Monday 23rd of November is the nineth day of my Beijing journey. Today is the beginning of my second week at work. Today is also my dad's birthday, happy birthday dad!!! (I know you won't read my blog, but nonetheless, happy birthday!)
To my surprise, Beijing weather has been so good recently. Since I arrived last sunday on the 15th, it's always been blue sky and sunny days(although still cold). The temperature has actually gone up recently, averaging around 6-8 degrees during the day, it's quite a pleasing weather. With the Olympics in 2008 and the 60th Anniversary of PR China in 2009, Beijing environment has improved significantly. Although every now and then I breath in some bad quality air (especially during peak traffic hours) but most of the day I'm really enjoying breathing in fresh cold air.
Today I'm starting to plan for my weekend trip to Shanghai. I received invites from my friends in AIESEC Shanghai, there's a weekend Shanghai trip organised for all interns, and most interns attending are from Shanghai and Beijing. I am looking into ways to travel to Shanghai. Comparing to the prices of flights (roughly 2000RMB return, or the cheapest I found online is around 1200RMB return) + accommodation for Friday night, to prices of train (roughly around 1000RMB return including sleeping overnight on the train on Friday), I think I'll probably go with the train. I 'baidu-ed' (more popular to use Baidu than Google in China) about travelling by train, found out that train tickets are on sale around 3 days before departure day, and travelling by train (especially those overnight ones) are actually quite easy and comfortable. I really look forward to a train experience, I remember my experience with travelling on train in Ukraine and I liked it. I think it's a great way to really get into the local life.
Tomorrow (the 24th) is Jordan's birthday, he's turning 22! Happy Birthday Jordan! Congratulations for being the second oldest among us! haha! Jordan have families in Beijing and therefore he will be going to dinner with them on his actual birthday. So us (Josi, Gerard, and Jian-the other friend from NZ who arrived in BJ in Sept to study English, and myself) decided to give him a surprise early celebration. We first 'coincidentally' say that we'll just come home for dinner, probably order take away delivery food to our apartment, and asked if Jordan will stay home. Haha, didn't think he realised anything different. Gerard have day off on Mondays so he stayed home with Jordan.
After work I took the bus home straightaway. Josi met up with Jian after work and came home together. When I arrived home, Jordan, Gerard and I decided to clean our home! It's been a week and we should really make it tidy and clean, especially that we have guest (Jian) coming over. Our home is really nice and comfortable, this is something that we all love about our home, it's new and modern, and it's spacious for a city like Beijing!
At about 8pm Jian arrived, Josi opened the door and Jian stepped in after her. Jordan went up to welcome them and suddenly Jian presented a cake that he bought for Jordan. We all went, 'Happy Birthday Jordan!'. Haha, I think Jordan just then realised that this was planned that 'everyone will all come home for dinner'. He suddenly realised and started to say 'oh I see, I see what you guys are doind!'. It's not a big surprise party or anything, but I believe we all enjoyed our night at home and just to be with friends. 
We ordered six dishes, rice and dumplings for dinner. It was a delivery service inside our residential area, and it came to a total of 93RMB (so CHEAP!!). It was such a big dinner, we were soooo full after this and keeping in mind, we still have a cake to share!!!! During dinner, we just talked about NZ, China, Beijing, and the most funny thing is that Jian kept on popping out Chinese vocabs every now and then. For example, we were talking about how unhealthy it is to eat out everyday in China, it's really bad for our body etc, and Jian suddenly say it's the worst when we 'la tu zi', at first we were like 'huh?', then he repeated again and I finally got it!! He was saying La Du Zi 拉肚子!! haha, it was so funny how he just pop out with different Chinese vocabs. 
After dinner we brought out the cake, it was such a beautiful cake. The cake was square and it's inside this plastic bowl kinda thing. The cake was decorated with strawberry red powder, cream and fresh fruits. Jian said that he didn't actually know what the flavour was and he picked it simply because it looked really good. After we sang happy birthday to Jordan, he blew the candle and started sharing the cake. I must say, OMG the cake is amazing. Apart from the roll of cream on top of the cake as decoration, the white filling between the sponges of the cake is actually yoghurt!! It's a strawberry and yoghurt cake! It was simply the most amazing cake I've had (apart from my favourite cake, Black Forest). It was too sweet that it'll make you sick, and the yoghurt and strawberry flavour just blends together really well! I really really liked this cake, mmmmmmmmmmm Jordan downloaded a movie, Surrogates, for us to share after the cake. I was feeling quite tired and sick (from hay fever and dry BJ weather) so I decided I'll skip the movie and head to bed. It was a loving and home-feeling night for everyone, and I believe we all enjoyed the night together.
Happy Birthday Jordan!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment