I've been in China for 5 days now and I already find myself thinking like an ... Aussie?? All of our trainers and 5 of the trainees are Aussie and after hearing the accent over and over (plus the Brits who are almost the same) I find myself hearing the accent in my head when I think! I must be a little deranged though because yesterday when I tried to speak the accent outloud it came out sounding IRISH!! Crazy :-) Ugh, I did try Vegemite the other day too, gross. It wasnt as horrific as I'd always heard but it was very salty and sour- yuck.
I am learning Chinese too, fortunatly. I've made friends with a really sweet girl, Chen Chen (Rachel) who speaks perfect English, and I'm constantly asking her "what's this? what's this?" in Chinese.
We have had so much going on this week, classes and activities and assignments. Monday half of the group acted as leaders and took us different places in Beijing. My group went to the Temple of Heaven, which was fantasticly beautiful and impressive. My friend EJ and I tried to find this place called the Echo Wall; we never did but instead we came across a group of old Chinese ladies out in a group of trees LAUGHING! They were hilarious! They just get together and laugh because it's theraputic =D They were even swinging in the tree branches a little bit, these old ladies! EJ and I couldnt help but laugh too.
Later that night the leader Mark was responsible for getting us to the bar/lounge where the whole group was meeting for a charity auction for the Intrepid Foundation (no man-auction this time, bummer ;-) Mark got us there with zero problems, leading us through these insane little hutongs (alleys) like he had a perfect built in GPS. I'm so glad that part of the assignment wasnt mine, otherwise we'd probably still be out there! The bar turned out to be French "Le Baie des' Anges" The Bay of Angels, and I had a lovely conversation with the bartender and my roommate in French! A truly multicultural experience in China. :-) Today is my turn to act as leader and I have to get everyone to the Summer Palace 10 miles away and tell them all about it. I'll let you know how it goes.
My last bit of news is there's been a little change of plans to my itinerary. Instead of training on that fabulous trip I told you all about, through the mountains and the pandas, etc, I'm going to be running a trip through China and VIETNAM :-o That was quite unexpected when I found out yesterday. If you'd like to look it up it's the CSV trip, Hanoi to Hong Kong. I have three of those trips scheduled between now and May, but then I should be moving back into more mainland China... yay for adventure!
Love you all!! Miss you!! ~Jami
Currently Reading: Plain Truth, Jodie Picoult
