Month in retrospect

One month flew by...

So I'm past my first month here in China, arrived 12 Jan '18.

I have had my first holiday as well. We, the friends left in Daqing, went to Harbin for 3 days. We planned to only go for 2 but enjoyed it so much that we stayed one more night.

Four of us went to the Ice Festival in Harbin, it was so much fun.

Me and Di

Me and Ryno

Overview of the Festival

Ryno the "Russian"

Cute ice sculpture

I went to a Russian club for the first time, it was fun. Being a foreigner here is fun you get allot of percs when seen in social places. Let's just say the vodka had a kick, the Iced Tea did not prevent the vodka from doing its thing.

I fell in love with many Russian songs, and some Romanian songs as well.// #Panama

Some of the group, 2 people, left for South Korea to go to the Winter Olympics. They said they had a blast, even went to the USA house. //that's what you get when your cousin is in the Olympics...

Our second day in Harbin was calm, ate at BurgerSpice and went to the Aquarium. //later saw it's near the Ice Festival

The third day was just a quick look at the city before we got a train back to Daqing.

We had quite an experience when we took a Didi to our apartments, let's start at the time we left the station...

So I called a Didi, Uber in China, as we walked I saw the pickup location is the other way. Not far though so we just walked there. It was at the Taxi pickup zone. We told them we arranged for a pickup so we just waited. When the guy arrived, it didn't match the description in Didi, he explained that there was a mixup on the system. When we wanted to leave there was an empty taxi in our way, so the driver thought it best to climb out and drive the taxi a bit forward so we can drive by. But at that moment, I just thought he is going to leave us there in the random brown car, while he drives off in the taxi. Upon his return another taxi stopped next to the other taxi, blocking our way completely, a guy climbed out and locked the other taxi, the one that our driver moved. Now with nowhere to go, our driver made a difficult U-turn and drove up the one-way to the exit, just to be blocked by another taxi standing diagonally in the road. Again our driver exited our car and wanted to drive it out of the way, but this time the car was locked. I suggested to the guys in the car that we should lift the front part to move the front out of the way. Everyone agreed and we got out of the car when we got to the car one of my friends misunderstood and wanted to just push it backwards. //in SA this will not be possible since everyone makes sure to lift the handbrake when leaving your vehicle

To my surprise we just pushed it out of the way, in the background there were some guys yelling in Chinese, or so I've been told after arriving at my place. //well that's the short version of the taxi story

So now I'm sitting in the office, no more classes for today. Mondays and Tuesdays are my days off so I work Wednesdays to Sundays. I'm currently on 15 hours a week, which sounds like not much but it still takes me some time to prepare for these classes.

I would love to hear from people, hit me up in the comments if you have any Questions.

Cheers vir Eers // #Afrikaans