9/30/2012

The Moon Festival


Time: 07.05. I haven't went to sleep yet. Sitting on two madrases beside three sleeping beauties. I got an allergy-attack yesterday evening from a naughty Mooncake. I still can´t breath good enough to lay down, I dont have my usual color of my skin and I'm forbidden to sleep. So well, I gotta be awake, sitting up, being still the whole night! Hardcore. These pills that Ive been taking for my allergy makes me kind of awesome; veeery awake and filled with fantasy. Perfect bloging- time. - Whats a Mooncake? Oh, well, Ill tell you soon. Just want to say an other thing first;

- What A Weekend!

No, I'm not ironic; it HAS been a GREAT weekend . . . until the stupid peanut-reaction of course. This weekend is not a normal weekend its the Moon Festival Weekend, which included for example experiencing the fantastic Nightlife of Kunming and sitting on a roof looking at the moon and eating mooncakes. . .!


... ... ... THE MOON FESTIVAL ... ... ...
 
The Moon Festival, even called the Mid-Autumn Festival, is one of the most important holidays in China, that appeared more than 3000 years ago. Its a big festival celebrated by Chinese and Vietnam people on the 15th day of the eight month (in the Chinese calender) every year.
 
The Moon festival is associated with the legend about the archer Houyi and his beautiful wife Changé. The story takes place 2200 BCE, at the time where we had ten suns on earth instead of one. Because of the ten suns the earth became very warm. Houyi got a mission from the emperor to kill all but one of the suns. After he had make it he got a gift; pill who could give him eternal life. The emperor advised Houyi to just eat half of it because of its strong power. Some weeks later Changé found the pill, ate it and immediately she began to fly because of her overdose. She reached the moon where she coughed up half of the pill. Changé couldn't fly back to her husband on earth, so she commanded the rabbit Jade, that lives on the moon, to make a new pill.
 
The legend says that the rabbit still pounding herbs, trying to make this pill. Once a year, at the night of the Moon Festival, Houyi visit´s his wife. That's the reason why the moon is extremely bright and beautiful this night.
 
... ... ... ... ...


Moon Festival Snack
I think chestnuts is my new favorite snack

MoonCake
speciality mooncake for Kunming contains a mix of bacon, ham and sugar.

One of the tree great clubs we went to yesterday.
Free entrance, free closet, free drinks, crazy dancing and well blond foreigners is treated like superstars.
 
 
Its light outside now. Its Monday morning. Im feeling a lot better so no worries. . . but I still got this incredible super- pill- energy!!! 
 
What to do, whaaat toOo do?!
 
Wake Up Everyone!
 
 
 

9/28/2012

Wo Shu Master

 

 
Intrudoction of Lesson One
Wo Shu

Kung Fu Fighting

 
Wo Shu, called Martial Art in English, began in the South of Asia more than three thousand years ago. It started from the instincts of the pasts Chinese hunters who needed to protect themselves and fight to survive.

Wo Shu comes from China, but belongs to the world.”
/Kung Fu Master; Li De Xiang

Wo Shu is more than just a sport; its culture, it’s a traditional art. There are a lot of different styles in Wo Shu. The South style of Wo Shu includes frequently fist, compares to the North style who includes more kicks. You may have heard of the relaxing Wo Shu style; Tai Chi, or maybe the fighting style that Bruce Li act called; Nan Quan? If you know both of them you must have realized the big difference between these styles. Wo Shu can be used both for defense, for keeping health and flexibility, for fighting, for entertainment and for building up your spirit. I’ve just spent five hours together with one of the greatest Kung Fu Masters in Yunnan; Li De Xiang.

Li De Xiang
Kung Fu Master
Fighting
"Focus all your energy and hit the side of your enemies neck."
At least an hour stretching. 
"You need more than just strength."
 KillerStreching
"To be able to do a great kick. . ."
"Lao Shi Hao"
For respect and gratitude to The Master
 
 

9/23/2012

A random post

Hi guys.
 
This is one of these weekdays that I wrote about last time. I woke up, bought yogurt, ate breakfast and now I'm sitting in the kitchen thinking about weekdays. I'm not really sure what to write about today? So I guess this will be a Random Post. If you don't know what a Random Post is, you´ll figure it out pretty soon.
 
. . .

I still haven't take any warm shower in our apartment.

