Towards the final countdown

High Flyers, graduation for some
Dinner , a roll your own Chinese burrito at a Muslim restaurant.

Friday night felt like a Friday as I had the next day off. I ate out at a favourite Muslim restaurant which is clean and the menu has pictures. The outdoor table was pleasant as it was a nice evening with lots happening in the street. A lady came and offered to help me order, she was obviously keen to use her English and show off a bit which I didn't mind as I was undecided about my order (except for a bing pinju TsingTao). Tasty meal, increasing my new repertoire by one.


Saturday, a day off after 10 days of teaching. I went with Luke to the electronics area by bus and subway, to buy a memory card for my camera (much less than purchasing from around here) and to price some other gadgets for people who had asked. The uncertainty over quality/price/compatibility through mostly sign language was too big a risk with other people's money! I'll take a fluent speaker and bargainer next time (Luke bargained well).


I found where all the foreigners hangout - at Shekou a trendy area about 3 km from Nanshu, I saw more today than the last 8 weeks all together. Not a very friendly lot though, hardly a hello smile from any.


What a treat, Olympics on many channels, flipping between the tennis (in English), badminton, tabletennis, basketball all on Chinese channels. keeping up to date with Aussies through the internet.


Having packed the kitchen gear and taken it to work for storage , I went out for a takeaway as I can not order a home delivery ( no read Chinese!). On may way back in I shared the lift with a young man and his Chihuahua which stared at me all the way up 25 floors ( the dog not the owner), equal fascination between us in the strange thing before us!


Teaching tomorrow from 8.45 and finishing at 5.30 with teh two VIP students I started my first class with weeks ago. I have survived the summer teaching , but the others have two weeks left after they increased the sessions to 8 weeks ( brings in good revenue).

Housework, not hard in such a compact place, packing down to two shopping bags of household stuff and a case of clothes to stay and a bag of clothes (reduced in size) to bring home. My additional Chinese language skills will not take up much room but I can see potential for a longer stay of actually learning some phrases. I'm working on the second line of teh Olympic song to follow Beijing hauan ying ni...which is so catchy.

My maths was tested today with converting yuan to USD as the bank didn't have enough AUD anyway. It was nice to get paid yesterday with enough time to convert as you can not exchange RMB outside of China and I am sure airports take more percentage.

Anyway Olympics getting exciting with some great women's tennis (Chinese of course)... you might get an update if anything exciting happens tomorrow if not, I fly out Monday, home on Tuesday.