Highlights: Besides my internship, which really made me realize what I want to do with my life, the amazing people I got to meet and keep contact with, skipping classes to go play in the snow for the first time (Lisbon doesn't really have snow, we have rain), I really enjoyed the Great Wall trip where I managed, finally, to climb from the Mutianyu area until the last reconstructed watchtower. It’s only about 1.3 miles, but the ups-and-downs usually kill me fast. Plus I got a chance to learn how to hand-make Chinese fortune knots, which kept me entertained for many subway hours.
Morning: BLCU students only have morning classes which usually start at 8 o’clock sharp. Breakfast used to go from 6:30 to 8 o’clock in the main cafeteria so every single morning the plan would be to wake up at 7 am (since I lived off campus), get ready, grab my bike, go as fast as I was able to (since I only really learned how to ride one in Beijing) so I could still get some good food, and not just Chinese style pancakes with some weird and nasty tasting sauces and pastes inside… I think I could only make that happen 40% of times, the other days I just got food on the street on my way to school.
Mornings were spent in class; it was sometimes hard to keep yourself awake during pinyin repetitions, text memorizing and character reading and listening... I think I fell asleep a couple of times…When 1 pm came, it was another struggle to get the most and best food before they stopped serving at 1:30pm. Fortunately we had a 3rd floor that was mostly run by independent restaurateurs and not by the university itself. These sold pricier food than the cafeteria floors, but saved everyone who could only find non-descriptive meat and some other hard to identify food on the floors below, given the fact they had no serving times.
Afternoon: Since I had the afternoons off and I already knew all the Beijing tourist places (perks of having gone there on vacation), I decided to get a job and truth be told, there is no easier job than teaching English. Although “Beijingers” rather have American-national teaching their kids, my English degree, CPE and non-existing accent (this was when I thanked movies and all those college hours) made it quite easy for me. Now I just had to sit back, do some demo classes and wait for the kids (and parents) to like me. In the meantime, I also applied for an internship at Agenda Magazine, run by True Run Media which was created by a long time expat, and creates a space for expats to meet each other. By the time I realized, I was teaching Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, having to commute around 30 minutes by bus, and interning all other days, 1 hour away from home, making my end-of-day subway rides, literally hell. By the time I finished my language course I stuck with teaching 3 afternoons and upped up my interning hours so I could get my monthly stipend of RMB 1,000. It wasn’t much, but I could deal and it was good pocket money to get around.
Evening: I was still living at the student area of Beijing (wudaokou) which is pretty close to bars and clubs (hell, I used to live 3 doors down from one) which made nights quite interesting. When I didn't get home from work at 10/11pm (remember, 1 hour commute…), I used to head down to La Bamba for some microwaved and cheap burritos in a 100% smoke allowed environment with such loud music, you could hardly speak to the person next to you. If that was too much for me to handle. Another restaurant, Red House, was close-by with their “all you can drink RMB 20 beer for two hours” along with their RMB 20~40 pizzas but my favorite in the neighborhood was definitely Helen’s; a wooden themed bar, with signed and scribbled walls and tables with good quality/price finger food.
I met a lot of people at Helen’s, some that even went to my school that I had never seen… Their Halloween parties were pretty cool, considering Chinese people generally don't really “do” Halloween if foreigners didn't exist in the country (the drinks would change name during that night, costumes contests would happen and special drinks would be offered and no entry unless you were in a mask!). But when the student scene was too much for me, I would head out to Sanlitun and mingle with “the grownups” as I like to say: people whom I met from the restaurant and bar industry while working at the magazine. This was the best way to return to my beloved wine, mostly from Europe.