Du Lala’s Promotion 《杜拉拉升职记》
Guilin is kind of a small city in China, in other words there's not that much to do/see here, well except for the mountains and the rivers. So to keep myself entertained I go to the cinemas. I've seen a couple of Chinese movies here, there's one in particular I want to share with you guys, Du Lala's Promotion. Okay, I admit the title sounds funny, other than that the movie is pretty good though. The movie is about LaLa's upcoming career.
Study study.. 学习 学习。。
Well it's not that bad actually as the title states, I do study from time to time. Since I never really explained to you guys how I picked up Manderin I thought I'd share it with you guys.
Arrival Guilin
When I just arrived at Guilin I wasn't studying my Chinese from the books. The first thing I did was improve my speaking skills, since I wanted to share my thoughts with my friends and I didn't want to do it in English. So I just kept talking Chinese to improve my level. So after like 2/3 weeks I could hold basic converstations and after a month I was finally able to hold conversations on an average level. After 2 months I noticed my Chinese wasn't improving so quickly as I hoped. So I came up with an idea to help me improve my Chinese skills.
Watch TV serie
The first thing I did was buy a Taiwanese TV serie, 【海派甜心】, it's quite good actually. Probably most of you already watched it, but I'm not the kind of guy that watches tv series so that's why I'm kind of behind. Anyways, I was pleasantly surprised I could understand the whole thing, cause back in Holland I checked the same TV show, but I didn't understand it at all.
After that I started to study, really study, not like the way I study in Holland. I actually picked up my book to prepare for the lessons, and I started writing articles in Chinese and gave them to my teacher, then she corrected it for me. Right now my Chinese is still kinda crappy but you can't learn everything in one day.
Okay enough with the boring talk. It took me 3 months to put a photostream online =p (because I'm a really lazy blogger) but check it out!
中文版
*好的，这是我第一次写中文blog，所以如果我写的不对请你改我一下。*
学习学习！也没有那么努力，还可以吧。 在我的blog我没有解释过我怎样学汉语，所以现在解释一下吧。
刚来桂林的时候
我刚来桂林的时候不是用书学汉语，是我常常跟朋友们说普通话。 那个时候我真的想快快提高我的汉语水平，是因为我有很多想法想跟朋友分享，可是我不想用英语说。 过了两三个星期我的口语提高了一点儿，可以讲简单的对话。两个月后我发现我的进步没有那么快了，所以我就想一想有什么方法提高我的水平。
看电视剧
第一个主意，我买了台湾电视剧来看看【海派甜心】。 这个电视剧不错。 应该很多人已经看过了，可是我平时没有看电视剧，所以可能对你们来说我比较out。没想到我可以完全看得懂！我在荷兰的时候也看过【海派甜心】，可是一点都不懂。之后我就认真学习，在荷兰没有那么认真学习过。 我有空的时候就会看书，还有写文章给李蓓老师看看。 然后老师会帮我改错的地方。 现在我的中文还是马马虎虎，可是我会慢慢学，将来我考HSK至少一定要达到六级。
好的，长话短说! 看照片吧！
我还在桂林！
Yes I know it's been awhile since my last update, as it always is =p Anyways right now I'm preparing for my HSK test, that is like a big test to check your Chinese level. Other than that I have been on some trips that I'll put on my blog later. What I also wanted to tell you guys was that I'll also start blogging in Chinese from now on, so my Chinese friends and family can also check my blog.
Oh and please leave a comment if ya feel like it, cuz I dunno who still reads my blog 
Songkran 宋干節
A few weeks ago there was an event held at our campus. To be more precise, the Thai students were celebrating Songkran. That's the traditional Thai new year, the celebrations were paired along with performances and games. You could play Bingo and some other games, there was also some Thai food you could try. The games were being held in de afternoon and the performances were in the evening.
As I promised in my previous posting I would upload videos of my performance on this event. We trained for this event for like 2 weeks. I think the dance wasn't the hard part, the biggest challenge was dancing at the same time. I never performed before so I was kinda nervous about it but in the end it worked out all right. The reason I performed was that I saw it as a challenge, and I'm glad I did it 
In the first video you can't see who I am but in the second video you should notice which one of the dancers I am.
