Nu Jävlar!

Lantern day pastry. mm

So finally the new year is over and life is back to normal. The festival ended with the lantern festival on Thursday. Traditionally you eat some kind of pastry, which is in my opinion super tasty! Yum! Slimy not so sweet sesame dumplings!  (We got some from work, we had a competition and my buddy won and gave these to me.) Since this is the last day of fireworks people went nuts. This has gone from being cultural fascination, through fear and frustration and finally to sever annoyance. I hate the fireworks.

I have now managed to get the gym card for the condo, and well, it ain’t fitness first but good enough. There is a pool, tennis court, squash room, but I have to bring my own towel and water bottle! Outrages. I have not exercised in two months, I could hardly run for 20 minutes at my normal pace. Relocation rocks!

Ghost street

I have started making new friends! I kind of got sucked into the irish community, so now I know loads of irish people. I even went to watch a rugby game, totally incomprehensible. I also had dinner with a local beijinger which was nice last week. We had hot-pot at a really nice restaurant street called Ghost street. Yesterday I went to a charity dinner and listened to a woman doctor who is trying to improve health for the rural parts of China and raise awareness of HIV/AIDS. It was very enlightening to hear about their struggle and all the issues that need to be overcome. I also met lots of new interesting people (still no bankers! :).

Last week on the way to work a random girl came up to me on the buss and started talking. She also works in the science park, so now I have a new buss-friend. I often get the question: so do you go to church often? First I didn’t understand the question because people are not freaky religious here like they are in Spore, but then I realized that they think I am American. So apparently that’s what Americans are known for. In Beijing Swedes are known for IKEA. And ping-pong. Overall people are very friendly here and it’s very easy to chit chat with anyone! 

Work is also getting more intense, and I have a new interesting project! We have had a major reorganization at work, so basically now everything is back to normal. Exciting times!

View from Bookworm (where I do the Sunday blog). It has been kind of smoggy lately.

All and all life is good and gets better day by day. There is so much to tell so skype me! Beijing is never boring, always some wonderful/ less wonderful craziness.