I got lost last week, took the wrong bus all by my self. Went one hour away in the wrong direction without a working phone, without anyone who understood English and without any idea where I was. The bus driver stopped somewhere on the countryside and said that everyone had to leave the bus. Got saved by a Chinese man while the countryside- people wanted to touch my skin and hair. And so on...

None lets me walk alone after this exciting happening I just wrote of.

My Kung Fu- lessons starts on Wednesday! Weeeeeeeeeii!!!!

We had to change the lock on the door four times because it keeps breaking.

I bought a supernice leather jacket, two nail polish and a Clubsandwich with a lot of majoniese yesterday after the church service.

Linnea´s locked bike just got stolen in our staircase.

I prefer to eat with chopsticks instead of silverware.

Our toilet has broke 3...4... hmm maybe 11 times.

I WANT SWEDISH COFFEE

It´s my turn to tell my LifeStory to my clasmates tomorrow. A bit nervous.

There is a man sneezing outside our apartment every morning at 9.15.

I would LOVE to hear more from You Readers if you appreciate my blog.


my new love lives in our staircase
 
 filip is waiting for food @ TCG Nordica
 
 you can find (and smell!) Stinky Tufu everywhere
 
 an easy way to transport your dog
 
hardcore chinese fighter


studdying chinese language



Thats all for today. Going to eat nuddles and prepare for tomorrow´s LifeStory.

Zai Jian Ni Men



9/21/2012

Nihao Weekdays

Sitting in my bed lissening to our cute little maid singing while she´s cleaning our toilet. Just ate breakfast and I´m going to Nordica in some minutes. We are going to restore and furnish backstage since last weeks flood.
 
If there is something called weekday in my life nowadays, that's what it is today. The WeekdayLife is starting. I had my second calligraphy lesson yesterday where I wrote; "You are the way" and "I like my dad" as beautiful as I could. I guess my spelling wasn't correct because my teacher came plenty of times trying to paint "extra" dots and lines on my characters, so I had to protect my painting all the time. I also had my fifth chines lesson yesterday where I learned how to say; "You are handsome", I am eating food." and "The horse is big."


John and Filip

 Me
(writing I like my dad)

Teacher

9/18/2012

Welcome Performance


The pics wasn't as good as I hoped, and a lot of them were in black and white. (Don't ask me why.) But no worries. Hakuna Matata.
As I promised. Here comes some pics from our performance.

 John plays "Circle of life" on guitar and Ellen have an slide show with her beautiful pictures on the screen.

 Dance
 My and Linnea´s dance show to the jazzy song from Aristocats; "Everybody wants to be a cat."
(We got some help from John, Johanna and Ellen in the last pic.)


Solo song; "Colors of the wind" - Pocahontas
I also made a spontaneous solo in ToyStory´s "You got a friend in me"

Linnea and me After The Show
(Felt very famous when we got roses and everyone wanted to take pics of us and together with us)

 
 This sweetness is taking all the attention every time he arrives on stage. . . or anywhere else. No wonders why. <3
Our teachers son Mio.

Louise and Ellen

John and Filip

  
The Swedish Team

9/17/2012

A cup of tea

God morning world. 
I’m back home in Kunming after two fantastic days filled with food, games, laughing, talking and hot springs. There is so many nice people working at TCG Nordica, I really like all of them. Thank you guys for this great trip!
I still think it’s so interesting with their food culture, not just because they are eating everything with chopsticks. Kunming people love spicy food. (I thought that I also liked spicy food until I arrived here, what I call spicy, they call “taste nothing”) Did you know that it’s sometimes impossible to order normal water in a restaurant? They are always drinking tea. (to their super spicy food. . !) You can order hot water sometimes thou. Did you know that Chinese don’t eat desert? They don’t like sugar, they cant drink milk and my Chinese teacher told me that chocolate is like fire to their throat. Its hard to find nice cookies and candy in the supermarket. Its easy to find meat (like chicken feet and dried mini fishes) in candy package thou. What do they do instead of eating a desert? Well; they are obviously drinking a cup of tea.
. . .
 Breakfast and lunch- place

Brushing teeth in a Hot Spring- Jacuzzi <3


Breakfast
Noddles with chicken, bread with meat and syrup, green cookies, pancake-bread-stuff, pumpkin- cupcake, black rise- muffin, fruits, egg, fried egg... yeah well, I choose the most "normal" food I could find. 

My favorite? Egg!

(a tiny piece of the) 
Hundred Dishes Buffet
to the left: no idea what it is... 
to the right; five difrent kinds if rise

My favorite? A meatmuffin!

