Learning Dutch and my progess

Today I was in a refreshing mood .It’s been almost 20 days we are back home .I have decided seriously to study Dutch. I don’t when exactly we will be able to live in Holland ,but for sure it will happen. Wijbren has difficulties to get a job outside of the country due to the recruitment agency requires applicants to be inside the country and available for interview anytime.

When it comes to languages I can speak Persian and English as native level and my native language helps me to understand a bit Turkish and Arabic. I learned English when I was so little and the root of indo European languages are so similar.

I know a bit French and it was hard in grammar ,but now Dutch seems to be easy after knowing English well, cause the root of all European languages are the same. Even though I have no chances to speak Dutch here .Although I have a Dutch boyfriend, but we speak fluently English and it is much easier to communicate ,moreover I am not in Dutch environment yet.
So today I was amazed that after spending only one hour after 2 days not touching books I could remember and red and write a bit Dutch. I am so happy with my fast progress,even so I am not practicing speaking nor being in Dutch environment.

The fact is when it comes to Chinese language ,it becomes a night mare. I have been living here for 5 years and I can understand what they say and can read and write a good enough ,but it is freaking hard this language.

Learning the characters are night mare and each single character comes with another one and the combination make totally another meaning. when it goes to intermediate and upper levels, you need to distinguish what exactly people mean not just knowing single character is enough. We can’t watch Chinese movies cause there is no subtitle and if it has if there is a new character there is no way to read it and you are lost.

Other languages like Persian( indo European language) or Latin ( German, other European languages) whenever you learn the alphabet and pronunciation at least you read and easier you find out the meaning comparing to English or any other languages you know.

Game time and secret movie shot taken from me

Anyhow after coming back from Holland Wijb has changed a bit for good sake.I am happy about it. Cause I feel now he can distinguish between proper thing and right time doing them.
Wijb always like playing Ps2 games and it is understandable in a certain level. but sometimes as woman It works on my nerves .We have other things to do and so many plans for future and could be extra work for instance

.

Anyhow back to the point ,he said one day:” I reached a milestone in my nerdiness yesterday when I finally finished downloading the PS2 game 'SSX 3'. For the past couple of months I've scoured the internet for people's opinions on what the best games for the console are and subsequently downloaded those games if there were enough people sharing those opinions.:
But now what is happening is I am getting addicted. Luckily I can control myself ,during these 2 weeks back to the routine life I was playing hard and meanwhile I was studying my Chinese and Dutch.
I have learner from childhood never loose chances and never let it go as time flies. I know sometimes I am hard to Wijb but it is for us and future though.
In fact today when I was enjoying my favorite “underground 2”which is a racing games and hot and deep inside it. He took a creepy movie of my action which I found it nice and we all laughed about it I would like share it with other friends.

Our friendly surrounding

Our friendly surrounding:

It’s been almost a week by now ,living in this neighborhood .Wijbren adore it. With no exception he finds some excuses to get out of home ,for instance:in order to get some breakfast or what ,then he jumps out for a walk every morning .

Most evenings, we stroll under the shade of trees, under heavy shrubs listening to crackers and grasshoppers singing to find mates, or hop to our small playground. Adapting yourself with a new place and surrounding is another compromising with nature which make life much easier and more colorful.

This morning I woke up with children noises and scream.
First I taught something is wrong ,but then realized that playground in front of us, is specialized for kid’s and this morning I saw parents are running on the track. There are plenty of swings, slides and other toys for kid’s.


Our friendly surrounding:

As we are living in China we are familiar with small parks or any small wood area, which government sets some public exercise- tools for retired people or anyone has time to spend outside in the day time and does some free exercise. In fact our small playground is not an exception at all.
Even everything is close by we are thinking to buy a scooter, for our own sake to make our life more colorful.



These days are hectic. First of all we got disappointed from my consulate in order to get some documents and transfer to embassy which we need for marriage process and nobody basically is back to work to answer us.

Corruption is something which is needed to be consider .In a lot of societies exist ,but in my country more obvious and tangible. They don’t work and with stupid excuses throw the customer form one office to another .

For instance with my simple certification which basically my passport needed to be certified that I live in China which I need to Dutch marriage in Holland .