The performance
You’re Late! ♫
I've been studying in Guilin for over 2 months now, the thing that really caught my attention was the method in teaching. First of all I've got 4 different subjects; speaking, listening, writing and comprehensive (combination of all three subjects). Each subject has it's own teacher, while they all have their own method in teaching I noticed a similar behaviour between them.
They're all very open and kind, you can actually hang out with the teachers, not that it's not possible to hang out with the teachers in Holland but it's different. Maybe because they're all very young 26~33. For example if you invite them for some activity they really consider in going. I hang out with one of my teachers from time to time, we've been to KTV (karaoke), drinking bar and we climbed a mountain.
The way they teach has another similarity, when you're late for class you have to sing in front of the class. And yes, I've been late for class so I also had to sing 0.0 What I really like about this rule is that you're actually happy when someone's late. The video below is one of my teachers who wasn't late but me and my friend forced her to sing Listen and enjoy!
Check my blog again this Thursday the 29th, I'll upload my dance perfomance video!
To The Amusement Park!
Two weeks ago I went to an amusement park in Guilin, it's called Merryland. I was kinda surprised that Guilin has it's own amusement park. It looks impressive on the outside but the attractions are kinda rubbish, but that was fine with me since I'm afraid of heights anyways xD. The food wasn't great either, just like the Dutch amusement parks. It might seem like I didn't have fun but it's the other way around. Since I went with a lot of friends it was a blast.
This picture was right before I went in the spinning attraction, it was the best attraction in the whole park. But the problem was it looked kinda scary, maybe you see it in the picture, I'm kinda tense.. =p
Lately I've been kinda busy preparing my performance at the end of this week, I'm dancing at a Thai event with some friends. I'll upload a vid afterwards =)
To the hairsalon
I actually cut my hair back in Holland right before I left but my hair was getting long fast. So I asked around where's a good hairsalon. "There isn't... atleast not around the campus." My friends told me that getting your hair cut in Guilin is bad news..
Hmm... it can't be that bad, can it? Well yes it can! My Indonesian friend just went to the hairsalon getting his hair done, and it was kinda bad. Better yet, maybe he should've let me cut his hair. I was getting kinda scared that the same thing was gonna happen to me too. So I went to the hairsalon in the city centre, I was told that it was supposed better in downtown.
Right before me and my friend Rocky entered the salon we saw it was pumped with people. Argh.. this was probably gonna take a while before it was our turn. But in reality it was super quick. After 2 minutes of waiting the guy from the salon asked us what kind of hairstylist we wanted. I found this a weird question, so I asked what he meant. "Well you get your hair cut based on the price you pay, the prices range from €3 to €5. The difference is the experience of the hairstylist." That basically means if you take the cheapest one you'd probably get a stuck-up haircut. So me and my friend immediately replied:"We'll take the €5 haircut."
After that we didn't even have to wait, we could get started right away. Now that's what I call service! After my hair got washed the hairstylist asked me how I wanted it to be cut. Good thing I brought an old picture of myself..
I also got kinda curious, I'm paying €5 for this haircut, which is kinda expensive in China. So how much experience does this dude have? He said he had been working as a hairstylist for 12 years now.. Wow.. was he lying or does he really have 12 years of working experience? Cause by the looks of it, he seemed like 35 years old to me. Anyways, I guess I'm happy he didn't screw my haircut up, atleast that's what I think. What do you guys think?
Before & After
Guilin 米粉 Mifan
After my arrival in Guilin I had to try the famous Guilin 米粉 (Mifan). It's basically rice noodles with vegetables and meat, but since it's so well known here I had to try it. My friend knew a good place to eat Guilin 米粉. As I expected the restaurant wasn't really high class. I would give it a 2/10 for the overall impression.
The food was super cheap here as well, like €0,40 for a 米粉 dish. After I got my dish I added some vegetables. As you can see in the picture, it doesn't look very tasty, but don't judge the book by it's cover. Cause it was really good =)
Ahhh... I just love the food here..
