Four months

Been here four months. Notable accomplishment: I can speak a little chinese (still illiterate).

I made a list of chinese words that I know today..it's the picture to the right. Pretty crazy how much of this alien language I've figured out. The best I can do these days is say VERY basic sentences. Most of the words on this list were written because I know the chinese character for them, but I wrote a few down so that I could practice recognizing the characters that are more complex. It's kinda funny...there are a few characters that I do recognize, but don't know the chinese word for. For example, the character for "entrance" looks like a box. Also note that all of these words that you see have a tone associated with each syllable. This is not indicated on the words to the right, I'm not sure how to write that on a computer yet.

As of yesterday, my vacation officially started. It took so long to finish grading all of the exams. There were 43 students, each with 9 total pages of tests to correct. Then there was the oral portion of the exam, and the essay part of the exam. The oral part was about an 8 minute session with each student, asking them simple questions where they'd have to use their brain to come up with a logical response to a question. I felt like a blade runner, asking ridiculous hypothetical questions to determine if my students were robots or humans. The written part was a 100 word paragraph about a basic topic. This shouldn't have been that hard, and for some it wasn't, but still. For some it was awful. UGH.

I caught three students cheating. They honestly must think I'm an idiot. Their tests were identical. Even the questions that asked for a short answer had word-for-word identical responses. They definitely weren't the only ones cheating either, just the most obvious. I guess it's unfair that because they were the suckiest cheaters, they get the shaft. When they come back, they're gettin a "stern talking to" by Mr. Jenkins. I have no idea how to address this problem. I really don't want to lose the friendly ambience I think my classroom has, but at the same time, this cheating crap is an insult. Sometimes I feel like my job is the ultimate fatherhood training job. Sidenote: only about 1/3 of my students answered the following question correctly: "What is a sentence?"

Enough about work. Right now in China is the Spring Festival. The Spring Festival is the equivalent of our Christmas break; people go home to their families and have big dinners to celebrate the coming of spring and the new year. By the way, the Chinese new year is in a little more than a week. Not sure what I'm doing yet, but I'll let you know. I don't have any plans for the break yet. I was going to go to Xi'an, because I really want to see the terra cotta warriors of qin shi huang di's tomb... but I need to go with someone who can speak chinese. I don't think I have enough of a rapport with anyone here yet to ask if they want to go somewhere like that.

It's ok. Wuhan is a kickass place that I want to explore a little more. Check out this place I found the other day. Nerd alert. I also haven't seen Huang He Lou, which is basically the symbol of Wuhan. I mean, the highest price and therefore best cigarettes are called "Huanghelou." There is also a theory going around that, because the number of unemployed migrant workers is increasing, there's a greater danger to people traveling around China (especially white people who are rich as hell). Right now is obviously a busy travel season, so I guess it makes sense. By now though, most people are home with their folks, eating big dinners and whatnot. Pretty funny that, two weeks ago during the Christmas break, everyone was throwing down in karaoke bars and nightclubs.

Only six months left. Still not really sure what my story is.

Miscellaneous pictures

I added a few more photos to my google picture sharing account. Here's the link: [ pictures ]


First, if you eat one of these....


Welcome to hell. I researched these, and they're called "Sichuan peppercorns," a necessary ingredient for any sichuan style food. Basically, any time you go to a market and get a rice dish, expect to find these in your food. The amount you see in this photo is the amount that an average rice dish with sichuan style food will have in it. The flavor these little things add is pretty unique...It's like a spicy, tingly, borderline numbing flavor. The first month here, I'd eat one of these during every meal by accident. Once you eat one, you immediately know it, and there's nothing you can do to change what'll happen next. You sense a "numbing hotness" from the spot where you made contact with the peppercorn, and the sensation slowly invades the rest of your mouth. The pain stays with you for hours. I've been told that in ancient China, they used to use these peppercorns whenever doctors were performing oral surgery. I usually cure my frustrations with....

YOU ZI! I'm still obsessed with these.



That last picture makes me want to get up and buy one immediately.


And here are some more pictures of my university:

I walk by this alley every day. One of my favorite views!

It's hard to tell...but these bushes are really beautiful. They're trimmed to about shin-high.

When I first saw this walkway from afar, I was convinced that someone was walking on water. In fact, they were walking on this thing.

Wuda's famous old library. Insanely beautiful.

The girl's dormitories, right in front of the old library. Mind-blowingly gorgeous.

Street level view of the girl's dorms. I won't use another combination of hyperbole and a synonym for beautiful, but you get the idea.

When the snow starts sticking, I'll take more photos. The first snow was only a few days ago.

New Year's with pictures

For the last three or so years, I've spent New Year's at a friend's house and we just played poker all night until about 15 minutes until the last moments of the year. That's definitely my idea of a fun way to spend New Year's Eve. This time around was also entertaining, but obviously different than the norm. I took a ton of photos this night because of the lack of photos taken during X-mas week. Here's the cast of characters:

Left to right: Han Jie (aka Ms. Han), me, Michael, his girlfriend, and Ms. Ding

Not too many details.