 My Beautiful, Tired, Breakfast-eating Classmates

 Happy Games

9/15/2012

and its done


My muscles hurts, my voice is gone and the headache is my best partner. It’s the day after the big show, our Welcome Performance.  How fun was it to make this performance? It was amazing!! I’m totally in love with this feeling. . . this feeling of standing behind the stage, hearing the expectant audience slowly silence and be replaced by the groovy introduce- music of the show.  It’s such a rush of adrenalin. Gosh I wanna do it again! I need to do it again. Wow. <3
I’m not going to write more about the show until I get all the pictures from it. We hired a professional photographer, because our own professional photographers were on stage the whole evening. (Ellen and Filip). I have some pictures from before the show thou.
Haha. Its insane how much there is happening here in China.  I don’t even remember all things. Okay; one of all things; we got flood backstage the evening before the show. . ! So all of us had to help to remove all furniture (there’s a LOT of stuff in the backstage), remove the floor-carpet, dry the floor under the floor-carpet and put back all the furniture again. Another of all things; there was 92 policemen at TCG Nordica yesterday morning while we arrived to prepare for our Welcome Performance. Yeah. More about that another day. I gotta pack. We’re going to hot springs with the TCG Nordica- team today. Hundred dishes- buffet and hotel tonight. Coming back tomorrow evening. Life’s good.

Bye for now.






9/13/2012

Welcoming Performance

Hi blog!
The big Welcoming Performance is getting closer and I’m starting to get very nervous. There is much to prepare; dances, songs, pictures, sketches and of course a lot of commercial. You can find these awesome posters all over Kunming.
 
 
Me Linnea John Louise Filip Johanna Ellen

We have also sent out flayers with invitations to our Welcoming Performance to a lot of random people we meet on the streets, in school, on cafés, in restaurants, in cabs and everywhere else. So hopefully there is going to be someone in the audience on Saturday. We are going to make a show inspired by Disney. That means that each part of this show has something to do with one of the lovely Disney movies. For example; I’m going to sing a song from Pocahontas, dance together with Linnea to a song from Aristocats and sing in our class-choir to a song from Tarzan and from Toy Story. Even thou I’m nervous I know this is gonna be great.

Feel Very Welcome Everyone!


Saturday at 20.00

TGC Nordica
Xiba Lu 101,
 Loft Kunming 650032,
Yunnan
China

(This is also the address to all of you who wanna visit me, or sent me a little sweet letter)

Love From Olivia

9/11/2012

Yes mum I am eating.

Olivias Daily Food

I'm not sure if Ive told you guys, some of you do already know, but I'm very allergic too peanuts. When I say "very allergic" I mean that I die if I eat it. To live in China being that allergic to peanuts is not easy. Chinese people love to put peanuts in everything, and they are using peanut oil nearly every time they are roasting or frying anything. . .  and I cant read or ask if they are using peanuts as an ingredients because I don't understand neither chines characters or the chines language. . . ! This is the moment you are all thinking; 

"Olivia! How can you still be alive?!"

 Well I'm gonna tell you how:

First of all; I got a little note from one of my Chinese friends, Aria, who says something like; "I am super-allergic to peanuts. I will die if just I eat a mini- tiny piece of a peanut or a little drop of peanut oil.". Okay I'm not really sure exactly what my little note says, but I guess its something like that because all the restaurant workers always get panic while I'm showing them my little note. 
I'm also trying to use this little note while I'm in the supermarket by giving it to a random chines,  pointing at the thing I want to buy and trying to look as piteous as I can. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. Anyway; one of the picnic-people from yesterday told me that even if the table of contents say that there is no peanuts, you can never be sure that's true. Crap.

Second: I try my way! That may sounds scary. . . but what is life if there is no excitement? ^^
(Dont worry mum Im sitting with my allergy injections, my medices and my phone in one hand and the new cool ateble thing in the other while "I try my way")

Ive found some nice stuff I can eat already. . . I'm eating it eeeveeery day. 

Here it is:

From the left to the right; 
1. Nescafé - cant live without it; its the closest thing to coffee Ive found.
2. Noodles with taste of chicken; just add hot water. Takes less than a minute to prepare.
3. Tropicana Orangejuice; <3
4. Chinese yoghurt- thing; Its inpossible to remove the cover from these, because you are supose to just stick a straw through it. Haha, we tried so hard before we figured it out! 
5. Unsweeted whole grain crackers with green beans; well, this is actually something new that I just figured out that I can eat. Theyre cool and I guess its pretty healthy too, I mean; Grean beans and Whole grain cant be anything but healthy right?