For our marriage documents I need to go to consulate and then pay and send my personal information to embassy to do their job which means 4 times traveling, meanwhile I have high responsibility in my current job and distance here is like traveling between countries in Europe.


Then it comes to our crappy schedule for this semester at university which we need to handle.

Sometimes I think I need to inspire to myself to be more canny and shrewd, how that works when the massive milestones in life in a period of time stumble and you need to throw them away otherwise you will be eaten by harsh nature and society. the anxiety that appears is hard to handle sometimes and I feel I am lost. Now I Am gutted but try to heal as we need to keep our love and happiness in China to survive .

Moreover Wijb is thinking to get extra part time job for couple of hours at EF in Xian which I am encouraging him .which make him busy rather than rest of day time play with ps2 games and we can save more money if we need to move on to Europe one day.
Now we are waiting to get our schedule and then organize our daily life for fall 2009 here.

Our New Place

It has already been two weeks by now, that we are back home. The first week was pretty tough cause we had a severe jet lag and we couldn’t do that much .In fact the weather and food and everything was annoying back home.

The only thing on those couple of days were nice to see ,the first was our old restaurant which the owner treat us in special way and we practice our Chinese somehow the second was our old bakery which produce special home-made bread and we missed it.

I had chances to install the proxy and edit my blog stories and moreover review my Chinese stuff and finish some English novels, contact friends on Facebook, but now I am abandoned for couple of days till have access to net again.

Anyhow we tried to contact people from university to move on to a new place. Last Wednesday eventually we got the key for our new apartment .

it took 2 and half days to move. God I can’t imagine how much bulky ,crap thing I have gathered.

I got rid of some worn out, bulky clothes and more than 3 boxes of shoes and clothes left behind which hopefully will be used by some poor people who are we always seeking and hanging around garbage boxes to find something to eat. If that works I will be rather not to have shit around me and others use them.

We are totally happy these few days to be in this new place. We are on the third floor .This place is smaller and cozier.

Basically we can say much more homely.

This city has so much pollution but when you are not living in high buildings, then you have some advantages as: receiving a better water supply,I mean the pressure of water is much better, and more over, using the stairs instead of lift, even so it seems annoying ,but if the lift is full of people and every single time and you have to wait more than 5 minutes ,especially in rush hour ,to be able to get into the lift then ,you wish you had never had any lift.

This city is located on the North West of China on the line of using heating system for winter, as winters have a bad reputation of cold weather, having cheap heating system is another precious thing.

Electricity in this country is so expensive and not doable for everything. A lot of houses use solar system and gas which is much cheaper.

We have a nice lovely living room and one bed room with a great balcony and nice wooden furniture which make life easier as well.

We are going to add some stuff to add some decoration and buy more plants as well.

The only thing which is annoying here is internet connection which we use kind of proxy to be able to use some sites which are blocked in China but this place ,using very low speed, crowded network, which I am hoping soon be back to internet access.

Back to China

Back to China

On Sunday 9th August, we flew back to China .Our flight was surprisingly pretty luxury as Wijb didn’t have a seat ,due to over booked economy seats and the boarding gate luckily gave him a seat on the first class and I was lucky too to move there and we had a great time with first class back home!.

These couple of days back home was pretty annoying and boring as we still have jet lag. We couldn’t sleep over 48 hours properly and food and weather sleeping time are in a chaos.
Anyhow we are coming back to normal situation and keeping busy with movies and I have started my readings in English and Chinese and the new thing is I have decided to study Dutch smoothly and slowly mean while, so quite busy these days.

I HAVE BEEN QUITE BUSY WITH DOWNLOADING MOVIES AND PHOTOS FORWARDING EDITING STUFF IN MY BLOG AND FACEBOOK.

I am hopping my friends and whom read my blog be pleased with ew update stuff.

Mongolia July 2009,second part:

When we got our tour for Grassland ,we were about 6 people and were supposed to get a car with the guide. It took 2 hours to get there. It was such a spiral

way and bumps on the road anyhow with listening to Mongolian music and some Chinese with us practicing their English for free as usual, which is not a big surprise we arrived. It was a nice impression to see grassland but such a pity to see how they want to treat you ,cause you are a foreigner.