• Michael did his thing; talked about hangin out with the Eagles (the band), the books he wrote, conversations he's had with Milton Friedman, and so forth. Ms. Han innocently made fun of him the whole time, it was pretty funny.
• The best quote of the night was some totally jerk thing she said. Before we made New Year's resolutions, Michael and I were having a fascinating "conversation" (which is pretty one-way if you know what I mean) about the property he owned. Anyway to change the subject, I asked everyone what their New Year's resolutions were. So everyone explained what they intended to do that year... When we got to Michael, I asked him, "What's your New Year's resolution, Michael?"
  "Well..."
  Then Ms. Han immediately interrupts sarcastically, "Maybe you can buy another house!" Everyone lost it.. he wasn't a fan of hers that night I think.
• What was my New Year's resolution? Get into better shape, even though I think that's my resolution every year.
• There were frickin cheese and crackers! Michael found a place that sells cheddar, so this was the first time since I arrived here that I ate some. I savored the hell out of this.

• We tried to watch a DVD, but only one worked: The Eagles - live in concert. I guess it was better than watching Hu Jintao giving some official address to the nation about the coming year.
• I wore my Penguins jersey as a gesture of hope for a better year (especially given their performance in recent weeks). Plus it looks cool, and I haven't worn it in a while.

• And here's a few more general pictures from the night:

X-mas week (part 3)

'Twas the fight before Christmas....what was Tim Allen thinking. Don't worry I'm not gonna start off with a similar play on words with that poem. Its become a bit trite these days, don't you think?

Thursday (25th) -- Christmas Day. A creature was stirring in the morning, namely me (Didn't see that one coming did ya!) I didn't have to work, but I did need to play the role of Santa. I put the presents in a bag, grabbed it and the mini bamboo plant that I had bought on Christmas Eve, and headed out the door. 8:30 am. On the way to the office, I bought a newspaper and a small role of tape for wrapping purposes. I had only had a limited amount of time to shop (due to the "illness" I suffered over the last few days), but I was able to get a few good presents for my bosses. I gave the plant to Steven and a foreign bottle of wine to Mr. Dong. All I was able to buy for Han Jie was a box of foreign chocolates and a few DVDs. I wanted to get more, but I told myself I'd get something else later in the day. I met Han Jie at around 9:30 so that I could get the presents into the office, and then made plans to have dinner with her later that night. The plan wasn't set, but I wanted to make her something delicious (I make good sandwiches), have a bottle of decent wine, and watch a DVD that we could both understand (i.e. something American with Chinese subtitles).

11 am. I had taken a taxi back home and was back in my bed. Four hours later, I woke up. I had to clean the place, buy food, and maybe buy another nice present for the babe coming over. I cleaned the place a little bit before I left.

4 pm. I headed over to the DVD store to buy something appropriate. While I was looking around, the phone rang. Han Jie. She was calling to tell me that she had invited her friend and her friend's sister to come over. Sick! ... So, new plan, I had to buy a ton more food, and clean up the place way more than I'd originally thought. I bought another Will Smith movie, "the pursuit of happyness," cuz it seemed like a good chic flick and the dude at the DVD store recommended it for the situation that I explained to him in very broken Chinese but expertly executed body language.

Now I was in the supermarket buying food for the get together. I scrapped the idea of getting her another present cuz I wasn't really pleased about the surprise party she just pulled on me. You might be wondering why I'm explaining all of this. She called me again. She explained that her friend actually wasn't coming, so instead it was now just her that was coming over. Why do chics do this.

So, back to the original plan. The only problem is that the original plan needed a lot more time than I had to work with, time which had been cut into thanks to her skullduggery. I bought potatoes and sandwich stuff, went home, and started prepping everything. I was definitely not pleased with the whole situation.

8 pm. She arrived, it took me about five minutes to get over it. Btw, she loves the sandwiches and fries I make. You can't really go wrong with bacon and cheese in a sandwich. We opened up the bottle of wine, and then watched, yeah, "Brokeback Mountain." I mean, it was the only movie I had which was enough of a balance of chic flick and understandability. I also didn't really need to translate much; the movie isn't exactly centered around dialogue. I'm not sure how good of a job I did translating though, she still insists that Jack Swift (Jake Gyllenhall's character) is straight. Sidenote: Anne Hathaway slept with someone to be in that movie. Overall though, a fun way to spend Christmas Day. It was the last day we could hang out for a few days; she had weekend plans, and I had plans for Friday.

Friday (26th) -- Had to teach again. It went ok...I showed them the Simpsons Christmas episode I was in the middle of downloading when I had to leave my place on Christmas Eve.. you know, the one I was originally planning on showing them instead of Toy Story. Anyway, I showed them the episode, we went over a few vocabulary words that popped up during the episode, and then we practiced speaking a little more. Afterwards, I went home and slept. I had plans for the evening.

