So, that's over with...
Ah, spring is in the air in Beijing. The magnolia and cherry trees are making with the blossoms, there's rain, and - most importantly of all - the temperatures are heating up, that the gods. Quite a few days have been bright and sunny and, as you can see from the picture, spring is making itself known in the best possible ways.
Which is great in a week that got to boast an assembly (that the kiddies couldn't understand because the English went over their heads), report cards (if I could, I'd insert one of those "woe is me" cartoons here...but Bing has failed me), and a guest visitor (a French cartoonist with a French/Chinese translator who gave the kiddies a drawing lesson the Kinders didn't participate in - we went back to the classroom and drew three scenes of Baymax instead).
Yup. Pretty much that.
Yesterday I went out with Vicky to make with the time honoured tradition of aimless shopping. Travelled via bike so feel all exercised now. We grabbed lunch at Korean BBQ place that was pretty delicious. You were given a bunch of small side dishes and a platter of raw beef cuts that you then cooked on a grill placed over an ironcast bowl of hot coals. There was also a bowl of rice and veggies. Oh, and I think I've finally figured out the secrety of chopsticks: ignore how everyone tells you to use them and don't think - just let your hand work out for itself how to get the food into your mouth.
We went to Lady's Street - a market, of sorts, with clothing stores that look like they stopped paying attention to fashion sometime in the 80s, lots of plants, and small pets - like rodents, birds, and fish. Ended up getting a betta:
Calling him Nemo. Not really expecting him to live that long - given that he was bought from a place where I once saw someone trying to sell a dead rabbit coupled with the fact I've horrible luck with fish the odds are not in his favour that he'll see summer. Still, hope springs eternal and all that; maybe he'll be lucky.
Otherwise, I pretty much just spent the weekend lesson planning and binge-watching Netflix's new Daredevil series.
On the one hand, it was gritty and dark and full of drama and heroics and ass-kicking. On the other hand, Matt had just upgraded his costume to the classic red suit Daredevil's famed for and things were just getting REALLY good...in the last episode. *sigh* Always the way. I know that the Marvel/Netflix plan/partnership/whatever has A.K.A Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist coming up next - all of them building to a team-up series called The Defenders (probably in 2017 if they keep to two series per calendar year) but...is it a wait-and-see, going-to-be-in-phases thing like the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) so if they DO decide to give Daredevil a second season it'll have to wait for the current run to tie up or can they...jump the cue or whatever and go for doubling up? I'd really like to not have to wait 3 years for another infusion of episodes - that's what I have Sherlock for, after all.
Oh, and in other news, I bought myself a hamper for my clothes. One of those cheap fabric kinds that you can fold up and stick in a cupboard between loads. As you can see, I'm getting a lot of use out of it:
*sigh* Cats.