizzy
A selection of the touristy 串 (skewer) samplings you can try on the street in Beijing. (We took a metro, then a bus back to our hostel from here on the first night without realising it was on the next street. Silly tourists)
Me, Dan Gao and Issy at Propaganda in Beijing. Their alcohol is made of EVIL. This kinda looks like we love Dan a lot
Beijing food is obviously quite different from what we eat in Shanghai (And people say they eat everything in China...)
J x
Baby you're a firework
Fireworks on sale in Haerbin. (They love the fireworks)
More news:
We have recently finished season 6 of LOST so procrastination is offically over. We've really enjoyed doing not much in Shanghai for the past two weeks, we've been out quite a lot, including an Erotic Fiction night at Glamour Bar (and yes, it's exactly what it sounds like) but we're definitely looking forward to doing nothing in 25 degree heat too before the end of the holidays.
Jess x
明天到北京- Beijing tomorrow!
My new Totoro slippers :D
Every day we have a beautiful sunset and the sun streams though our apartment and makes it all orange.
Jess xx
Well I'm kinda gonna be washing my hair that night..
Isabelle & Ben
Japanese
Big birthday cake :D
Ok by this point much sake had been ingested and this is me trying to put cake in Tiagos face. Unfortunatley I chickened out. Me and tiago seriously had about 5 pieces each. I LOVE CAKE
Jacob, Isabelle, Ben and David
Stephanie, Wallace and Jacob
Sushi cup!
Me and the boys.
Great night
Jess xx
Christmas day fun
Yummy Christmas food, potatoes, cranberry sauce, Turkey...
Emma, Alex and Miranda (with amazing Santa earmuffs)
Carving the (very expensive) turkey
Tucking in nom nom
Chris after accidentally setting his cracker Christmas hat on fire by a candle!
Me, Miranda and Tizzy
Cheese heaven
Fairy cakes (on the coolest cake stand sent from my mum)
Isabelles second christmas dinner on christmas day around 11.00pm
After dinner naps FOOD BABIES
Maddies stay in Shanghai 30/12- 05/01
Cocktails at Tara 57
Having amaaaazing hotpot. This hotpot place is amazing.
Me and David with our cool hotpot aprons on!
A man does a noodle dance
Getting nails done at the hotpot restaurant! Haha
Me and Maddie on the bund, freezing day
Maddie in Shelter!
Amaaazing cakes at chocolate cafe/shop Whisk!!
New Years Eve with the best girls in Shanghai (minus you Tiago)
XXXXX
FOOD
Christmas day was a big cooking session for me and Is (16 people!), so here's some photos of all the yummy foods and things we did before the big day. Luckily we got a lot of help and other people also brought yummy things. Lets just say we love food
Gingerbread cookies
Chocolate balls!
(Yes haha it's a big potato)
Roast potatoes!
EWWWWW healthy vegetables
Seating, before food was added
(Minus evidence of food babies)
We love you! Merry Christmas!
More to come soon xx
下雪- Snow