The food was quite basic and economical and we slept in a Mongolian tent(yurt) which was made from concert and hard ,but the same shape of traditional one.
The next day we paid for 2 hours horse riding which was good and nice to have some horse riding. In fact Mongolian horses are short and me and Wijbren had

imported European horse other wise for Wijb would be such a pain in butt to sit in a horse which his feet would drag on the floor, longer than horse's leg .!

Anyhow we walked along a small lake and saw the wrestling and racing match which was nice. After 2 days we backed and the following day a bit rest and hag around the city and then went to desert tour which was 4 hours far from Hohhot and quite far in fact .


The area was quite small and it was nice to see real desert but riding on camels for 2 hours and some areas were so steep and we both were scared to fall from camels and all 2 by 2 camels hooked on each other ,with one guide in front. To me horse riding was much doable than camels, they were a bit nasty and slow.. but I could managed to take some nice photos on the camels. One time camel was scared and I was close to fall…
I can cope wth camel riding bt to be hoenst is not my favourite things to do and wijbren's face was so pssy and full of anger casue he didn't have ny proper saddle just siting on bundle of blankets.

We had 4 tents and when we arrived to oasis settled our camp there and we had another Dutch boy and 2 Korean girls and a Spanish guy. Our driver was a bit crazy and had 2 big bottle of Baizhou( Chinese wine) which taste terrible.


We had to company those crazy guys and drank the whole 2 bottles and some beer which was not what we wanted. At least on grassland we had nice Austrian and German couples and better company at night for barbecue ,but anyhow it passed and we had to listen to stupid ,charming conversation of those 2 girls and guys ,crush on each other and were drunk and in the morning were all of them pissed…anyhow the way back we waited and a big German truck came to pick us and took us back to base camp out of the desert and then the way back to Hohhot…

Trip to Mongolia July 2009

Located at the center part of northern China, it was inhabited by Eeduosi people 20,000 years ago. With a long history, it was called Inner-Mongolia for the first time in the Qing Dynasty.

Beautiful and abundant in resources, Inner-Mongolia is a province with the wildest longitudes in China and its special location dictates the abundance and variety of its tourism resources. With grassland scenes and folk custom as its two major tourism resources, Inner-Mongolia has such natural scenes as vast grasslands, deserts, forests, and lakes.

After staying in Beijing for a week then we got our first class train ticket to Mongolia,lets correct it inner mongolia,which the capital is hohhot.......

Our hostel was nice but the impression from the city was terrible as the train station was so dirty and filty better to say...after 22 hours on the train our guide from hostel took us to our hostel and we rested the first day and hang around the area and we found out quite few nice muslem restaurants with Kababa dishes.

This pagoda is quite unique in Mongolia. The style is from Indian Buddhism. Although it is called the "1000-Buddha Pagoda", there are actually some 1563 carvings of Buddha on its exterior walls. Inside the Pagoda there is, sadly, nothing at all - it was all stripped-out and destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. However, the empty interior has been used to display an ancient stone-carved Mongolian Map of the Cosmos - on Buddhist principles. Another copy of it is outside, set in the walls of the Pagoda grounds.

Inner Mongolia's dairy products include cheese, milk curd, salty milk tea, and fermented horse milk, all of which are acquired tastes. Those who visit yurts (Mongolian tents) in the grassland (see last paragraph) will probably be offered fermented horse milk, which is supposed to drive away cold and invigorate circulation, although it has been known to bring on headaches in a few people!

Then what we did on the first day was visiting five temple pagoda which is located on the East side of the city.This pagoda is quite unique in Mongolia. The style is from Indian Buddhism. Although it is called the "1000-Buddha Pagoda", there are actually some 1563 carvings of Buddha on its exterior walls. Inside the Pagoda there is, sadly, nothing at all - it was all stripped-out and destroyed in the Cultural Revolution.
However,

the empty interior has been used to display an ancient stone-carved Mongolian Map of the Cosmos - on Buddhist principles. Another copy of it is outside, set in the walls of the Pagoda grounds.

basically Hohhot is like other cities in China with cleaner and fresher air infact.

We decided to get 2 tours to got to grassland and sleep there overnight and another tour to desert,Gobi desert and stay in oasis for one night and practic our camel and horse riding which was a great experience in fact.