It must be fall, because most of the girls have taken to wearing short skirts with high boots... a nice sight (certainly better than the fills and laces that dominated the summer, also the colors have changed to much less pink... apart from the Russian girls in my language school - who ever spread the lie that pink hot pants with leopard print and matching suspenders is an acceptable fashion statement should be severely punished). I'd totally follow that trend (well if I had such boots, but more importantly) if it wasn't still friggin' 27 degrees out there! The Americans on the other hand are still wearing tank tops and flip flops. Speaking of which... how is it that Chinese girls wear ultra-short skirts but never show any cleavage? Most shirts are made in a way to hide whatever is going on in the chest area - buttoned up to the neck and a huge bow or some other frizzly stuff on the chest. So, when I walk around in a tank top I get lots of stares (disapprovingly from elderly women)... eliminating them from my wardrobe would mean tossing half of what I can wear at these temperatures, so... stare away!

I also found out why nobody here bothers to lock their bikes to a fence or railing. Apparently people here don't steal parts. They only steal bikes if they can pick the lock. So I was told by my students and, well, also experienced first hand... I am lucky, I've still got my bike since I invested in a good lock... but by trying to pick it they destroyed the locking mechanism and I could for the hell of it not get it to open. I had to go to one of these little bike repair shops that are at pretty much every street corner and had to have it broken. It was impressive. Even with excessive brutal force it still took a good twenty minutes to open it. Of course, this guy also sells locks... which makes me wonder if he is the one going around destroying locks so people buy his (I wouldn't be surprised if he has a spare key to the lock I bought from him, but maybe that comes in handy if I ever lose my key). This happened on the second day I had my bike! I had locked it in front of the language school. They have a guard there in the mornings who watches the bikes, but I guess he was taking a nap in the afternoon. In any case, I am not taking my bike there in the afternoon anymore, which is only once a week anyways. If I have to buy a new lock every week, it will very soon exceed the price of the bike.

This weekend I'm having my kitchen installed... exciting. First I have someone tearing out the old sink and demolishing the little walls it sits on. This guy, 王师傅 Wang shifu (where 师傅 "shifu" here means someone with technical skills, like a handyman or cab driver; 师父 - also "shifu" is respectful for teacher, like a Taichi or Kungfu instructor) is quite funny. He already drilled holes for me to hang up my shelves and refused to take any money, because he is a friend of my boss. So I plan on slipping him some money this time together with a bottle of brutal liquor (the shelves in the supermarket are flowing over with this clear 50% and more rice-schnapps, there are so many varieties, it's mind boggling). He can't refuse a gift, can he? He always treats me a bit like an idiot, I mean, clearly, anyone who doesn't speak Chinese is an idiot! Instead of talking to me, he starts to mimes things when I don't understand. It doesn't help that he has this accent where "s" sounds exactly like "sh." Many people do that here. I really don't understand how they can communicate. Chinese already has so many homophones, why add a few hundred more by not distinguishing between "z,c,s" and "zh, ch, sh"? It's insane! In the end I usually catch his meaning, but he doesn't believe me (although he even wrote it down!), so I have to call Lingfei to translate. Turns out he told me exactly what I thought he did. So, I'm looking forward to an entertaining evening today.

My Chinese is making big progress. I have also found a language partner. It's not quite fair, because her English is already much better than my Chinese (and I feel like my English has deteriorated in the last couple of months, I'm starting to use some phrases I pick up from Chinese that don't exactly have the right Grammar!) but I think it's going to help a lot. Usually I only practise speaking with the people in my class whose accent is just as bad as mine. It's easy to pronounce the tones correctly in a single word, but to string them together to sentences fluently is a challenge we consistently fail to live up to. Liu Xing, my language partner, is the first Chinese with siblings I meet who was born after the introduction of the one-child policy. So I asked her what punishment her parents had to face and she said they only paid a small fine and probably lost some job opportunities, but they didn't experience it as a real hardship. And she never felt discriminated or encountered any problems because of that. She thinks today the punishment would be much more severe though. And another interesting fact about this topic - in Jiangsu province couples are allowed to have more than one child if they both don't have any siblings. But that's not true for everywhere in China. Oh, and ethnic minorities are also exempt from this rule, I was told.

Meeting Liu Xing was fun. My writing teacher introduced us and we met in this western-style cafe. They wanted to have dinner, but ordered only sweet stuff! Apart from a salad. But in true Chinese fashion, all the food arrived at once and we ended up eating salad, cheesecake, crepes with ice cream and grilled cheese sandwich all at once :) I just can't understand why one would want to eat mediocre western style food when one can get really good Chinese food, usually for less money. And I firmly believe that me eating Chinese food three times a day is what has prevented me from catching the virus everyone else in my Chinese class came down with. Must be the soy milk :) But Liu Xing is really interested in Europe, so I guess I should cook some European food for her some day - when I have my awesome, awesome kitchen! :) Can't wait. Still need to buy a wok and a cleaver. I have been putting of this purchase. It's an important decision that should not be rushed. I mean, we're going to spend a whole year together! I don't want some cheap impostor in my kitchen...