Im also eating a lot of apples, bananas, eggs and oatmeal.

Thats all about Olivias Daily Food.

Thank you for your attention.

Lot of Love /
Olivia

9/09/2012

I´m not a coward

Hi guys. I’m feeling better now. Had a wonderful day which started 10.30 with an international Christian church service together with Filip, John and the Newman family. It was located at the third floor of a hotel with a lot of foreigners from all over the world. This church is registered, but no Chinese people are allowed. The priest talked about “What you sow you will reap”; that your actions today will create your future. He made me starting to think about what I want to become when I get older… hmm? Anyway, he was great!
12.00 We went to my favorite restaurant (so far…) after the service. We shared a lot of different dishes, that’s how you should do in China, for example; sour and sweet pork, scrambled eggs, fried chicken and rice noodles with beef. Oh YEA I’m eating with chopsticks!
14.00 Picnic-time! We went, together with the rest of my class, to a beautiful park filled with happy Chinese in all ages. We met the other Scandinavian; from Denmark and Norway, and had a long, nice picnic in the sun. The Norwegians had made a Swedish “kladdkaka” and vanilla cupcakes. I love picnic! John and I also made our own TaiChi on a little hill in the middle of the park which the Chinese people really appreciated.
22.30 Lying on a couch in Ellen, Johanna, John and Filips apartment. The other are watching a scary movie . . . I’m not gonna tell you which one it is, because you might think I’m a coward.
Bye for now!

PicnicPeople <3
(I'm in the background staring at the vanilla cupcakes...)

My super-sweet roomie Linnea and a random Chinese baby.

A part of the beautiful park... and one Ellen, one Linnea and one Olivia.

 I didn't get a pic of our TaiChi, even thou a lot of Chinese did,
but I got one of our Chinese waltz-dance.


9/08/2012

This night wasn´t my favorite

Saturday morning. This night wasn’t my favorite. My stomach isn’t as it should be, if you know what I mean . . . and I have both headache and fever. I think it was because of the tacos we ate yesterday yesterday. Well, it didn’t look like tacos, it didn’t taste like tacos and we didn’t find the right ingredients for tacos, but the idea from the beginning was to have a Taco-Night. Making tacos in China isn’t as easy as you might think. What we found for our tacos in the huge shopping center was: something that looked like smashed meat, bananas, bread for toast, ketchup, mayonnaise, salt and some kind of mixed spices that looked ok. We found a lot of other cool stuff in this shopping center thou. But anyway, we had a great evening and this “tacos” actually gives me time to make a post; and that’s a good thing! 
A week ago, we participated in a “City Hunt”. We split up our class into three teams and each team got a paper filled with challenges that we had to do on different places. Each challenge we completed gave us points. My team (John and Johanna) won! . . . I guess I wouldn’t write about this if we´d lost ^^. The reason why we won was because we made a video of when we are doing push-ups outside McDonald's together with random Chinese. (100 point for each extra Chinese!) We also run between two famous gates 5 times, learned Tai-Chi and shake hand with 4 foreigners. It was really fun! The price for winning was an hour massage.
We got that massage yesterday. I seriously don’t know how to describe this massage with words; it was the best massage I ever got! I was marvelous! They were so skilled they could feel where I had pain and make it disappear. I was not like any massage I’ve got before, not even close to. It might sound weird while I’m describing it; I wore all my clothes, so they didn’t use any kind of oil, and everyone was in the same room, so the masseurs talked with each other a LOT (I didn’t understand a word they said, but I liked that; I didn’t have to talk with them, and the sound of voices makes me relaxed). Perfect. One of the guys that massaged me (yeah I got a new guy after a half hour) even talked in the phone while he gave me massage with one hand. . . and he was still skilled! I’m so impressed. I’m going there again for sure, maybe once a week for the rest of the year. . . I mean the cost for an hour was like nothing - 35Y ( I think that's 3, 5 euro).

Some Pics
These little sweethearts where living in the food department in the Shopping Centre. Just to pick and choose.
 
 Chicken feet is found everywhere in this town; the Chinese seems to love it! Yummy!

 Ellen found some crabs too.

Super-Relaxed girls after the lovely massage; before ourTacoNight

Gonna try to find some medicine. Its GameNight at Nordica tonight and tomorrow a Picnic wit some other Scandinavian people. Don't wanna miss a thing!