All posts tagged: around town

Around Town: Time to Pack

Published by Sula H.

It’s time to pack. For the students the Fall Semester 2010 ends by tomorrow which means most of the 22.000 “residents” on campus are getting ready to leave. In fact, the first big wave of students heading out to their respective hometowns took place yesterday, and now seeing students with suitcases on their way out is quite a common sight around here. By the end of next week, most everyone is going to be gone, and then this part of town will turn into a ghost town – with most of the stores around shutting down and all the businesses closing their doors. Time to get ready for our (Chinese) New Year!

Around Town: In the store

Published by Sula H.

So, guess what! I went shopping in the supermarket on campus that I always frequent today and encountered a curious thing: all the Christmas decorations were gone! Vanished! After most of that decoration had been up for over a year (or even  more?), collecting piles of dust along the way, now – just a few days after Christmas – it’s all gone! Now I don’t get to look at little Santa Clauses and Christmas baubles at Easter or in the summer holidays. But I guess, that’s a good thing, right?

Around Town: Christmas arrived!

Published by Sula H.

It’s here! Yes, it has arrived even here: Christmas. Or at least the decoration. About a week ago they put up all the decorations on campus – lights on the two main roads, the big Christmas tree in the central shopping square, and along the road to the teacher’s building a lot of colored lights. Now, whether the decorations are pretty is another question altogether, but at least there is something, and that’s enough to be thankful for!

Around Town: Discovering H&M, C&A & Co.

Published by Sula H.

For some, they’re just a few of the many clothing stores. For others, they’re the go-to places for shopping: H&M, C&A & Co. For me – saying it plainly – they’re reason for great excitement! Not because they would be my No. 1 choice, if I had choices, but simply because they are the only choice for Western clothes around here. Yes, I’m excited! Because we have them in the city now. It only takes about 2-3 hours to get there, but hey – who cares about that, if you finally have a chance to find Western style clothes? Only recently did I learn we had H&M in the city, and the other day, one of my friends took me there. Unfortunately, we already were on our way out of the city, so it was just enough time to have a peek, but it’s surely exciting when all of a sudden you find clothes in a style that you actually like! Now, the only problem left is: I simply need to find the time to …

Around Town: Shopping on Campus

Published by Sula H.

Christmas is always a good time for giving and sharing with others what we received. Now, we have a club on campus that supports orphans in our area. It’s a great opportunity for students to get involved in a charity project (they usually have very little exposure to anything like that). Every year for Christmas the club organizes the “Christmas in a Box” project where they collect boxes with goodies to give to the children in those orphanages. This year, instead of boxes, they use red bags. So, the other day I took some of my own students out shopping to fill my bags with goodies for some of the orphans. It was the first time for my students to do anything like that. The goal was to get something useful as well as something fun. So we went on a tour through some of the shops on campus, and look what we found:

Around Town: Metro

Published by Sula H.

One of our favorite stores around is Metro. I particularly like it, because it is a German store. So it has a lot of things from Germany, but from other places as well. It’s over in the city and even with good traffic (which is rare) it takes well over an hour to get there, but you can get things there which can’t be found anywhere here in town. Things like butter. Or cheese. Things people in other places usually take for granted. Here we don’t. Let’s take butter for instance: How precious can a chunk of it become when it takes so much effort to get it! Once you’ve brought it home safely, you treasure it, and everything you use it for becomes a treasure as well. Like Christmas cookies. Precious simple Christmas cookies. What are Christmas cookies without butter? The list goes on and on … as I said: We do love Metro! Last time I went there because I needed to get candles, and Metro always gets a fine selection of Christmas …

"Plane Watching"

Around Town: To the Airport

Published by Sula H.

You know how people like to do bird watching? Well, we decided to do the same. Only a little more sophisticated. Ours is called “plane watching”! So, yesterday we grabbed our bikes and went for a ride … to the airport. It takes about 1 1/2 hours to get there, and first, the guys wanted to go explore the terminal. Most of them have never been on a plane, so just going to the terminal was already quite the excitement. But the real excitement came, when my friend E. and I could convince them to go to the end of the runway to watch the planes. That area is actually quite walled off, but right at the runway where the planes touch ground there is a small area with only a fence. We found that little spot (right in the “backyard” of some farmer’s land) and that’s where we settled in for “plane watching”. We were lucky to be there at “rush hour”, so the planes kept coming in. I let my friend E. play …

Around Town: Bike Repair

Published by Sula H.

So, every Thursday I go on a bike ride with a friend. Last week, when it was Thursday-Bike-Riding-Time I could feel something was wrong with the chain. (Actually, I had realized the problem for some time before that, but it was then that it really caught my attention.) Silly me didn’t think much of it – I assumed it had to do with shifting the gears and that the problem would simply dissipate, if I just shifted several times, until the chain was properly adjusted on the gears again. (Can you tell I don’t know much about bikes?) Well, you’re right because my logic didn’t work. Though nothing happened on Thursday, the following day when riding my bike to the tennis court, the chain came off as I was going uphill and shifting the gears. I fixed it after I got home (yes, I know how to put the chain back on, though I really hate getting my fingers dirty) – or at least I thought I’d fixed it. Saturday, riding my bike again, all …