Days 17, 18 and 19 (wow!)

(Sorry for the crappy self-picture!)

I got my hair cut on tuesday! Big, big deal. I was afraid of cutting my hair, but when I talked to O. about it, my Italian friend, she told me she wanted to cut her hair too. And paint the tips of her hair brown (she has black hair). So we set off, into one of those evenings that go so wrong that you can only wonder at the ingenuity of it's failure. To start with she had arranged for us to meet a Chinese co-worker so we could explain what we were trying to do. The place was on the other side of the city, and we left at 5.30 so it was rush hour. People being pushed into subways? Myth confirmed to be true. People stuck between doors? Yup. People pressed up against the subway windows because of the lack of space? Right again. All in all, it was a hectic and very uncomfortable trip, since we also had to take 2 subways and a bus. Once there, we tried explaining what we wanted done (which took a while). And that was the moment, standing between 5 Chinese people and one black-haired Italian, that I realised how Extremely light my hair colour is. Seriously, you shall not believe it, but I'm practically blonde. And my face is so pink and white... I'm a freak casualty of nature here. Anyway, my Chinese hair cut was easy (and cost €1,50) but O.'s treatment was somewhat more complicated. I found out that here in China people paint hair by adding colours to it- first her hair was painted red, then they added purple, then green then blue. The resulting colour, however, stayed reddish. Meanwhile, I had nothing to do so I started studying my Chinese, and soon had 4 Chinese haircutters who had nothing to do sitting around me perfecting my execution of the Chinese language and laughing a LOT. 

O. and her new hair!

I always just assume that Chinese people are laughing with me and not at me, so I just laughed a lot too, and it was actually great for my Chinese skills. Being 18 here seems to equal being a toddler- so naturally they found me 'cute'. I can come back any time if I need to practise, haha. Actually, even at the U. school, most people are older and have finished studying, so I feel like a child there too. The overall profile is: 21-28 (mostly 24) years old, on average having lived in 2/3 different countries, having 1,3 nationalities each and studying a language OR some kind of business OR law (no exceptions to that last point!). Many of the people here are artists, and the rest are certainly creative (except for me of course. Damnit.)

Anyway, so after O.'s hair was 'finished' (it's still red and she hated it at the beginning, they really messed it up) we went to have dinner locally and misunderstood the waitress so that we got 3 plates instead of 2 of Chinese food ('omg... we keep eating but the dishes just stay the same size!') so the meal was 'expensive'. 

During dinner we suddenly realised we were going to be too late to take the bus and subways back home, so we would have to hire a taxi. Then O. found out she had no more money, so that by the time we almost got run over on the road we were laughing so much about the ridiculous situation that we couldn't breathe. Best way of dealing with letdowns!

The next day, on wednesday, I finally got my bike fixed properly, so that it is now a relatively good bike WITH pedals. And air in its tyres. Which was another gruelling experience, since people GATHER to watch you mess up when talking to the fixers. And then stay on to watch you duel with the air-filling-machine you can use (until some guy decided to show me how it worked). I've been biking a lot more now. I actually know how to bike to school, someone who lives close to me showed me yesterday! Biking is a very challenging thing to do. Listening to music would be very, very stupid. But again I'll owe you that explanation: food and traffic, coming up next.

Yesterday I also had a kung fu class of two hours on my own, because no-one else showed up. When I realised that I was going to be alone I just wanted to leave again because I felt soooo awkward. Being in China really tests all my personal difficulties this way! xD. Anyway, I stayed, which was great because I don't get a lot of sport here otherwise anyway, and I learnt many new ways of kicking ass! Now my entire body hurts. A lot. Two hours of private kung fu are more than enough for a simple half-latin american-half-dutchie. 

 I added a little extract from a typical character class today! I'm very sorry, I have so much more to tell but my arms are too sore to type any more. What a lame reason not to keep up a blog properly. Good night! Love, Sophie.