Summer getting closer and closer

May is already here, which means I have only two months left in China.
My ticket back to Norway is ready (31th of July), and my tickets to India are booked!
It is gonna be so sad, to say farewell to my friends here in Beijing. We are like a big big family here, and the days are not gonna be the same without them. And living in Europe without all my Latinos.. will be different.

The same week I came back from India, I had my midterm exams. I finished them all with great results! It was easier than I thought it would be. After the exams came also the nice weather. Almost 30 degrees celcius and sunny everyday! I looove it. Nice weather also means more picnics in Beijing´s many many parks. Last Sunday we went to Beida park ( Peking Uni), and we had a great time there. Riding my not so fully charged electric bike with three persons, took us a while to get there.. (Could not ride it fast, or the battery would have died). But somehow we managed to go all the way to the park and back to our apartment again! :)

I have eaten so much good food these two months! And it is not only me enjoying eating, but my rabbit, Mango, eats a lot too.. and now she is big and fat. No one understands how she got so big, so fast! And her ears are enormous ( comparing to when we first got her ). While Mango eats too much, my turtles don`t eat at all. One even died.. but we don`t know why.

R.I.P turtle

Andreas´ (Norwegian!!) birthday dinner

I FINALLY found sour cream! Rømme <3<3<3

The best sushi in Wudaokou. Soooo yummy

Some of my Indian henna drawings. 

Jealous, much? :) 

My friend protecting herself from the smell on the metro.. 

Chinese fashion :s

Indian food at the Ganges. It is nothing compared to real Indian food, but this is great for Beijing!

Chinese girl dancing Indian dance. (And I got tricked. I thought she was Indian, but my friend kept saying no she is Chinese. In the end we asked a waiter, and he said yes she is indeed Chinese..) 

Biking to Beida Park!

Its incredible how people can find their own bicycle among this..

The tower thing of Beida

Norwegian chips!! Ingen Kims ingen kos :) 

And we went to VICS, again..

Incredible India

India was amazing. 
The people, the food, the weather, the colors. What made it even greater is that my boyfriend lives there, knows the language and could show me around to all these beautiful places. 

We visited three different cities; New Delhi, Agra (Taj Mahal) and Varanasi ( where my boyfriend lives). 
In New Delhi, an honest tuck tuck driver took us all over the city, and showed us a nice place where we could have dinner. We paid 500 rupees for a whole day, including picking us up at the hotel which was next to the airport. Ricardo met him the day before I came, and this guy told Ricardo all about how tuck tuck drivers work here and how they rip off foreigners. They always work in teams, first you get on the tuck tuck and you say which hotel or restaurant you wanna go to. Then this other guy will come, and ask where you guys are going. After telling him, he will say oh that hotel is closed, or that one is so expensive. I will show you a better one and for a better price. So tourists will believe him, and follow him. But the thing that they don´t know, is that these tuck tuck drivers will get commissions from the hotel, restaurant, shop, tourists office etc. 

They will always try to rip you off, even these so called "government tourist offices" will try to get the most money from you, and they will give money to the tuck tuck drivers who takes you to the tourist office. An example, a roundtrip to Agra (5 hours from Delhi), costs from 20000 to 30000 rupees (2400 to 3600 kuai) for tourists if you go to tourists offices. We paid 4500 rupees (550 kuai) for a private taxi driver. 

India Gate

Lotus Temple

Lotus temple at sunset

We spent one night in Agra. Everyone told us to go and see Taj Mahal during sunrise, and that Taj Mahal is beautiful and you will see all these different lights, so we had to be there from 05.30. Luckily we did not get there that early. We came there at 06.00 am, and thought we were late. Then we saw this huge line of foreigners wanting to get in, but the doors would not open before 06.15, so we knew we would miss the sunrise. However, we were still glad that we came there so early, because the weather was chilly and nice, not that many tourists and we could take some nice pictures :)

Taj Mahal was built by a Mughal emperor in memory of his wife, over 400 years ago. And it is as stunningly beautiful as everyone says it is. We spent over 3 hours there, walking around, taking pictures and just enjoying the moment.

Taj Mahal

After visiting Taj Mal, we drove back to Delhi and took a train to Varanasi which took about 12 hours. 
When you arrive in Varanasi train station, there are so many rickshaws and auto rickshaws waiting for you, but they will not give you a good price. We were living in "Chowk", and they wanted 150-200 rupees to take us to there ( takes about 15 minutes), but usually it is 80-90. So we walked away from the train station and found a driver who gave us a reasonable price.Varanasi is the worlds oldest and most religious city. It is very colorful and nice, but sometimes the people can be a real annoyance to you. Even though we were riding on a motorbike, they still stopped us and asked if we wanted a tuck tuck ride, and asked were we wanted to go. Or people trying to sell us things we did not want, get us in to restaurants we had no plans to eat in etc. If you are walking alone, some guys will always ask where are you going? I can show you where it is. I always says no thanks, and walk away. You never know if they are good guys or bad guys.. 

The main ghat

The traffic in Varanasi is also very chaotic and has no system at all! I thought that the traffic in Beijing was bad, but at least there is a system here. In Varanasi, people were walking, bicycling, driving motorbikes, cars, rickshaws, and cows were walking on the same road! When we were driving our motorbike, we always had to stop for cows! It was crazy, and we almost crashed a couple of times. Indian guys drive so insanely fast and don´t care about traffic rules at all. 

