Time passes…

So some trivial stuff has happened and some intensely non-trivial stuff also has happened. I’ve been hanging out with a lot of new people and have been settling in in my new apartment. I bought two sideboards matching the horrid/awesome eighties couches that came with the place. They’re really comfortable compared to most of the furniture at home in Sweden. Here mostly everything that’s should be soft is hard. My mattress for example is hard like a rock. I bought ergonomically not so incorrect pillows to compensate and it works pretty good. I’m sleeping some 9-10 hours every night almost until noon since I don’t plan anything before 14:00 most days.

Tomorrow is the first day of the moon festival and all the other students have the next week off. This means that most people will be traveling around in China, and so will I. I’ll probably stick to exploring Yunnan (the province where Kunming is located) because it has enough history and interesting environments to last for an expedition far longer than a week. It would be great if I could find someone with a car and a Chinese drivers license since I love road trips but I think that’s almost impossible. You who are interested in where I’ll be going can google “yunnan stone forest” and “tiger leaping gorge”. I also want to visit some minority villages around the province to see how it is and sample their food. When the Han (the dominant ethnicity of China) spread out they pushed the other peoples down south and west towards Yunnan. The result is that theere are many different kinds of ethnicities here and they all have a pretty interesting story.

 

Something more serious also happened. My friend Susanne came from Sweden to be my partner in business. Unfortunately things didn’t work out smoothly between us and we ended up in a heated argument with our cooperation torn to shreds. We have no contact at the moment and I believe that to be good for us both. I think we both have pretty much the same perspective on the situation and here is mine: I respect her for her good qualities but discovered that the bad ones made us incompatible as business partners and I’m glad this ended before any serious damage was done. Even if we would have been able to patch things up this time it would have happened at a later date, possibly with a lot more at stake. Maybe we can be friends some day but that is out of the question right now.

One week gone already?

There was a lot of rain the first few days in Kunming…My first impression of China was the mad honking in the street that woke me up. I’ve been sleeping soundly at nighttime since hardly anyone travel by car during the night but at 6 AM the road is full with people bent on waking everyone up with their horns. I could say a lot of things about the pollution and filth all around but that’s something I’m getting used to. I’m acclimatising and have found some really nice friends to hang out with.

At the moment we’re some 15 guys that are hanging out and we’re all going to start studying here this semester. Not everyone will go to the same university but the unis are really close to each other. I guess the group is too big to stay intact for very long and we’ll probably branch out into smaller congregations in time. Right now we just hang out, eat and help each other with whatever needs to be done. I’ve received a disproportional amount of help from my friends here since I can’t speak Chinese yet. One thing that amazes me is that I’ve met so many swedes! I don’t know why they all come to Kunming but it seems that Sweden is overrepresented compared even to the Americans. I didn’t come here to meet swedes but most of them are really cool guys and I hang out with them. It’s too early for me to get chinese friends yet since I can’t communicate with them at all.

I’ve worked out a pretty nice deal with my university (Yunnan University locally known as “Yun Da”). I’ll attend 2 hours of individual tutoring at Yun Dan each Monday and I’ll fill the rest of the week with private tutoring. Hopefully I’ll like my teacher from Yun Da and he/she’ll have enough time to teach me the entire week. This arrangement enables me to travel or being ill without having to pay for ther classes during that time and I will be able to change teachers if I don’t like who first end up with. Yun Da are pretty expensive but the reason I go to Yun Da at all is that I need a uni to tell my Swedish student loan agency that I study full time. Another problem is that I don’t get an X-visa this way so I’ll have to leave the country on the 22:nd of December. I plan on going to Thailand for Christmas and new years eve. Hopefully I’ll meet up with Victor there, a friend who’s gone backpacking in Thailand. That’ll be awesome!

Also, something big is about to happen tomorrow. My friend Susanne is arriving from Sweden and I’m meeting her at the airport. I really didn’t expect any of my friends to visit me while I’m here in China even though a few have voiced some desire to take the opportunity to go to China. Me and Susanne really have become close friends over the last couple of years and I’m sure we’ll have great fun here. We’re already planning a trip to Shanghai and hopefully we’ll be able to do some export business from here. I’ll tell you more about that if it actually happens.