Metro Cards Blowing in the Wind

A few more pictures of Confucius's Temple. The middle one is a sacrificial oven!

I had a fun day that seemed to revolve around my metro card. This morning, I started my classes again at Starfish after their long Spring Festival break. At the subways here you have to swipe your card once when you enter and then when you want to leave. I went to swipe my card as I was leaving the station and all the machines went crazy and wouldn't except my card. A nice man in front of me told me in English to just be patient and wait a few moments and let everything rest. It actually did the trick! However, I seemed to loose my card somewhere between the terminal and the bus stop! I shoved onto the bus as I was still looking for my card in pocket. I had to buy a ticket on the bus from the special ticket agent. Can you imagine if there was a special ticket agent on every Trimet bus in Portland? I was so flustered that I actually got off at the wrong stop! I decided to just get into a taxi for the rest of the trip to the shelter.

Wang Fei was the only student available for my Intermediate class today. We just talked about our Spring Festivals. She was worried that she might have lost all of her English while she was at home, but she was just fine. She is going to leave to study in Russia soon and is working hard to study for a few exams. I was introduced to a new student today who will be joining my Beginner's class next week. We talked for about thirty minutes. She was exhausted. She is married and has a ten month year-old son and another baby on the way, plus she works 8 hours a day. Now, she wants to improve her English. She makes my lifestyle seem lazy in comparison!

I met up with Marie in Sanlitun to show her where I got my hair cut last September. She was going for a total hair make-over, so I told her to give me a call when she had finished. I spent an hour in a coffee shop reading a book, got my nails done, and took an adventurous trip to the Movie and Music store. I walked into the store and noticed all the movies were not there. One of the salespeople asked me "DVDs?" and I said "yes" and she said "follow me." I was little surprised, but decided to go with it since the hallway she was leading me into was full of people. She walked me down a few hallways and then finally into a little room that was full of DVDs and jam packed with foreigners like me in search of movies from home. I learned from a friendly Australian that the movie store had been raided and they often move their DVDs into different sections of the building when that happens. The best part was that I listened to so many people get upset that they had run out of copies of The King's Speech. One English woman was so mad and kept on talking about how they could have so many copies of The Black Swan and not enough of the Oscar award winning movie. If only Colin Firth knew of the people's demand for his movie in Beijing, China. I felt bad for the salespeople. I had actually gone to the store for that very movie, too. However, I still came out of the store with a few movies that I am excited to watch.

I went back to check on Marie three hours after I had left her. King, her boyfriend, had met up with her and was dutifully watching episodes of "Lost" on his ipod while she getting the finishing touches on her new look. We went out to dinner at a fantastic Korean restaurant and King told us some funny stories about his childhood. When we reached the subway this evening, I learned a hard lesson. I had bought about 20 quai worth of subway tickets to tide me over until I could buy a new metro card. However, I learned that one can only use a ticket at the subway station that it was bought at! Whoops. King helped me buy a new metro card that I will guard safely in my wallet only from now on!