But I must say that if you can drive in India, you can drive in any parts of the world. And I think Ricardo is a really good driver and so brave for being able to drive in Varanasi!! 

A dead person being carried to the burning ghat

The Ganges river goes through Varanasi, so we woke up twice to see the sunrise over the river. It was beautiful. We went on a boat trip along the ghats, and it was a wonderful experience. You will see people taking a bath in the river, washing their clothes, swimming with cows, and also dead people getting burned in the burning ghat.. Everyday you will see dead people being covered with flowers and carried to the burning ghat. The people often comes from south, and get transported by train to Varanasi, where they will be cremated.

6am, watching the sunrise over Ganges

Taking a bath

The burning ghat

The food.. it´s just so delicious, with all these good spices and sauces, dipping roti or naan bread into it, eating fresh yoghurt everyday... yummy. The best part must be that you use your hand eating Indian food. Its just so much better than using fork and knife! And drinking real Chai tea everyday. So cheap and so good. And not to forget about the super awesome tandoori chicken! Just thinking of Chai and Indian food makes me so hungry.. 

Tandoori chicken

Garlic naan

One of the things that I liked the most about Varanasi, is that you can see monkeys everywhere!! I love monkeys, and whenever I see them I will become so happy and start smiling. They are jumping from rooftop to rooftop, on trees, and sometime they will come and try to steal fruits and other things from you. I got strictly information about not touching or hugging them, because they can be very aggressive and can attack you. In China you have these things in front of your window so no thieves can come through the window and enter into your house. In Varanasi they have some protective things on the windows against monkeys..

These 15 days went by so fast, and I had to get back to Beijing again. We took the train to New Delhi, met Ricardo´s parents(they were there for an exhibition) and ate in Kingdom of Dreams, and then I had to go to the airport, flying away from Delhi and Ricardo..

A small update

Being a student at BLCU and in Beijing is fantastic.

All the people you are meeting, the great food you eating ( or cook-me and Yilin are getting better and better in cooking!), enjoying the spare time you have with friends, doing homework in one of the many cafés on campus or in Wudaokou, shopping cheap and nice things, biking around (if you have a bike), walking through the many Hutongs, and so much more!

Right now the weather is lovely in Beijing, sunny and 15-20 degrees celcius. I love to ride around on my electric bike ( btw, I finally got new keys), feeling the wind blowing in my face, being faster than all the walking and bicycling people, not worrying about traffic lights or traffic rules..

But the good weather will not last for long, because the sandstorms are coming, along with its horror. Beijingers says that people can´t go out, or drive, because they can not see anything. In the recent years, it has become much better because of tree plantings, but still, the sand from the deserts in Inner Mongolia and Mongolia is still there and coming closer and closer to Beijing. And after the sandstorms, the heat and humidity will come and kill us all with overwhelming hot weather. So I´m enjoying the weather we have now to its fullest!

This semester has been good so far, and I have actually been studying and doing all my homework. I got new teachers and new classmates, and they are all really nice and fun. And I´m surprised that so many got Chinese girlfriends in my class! (3!) I was asking my Australian classmate the other day how he and his Chinese girlfriend met, and before he even got to answer, I jokingly said : in Sensation?  (a club in Wudaokou), and my other classmate was laughing so hard.. because it was true. Well, the best way to learn a language is in bed, as Ricardo´s father told him..

Speaking about love and Sensation, there are so many new couples on campus! And even my flatmates have some romances going on. It must be the feeling of spring coming :) I guess Sensation is a place for love seeking people to go to. I have a few friends who found their girlfriend/boyfriend there, and some are still together.. Looking at all the couples kissing and hugging around, I envy them a lot. Being apart from my boyfriend is hard, because we lived together and did everything together.  Luckily I´m going to INDIA(!!!!) tomorrow to visit him for two weeks!

I also welcomed two mini turtles and one beautiful rabbit into our family! 

Me and Yilin´s cooking skills are getting so good!! 

But even though our cooking rocks, burgers at Bluefrog at Mondays is a must.. :) 

Marte visiting me in Beijing! In two days we visited 6 different tourist attractions :o  

After Marte left, Runa came. She visited me for 10 days, so more time to check out Beijiing :)

I love seeing a blue sky. We live in the 7th floor of this building.

My two baby turtles. The darker one is the male, lighter one the female. 

My cute bunny. The race is called Belgian Mango Rabbit

And we call her Mango, because when we got her she was the size of a mango, and her nice color reminds us of a mango

The next day my good friend got the same rabbit, but a male, hoping to make some babies.. 

Now my bunny is so big!! No more the size of one mango, but two mangos! 

India, tomorrow <3

Bad Blogger

To be honest, I am not a good blogger at all. 

I blog very seldom, I don´t write good posts and it is probably very boring to read my blog. 

This is because I don´t know what to write about, and I don´t know how to make a blog interesting and fun, and to make readers longing for more posts. Another reason is that I don´t have time to spend everyday blogging, or trying to figure out what to blog about. What I would like to do is just to posts lot of pictures. Pictures tell more than a thousand word right? But that would be too boring for you guys. 

So from now on, I´m going to try to blog at least once per month, like a summary of what I have been doing after every month. And if something very interesting happens, maybe I will blog about that too.

:)