Kunming again

It has been 3 months now since my second arrival in Kunming. Last March I spent a month here. And now the month of September, October and November have passed with lightning speed. Which actually is a good sign that now I am enjoying it.
I know it has been a while since I last updated about my ‘wandering around the world’, and I know I kind of always have this problem of leaving long pauses in between successive posts on this blog. Its just that it is so easy to ‘forget’ about home when you are in a new place that you are really enjoying. And the latter now definitely is true.

So what has happened so far?
At the end of August I arrived in Kuming. This time the scholarship people agreed with my request to go to the Kunming Normal University and this appeared to be an excellent choice. When I arrived they assigned me to my scholarship room which I apparently shared and still share with a swiss dude called manuel. The room is quite big and Ikea-ish simple but stylish. I am not complaining at all.

In the first couple of weeks I met loads of fun people including an old high-school classmate of me called Ruud Batta. He is teaching Business Economics (I believe) here on the Yunnan University. Also I met Marianne Ho (commonly just called ‘Ho’ or ‘The Ho’ out of convenience and of course our usual attempt to be serious about potentially funny stuff ;) who actually is a friend of a friend (thanks annemae for getting me and ‘the Ho’ in touch ;). Yes once again it is a small world after all.

To ease, diversify and not limit my means of transportation to ‘foot’, cab and bus I also went on a ‘I-want-to-buy-a-crappy-bicycle’ mission to the local second hand market here. I ended up buying an extremely cool and solid second-world-war-looking Kunming Cruiser that came with the necessary sounds, rattles and ticks whenever I cruise around the city.

Loads of parties, which I naturally was forced into by others, have come across my path as well (nobody should be extremely surprised about this fact anymore I guess). To name some: Halloween pub-crawl, Sinterklaas party, Chinese music festival(letje), Black and white champagne party, monthly Latin parties, A million house warming parties and of course the more normal ‘lets go to a bar and end up in a club’ kind of party.
Me and an Soshanna organized the Halloween party on the Saturday before Halloween. We got some beer discounts at the bars for people in costume and came up with some (drinking) games to play in the several bars.
Me and me roomie Manuel went costume shopping and both came back with a kind of Tina Turner look-a-like costume so we agreed upon the fact that he would be Tina and I would be Turner!
However, as someone that night asked me if I was a female Ukranian weightlifter, I am not sure how accurate my ‘Turner’ looks resembled the real deal.
All in all it was a great night with some 60 people showing up and we kept the party going till……very early.

The Chinese music festival was something special as well. Let me describe it by saying that I think this Chinese music festival must have looked very alike to festivals like Pinkpop, Roskilde or Glastonburry but then 25 years ago.
It was a funny setting with a small stage in the middle of nowhere, locally famous Chinese and Foreign bands and bonfires right in front of the stage when dusk came falling in. And with big beers for little prices the night definitely turned into a success.

Also I found a new way of helping out people. Or actually people found a new way to let me help them out. As two of my very good friends here, the infamous Ho and Mo formerly known as Marianne and Molly, are very excellent in getting lost. So every time they get lost I keep getting phone calls and need to give directions, solve some Chinese language puzzle (have to admit that this is not my strongest point) or just simply need to tell them where they are. It’s a fun activity though. And it definitely makes you bond with people I can say :).
It also rewarded me with a new nickname: TTK. Or Tom Tom Karaoke in honour to the GPS system and my great Karaoke skills…..or was it because I was wearing a t-shirt with the letters TTK on it? I am not sure anymore ;)

Another thing that I managed to do was get in for free at a Jacky Cheung concert. Apparently he is a kind of Robbie Williams of HK and amazingly popular in China. So in spite of a warning that he only plays real Chinese rainbow and candy sweet pop music I thought it would be a good cultural experience to see him. So one day when he gave a concert in the soccer stadium here I decided to go and take a look and either get cheap tickets on the black market or get in for free. By first passing 2 police checks by telling them that I had to go and visit a friend who lives right beside the stadium I stumbled upon the last ticket check right at the stadium doors. After hanging out at the gate for a while waiting till some of the about 20 police guys would take it a bit easier on ticket checkings I started talking to one police guy. I asked him who the guy was who was playing in the stadium and if he was famous. At that moment when the friendly police guy explained to me what was going a voice from inside yelled ‘just let the foreigner pass so he can take a look at the concert’. Apparently it was the local police boss who did me a favor. So I got to see the last hour of the concert including firework show.
And yes it was not too bad at all.

So what about studying? Yes I have done some of that as well. There is 18 hours of class each week. Seems like a very limited amount but given the amount of homework and repetition that, in theory, is necessary to be able to keep up with the lessons it is still a normal 40 hour ‘workweek’. My class is nice and with 11 people also fairly small.
The first 3 months I especially improved in my reading and writing, however there still is loads of progress to be made. Speaking has stayed behind a bit but I am planning to work on that next semester more intensively.

Sadder times have also fall upon the happy town of Kunming as people start leaving with the semester drawing to its end. Today Molly left and on Wednesday two party-hardy Dutchies are leaving. And telling you all that it is a pity they are leaving is actually a great understatement.

I have also put some pictures online (yeah I have been very active today). Not as usual on http://kruuemel.spaces.live.com/ as it is kind of a shitty site. However old pictures can still be found on there.
New Kunming Candids can be found on: http://picasaweb.google.com/marc.frencken
As the upload speed is terribly slow here in China I haven’t put that many pics there yet but in the near future I will definitely add more pictures to this website. So stay tuned.

There are definitely more stories to tell (among others my trips to XiShuangBanNa with Joke and a trip around the Guangdong province where I visited Duncan and Joke and gave directions to Molly :)). But I will write about that some other time.

If anyone is traveling China and passes Kunming just let me know. It would be great to meet up and show you around. In the meantime let me know how all of you are doing? Just as you haven’t heard from me for a long time I haven’t heard much from most of you. Am just curious how all of you are doing.

Take care,
Marc.