Catherine was also jetting off to Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea, a trip she'd been looking forward to for months and had saved up for for ages, so all of us in the flat were getting very excited. We went out and bought some sturdyish backpacks. When I came to pack I was unimpressed that my side pocket zip broke on first contact. It was a sign that my bag was just not going to make it! It did though, as it happens, though it's worse for the wear and I will probably choose not to use it for my summer travels. I have another bag that I can use but is much smaller. But then in summer I won't have to pack so many thermals, so hopefully it'll do the trick.
Ah yes, thermals. After the relative warmth of the south (positive temperatures!) it was a bit of a shock to the system to come back to minus 24. With highs of minus 18. That is considerably colder than a freezer. Imagine living in a freezer. Now imagine COLDER than living in a freezer. Not hugely fun. But actually, not really that bad! I survived by wearing a layer of cotton trousers under jeans, and then a strappy top to function as a vest, a cotton top, a fleece, and a jacket. Two pairs of socks (one under the layer of cotton trousers, and the other over, to trap warm air. Gloves, scarf, hat. Shoes : ) The cold here is very dry and bone-chilling. You get so cold it doesn't really hurt. During Spring Festival, I went to several places that were officially warmer, but I felt much colder. Sometimes because of the wind, sometimes because the air was damper and that was much more uncomfortable. Urumqi winter is really easily copablewith. It's a word.
One nice aspect of the winter is the ice sculptures that pop up everywhere. Because they're quite simply not going to melt, they make them in the parks and in the streets. The themes tended to be: the Olympics, Uyghur culture (camels and dancing... I think possibly the Han carved the ice) or traditional Chinese (lions and dragons n stuff). Catherine and I had a bit of a stroke of them one day to see what they feel like, and it's weird because they don't feel like any ice I've ever touched! Incredibly smooth, and also it felt weirdly resilient. Like you could turn a blowtorch on it and it still wouldn't melt! It was still snowy as well, though the snow now was packed into sort of greying solid lumps. But when it snowed fresh, it covered all that and was pretty again.
On my return from Hangzhou (and the pub lulz) I had a lovely Christmas-New Year surprise waiting for me: presents from home and from my friends! : D It was really nice to get parcels so thank you everybody... I am of course not hinting for more haha! ; )
We did a few things of note in the fortnight: our friend Lili, from Kazakhstan, and one of the nicest people you could ever meet (see, I don't hate ALL Kazakhs!) wanted to watch Borat, as it is banned in Kazakhstan. So she and Galina the Russian in our class (her flatmate) came round to watch it with us, and we had a bit of an impromptu party that most certainly did not involve betting games, cheap vodka and friends vomiting in the stairwell. Lili was fortunately not too offended by the film, though we did have to stress several times that the main focus was really to insult America, not Kazakhstan. The language was also a bit of a difficulty, as it was in English with Chinese subtitles. Apparently the 'Kazakh' they speak in the film is not Kazakh but closer to Uzbek, so she couldn't get that either. We discovered afterwards that there were some pretty crucial parts that neither of them had understood. But no matter.
We also got a visit from friends of a friend: Catherine taught English in Hong Kong three years ago and one of her students, William, had come to visit her, with his Korean friend, at the same time that Frankie came over in September. William studied for a semester in Kazakhstan and the Korean girl, Minceon, was his classmate. She was travelling round China with another of their classmates, William's roommate Janis from Latvia. So we spent a day showing them around Urumqi and having Uyghur food with them. They recommended some places to go for my Spring Travels as well. And now if we ever want to visit Korea or Latvia (and I fully intend to go to every country in the world, so it's bound to happen...) we have some friends who can tell us where's best to go : )
Days before we went off on the ol' travels, we got a knock on our door and Eric came in with a brand spankin' new American called Greg, who is here to study Uyghur, from Indiana University, and also speaks Chinese. Eric and he didn't know each other before, but had grown up minutes' drive away from each other in Connecticut and had basically followed the exact same path in life, and now they're both students of Indiana studying Uyghur in the same university in Urumqi. Freakydeaky. Greg is here on a Fullwell Scholarship, which basically means he is very clever (like EVERYONE we meet here, they're all PhD students goddammit!) and so the US government give him funding to go out and research whatever he feels like wherever he feels like for as long as he feels like. He is researching Han Chinese who study Uyghur as a second language. There's not very many that do though!
Later that night, Greg introduced us to another American, Kevin, who is over here doing something or other, and Adam from Philadelphia who is another Fullwell scholar, studying a local folk instrument called the rawap. As one does. So our group of foreigners is expanding!
Liam and I realised that our return flight to the UK was impending and had to be changed. It took us a long time to decide on a date to go back, and we finally settled on September 12th or thereabouts. But when we spoke to the Emirates people, they told us that our ticket was only year-long flexible, so the latest we could leave would be 21st August. Hang up phone, rapid discussions about whether we'd be able to fit travel plans into the new time limit. Decide we can do it. Ring them back. Yup, August 21st please. "Oh sorry, the latest we have is August 14th." So August 14th we took. We played with the idea of flying from Hong Kong instead seeing as we'd been dahn sahf, but couldn't get tickets for that, so from Beijing it is, on August 14th. I'll be home August 15th : ) and also :..( One issue with the flight we have is that our visa is only valid to August 12th. Hmm. We can get up to a month long extension though. We have to pay for the privilege but we figured those extra two days might make all the difference to our travels and so we took them. Catherine is going back on the 12th though.
Oh! And I got my exam results. I can't actually remember what I got which is a shame, I think I got 93% for reading, 89/90 for comprehension (I may be wildly wrong, I just can't remember! Catherine picked them up for me so she has them written down somewhere I think) and like 80% for speaking and listening. This annoys me somewhat because I know I got 93 for speaking, so my listening must have been abysmal to drag it down that much! Before y'all ooh and aah over my results, bear in mind that after 'converting' them into English type marks, I didn't actually do that well, like 65 or 70%, and that the exams were a complete shambles that a monkey could have passed with flying colours. Apparently some of the Kazakhs didn't, though...
And that was the state of play before we left for our travels!
This is my winter attire. Stunning, I know.
What you can't see in the first picture is that this is my under-layer. Thermals all the way, people! I will bring the trend to Britain; this is my pledge. : )
About to eat Uyghur food (l-r) Janis, me, Minceon, and Liam.
My first ice sculpture pose! I was delighted as you can see... The ice sculpture was on the corner of my road. If you can't see clearly, it is the Olympic torch, and set into the wall are carvings of the 5 Olympic animal mascots.
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