"Oh not much, not feeling too great though.."
"Oh really, how come?
"Well, you know I'm sort of in the middle of an exam period right now...Well, I'm possibly not the most prepared student on the course."
"How's that?"
"Well, I was doing pretty well with revision, until the 31st of December, when I got plastered at this New Year's Eve party. And then proceeded to be drunk until the 2nd of January."
"When did your exams start again?"
"The 4th..."
"Ah..."
"Furthermore, probably as a result of incessant drinking, I've got a pretty bad cough. And I have a speaking exam tomorrow."
"Shame."
"I know right. And, to add insult to illness, I accidentally overpaid my landlord, who now refuses to pay me back."
"Say whhaaaaaaaaatttttttttt?"
"Mate, don't even get me started. You know the Chinese have this whole thing about 'face' [面子，mianzi], well we reckon she probably realised that we overpaid [considering she said 'well, you should have checked it properly then'], but would never own up to it in public as Chinese people are ridiculous. It's no surprise though, Chinese landlords are notorious for being shite. When we called her she accused us of calling her a thief and told us to stop harassing her, as if we regularly call her up for chats. She's a b*tch anyway, she's lucky if I don't box her face in the next time I see her."
"So...any good news?"
"Well, I did manage to book my train ticket from Xi'an to Beijing, they were very nice to me when they realised that I was a foreigner and didn't really know what was going on. I had to queue up in the snow for 45 minutes but it was worth it. Everyone looked a bit shocked to see how much money I was forking over [420 yuan, about 40 quid] for a sleeper train. I realised that most Chinese people were buying seating tickets [about 100 yuan, 10 pounds] and so I probably looked like the stereotypical rich foreigner."
"I thought you weren't going to Beijing till the 11th?"
"Yeah, but Chinese trains get really busy so they open up sales 10 days before. Usually you book about 3 or 4 days in advance, but trains are especially busy during the 春节 [chunjie, Spring Festival] migration period, which lasts for about 40 days, which is when I'm planning on doing all my travelling."
"Right, and what is...choown...chaan? jyay exactly?"
"I'll do a post on that later."
"Ok cool. Any other good news?"
"Well, to be fair I did have a lot of fun over the 2 days of [non-stop] drinking, it reminded me of home, except for the fact that we went to an indoor water-park/hot-springs on the 1st. That was pretty good...no pictures of that though. I've got some pictures of us drinking though, if you're interested?"
"Hell yeah."
I wanted a picture of me to be last, but I thought it would be better if they went in some sort of sequence. Happy New Year everyone!!
xXxXxXxXx
