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Friday 14 November 2008

Smashing Good Time


The Dirt Market is a fascinating place and quickly becoming one of my favourite places in Beijing.  It is a cultural market where you can buy homewares, antiques, lamps, jewellery and lots of cultural revolution items.  It really isn't a place many foreigners know about. 




I went there a few weeks ago with some friends as an inservice into the art scene in Beijing.  We were having a lovely day when I found this beautiful little art deco vase.  Just as I was asking the stall holder how much I hear a smash and look down.  To my horror, I had knocked a very ugly vase onto the floor and it was in about 50 pieces.  The stall holder starts yelling at me in Chinese and all I want to do is run.  Obviously I had to pay for it, but here is the tricky part.  When you market shop in China everything starts at a ridiculous price and you need to bargain them down.  Well my dear friend the stall holder thinks he has won the lottery as he can name any price and I have to pay.  Well to cut a long story short, with the help of a friend who speaks fairly good Chinese and a visit to the mediation room I ended up paying about $22 for a piece of junk worth maybe $5.   


I did get a good story out of it and I made sure I kept the bits.

Wednesday 5 November 2008

So Excited

I am very excited that this photo was chosen as the winner of a photography competition.

It wasn't anything huge to the world, but to me it was an ego boost.

I needed to shoot something red.

I suppose it is a bit unfair seeing the only colour used here is red.




Tuesday 4 November 2008

Rocking Claudia


Claudia's class has been learning about friendship and at last weeks assembly they performed the "Friendship Rap." It was very cute and funny, especially the 'yo dude' hands.