second day in Beijing

Yesterday I had a wonderful evening with Andrea and her father - we went to a restaurant where we had lots of interesting (vegetarian!) food that was presented in a lovely, floral way.

This morning I met my second CSC China 13 teammate - Tom from Germany. We decided to explore the subway and after some time we found the station :o) and got to the forbidden city, which we did not enter as we will do that tomorrow with Thiago.

Two very interesting things happened at that place:

1) I was very honoured because obviously the Chinese are so happy that Susanne from Austria is visiting their country that they had Austrian flags fly all over the place in front of the palace. To my greatest disappointment I had to realise in the end that they did not do that for me... a state visit of the Austrian Chancellor. Damn.

2) When I filled in the immigration form, I had a good laugh, because they do not use the word "foreigners" but "aliens" - I thought that this was very funny, but now I know why: they DO think we are aliens! Only 5 min after we stepped out of the subway, I was being photographed like some kind of rare bird. The last time I felt like that was when I was sitting on horseback wearing a strange costume symbolizing a Bavarian mascot at a German traditional parade.

I wanted to add some photos, but it just does not work, so I will try to add them later this week.
The assignment is approaching and I am getting nervous about it - but at the moment we are still on holiday and it is fascinating to dive into this very unfamiliar world...

stay tuned!  - Sue

take off!

Hi everybody,
in a few (very few) hours I will take off for Beijing and the chaos in my living room is increasing! I am quite convinced that I packed all the wrong items... I am so excited!! Next entry will be from very far away... keep your fingers crossed for us.... - Sue

Last Day at Work before Take Off

Do you know the feeling that the more you try to prepare the more you feel unprepared? Well, I can tell you, this is definitely the situation I am in right now.
When trying to look for useful presentations that could be of interest for the companies we will be working for during the weeks to come, I get lost in "too much information". At a point I stopped to download "interesting stuff". We will find a way at the time we know our clients.
The other topic is "learning Chinese". Believe me, I did not try to be over-ambitious. I tried simple things. Like pronouncing the city, we are going to, Shijiazhuang. People look at me as if I was kidding, when the tones leave my mouth so very reluctantly and it sounds something like 'schitschischuang'. The expression on my face when I say it is something in between complete despair, wonder and embarrassement. A completely different language.
A nice colleague of mine taught me to say "I am from Austria" in Chinese. This is something like 'wo shi ao di li ren'. (same expression on my face, same very unchinese sound).
When I really gave up on my Chinese was, when I learned about the different tones and ways to pronouce them which is leading to different meanings. I came across the sentence: 'Mama qí ma, ma man, mama mà ma.' Which means: 'My mother is riding a horse, the horse is going slow, mother is upbraiding the horse'. Come on!

... to be continued. All the best to you all, Sue