Remember Justin from Canada? I had gotten a text from him on Wednesday, before I went to the KTV, asking if I wanted to hang out on Friday night. I was down. It's not often that I get to speak English at the normal rate, and he also seemed like a cool guy. I woke up from my nap at around 3 pm and told him I could meet him in Hankou district, which is far as hell away.

Hankou is across the Yangtze river, which is a big ass river. Thus, there's a big ass bridge that was built to cross it. As you might imagine, traffic gets nuts on this bridge because, uhh, there's like 9 million people living here. As a result, the government issued a rule to control the traffic on the bridge. If your license plate number ends in an odd number, you can cross on, say, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of that week. If it's even, then you can cross on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. I'm not sure about the exact days, but the day you can cross it depends on your license plate number. So when I was trying to meet Justin in Hankou, I had to find a cab with an even license plate number. In Wuchang, the district I live in, it was a rare commodity to find an unoccupied cab that could cross the bridge. At 5:30 pm, I started trying to find a cab, and I got one at 7 pm with an incredible stroke of luck.

I was dropped off in Hankou at 7:30 pm. Hankou district is the place to go for the good parties, bars, restaurants, and so forth in Wuhan. The taxi left me at the base of a large, commercial-looking, glass building. Justin met me at the door and took me up to whatever we were doing. I realized quickly that I had no idea what was going on, so I asked, "So, what's going on?"
"It wouldn't be fair if I told you."

The music became louder as we approached a dimly lit room. There was a lot of light coming from the right side of the room, and we headed through a sea of people towards it. I looked into the room. It was a fairly small theater, probably only meant for private parties or small shows. A dance crew was dancing on the stage to a very, very loud track. The place was filled to the brim. Justin yelled as loud as he could but I could barely hear him, "Wait here, I'm going to see if I can find seats since we got here a little late." He walked ahead while I watched the performance from an obstructed view. A little later, he waved me on.

We started walking to the other side of the room, but we crossed over the front row. Then he sat down in a seat, "OK here we are." I sat down in a seat, and then I leaned forward and touched the stage with my hand. He laughed, "See, it wouldn't have been fair if I told you." The show was a holiday talent show put on by his ex-employers, a private ESL training company, and he was a special guest. I guess he just wanted to freak me out a little. The performers actually were a mix of staff, faculty, and students. For example, the dancers were the girls that worked at the reception desk. It's a job which hires based on a few qualities, most notably appearance. They were hot.

In the middle of the show, they were going to select two tickets from a box to give a prize to. Guess who the special guests to choose the prize were? I went onto the stage and captured the audiences' hearts with a grab bag selection so dramatic it reduced many audience members to tears. "200438." Screams, followed by Chinese gibberish from the MC. Apparently, my hand guided an audience member's fate towards good health, as I won her a one year membership to the gym downstairs.

After the show, I met people! Three guys from the US, one from Australia, and one from New Zealand, all teachers at the ESL place that was hosting the show. We went to dinner at a kickass expat restaurant. The owner is a jolly but also very dangerous looking man from Maastricht, Belgium. After the meal, Justin, Louanne, the owner and I talked over a shot of Jenever. That took a while to finish. I was over the sickness from the hangover, but the after effects had lingered longer than normal. I still had trouble eating food and drinking alcohol like normal. I was already knee deep in a glass of Duvel, a famous Belgian beer with about double the alcohol of a normal beer, so my brain was already pulsating.

We talked for a while. He told a bunch of hilarious stories, like the Belgian version of Santa Claus, St. Nicklas, who beats children if they're bad. The best was about the shot of Jenever that we were "enjoying." His Grandmother drank a shot every night before bed for thirty years. He also said that in Belgium, if someone comes over to your house, you must offer them a drink. Usually it's Jenever. So, when it was payday in Belgium, if you wanted your mail to be delivered earlier, you'd offer the mailman several shots before you sent him on his way. The more shots you offered, the earlier he'd come. You can guess how that story ends.

At the end of the day, I'd made five new friends, saw a crazy Chinese talent show, gave someone a free one year gym membership, and had a new favorite restaurant. On the taxi ride back, I was able to find out more about the people I'd just met. I had explained the whole Michael situation, so we talked a little about Michael. The guy from New Zealand asked, "What's his story?"
"Huh?"
"Well, come on. Everybody's got a story." What a thing to say. It'd never really occured to me to ask it, but thinking back, it was pretty obvious. What was his story, indeed... Suddenly, I felt a little more at home than I had before.

X-mas week (part 2)

...So at noon I was to meet with my students at what they know to be my favorite place to eat in China: Pizza Hut. They got the typical weird pizzas with seafood on it, and I watched them eat the pizza with their forks and knives. I told them "once you get into Canada, eat it with your hands!" Keep in mind, I was in terrible condition. I felt bad. I had an opportunity to eat pizza with my students for likely the last time, but it didn't go the way that they wanted. The thought of eating anything was too dangerous to provoke, and I was huddled in my seat trying to keep warm even though the place was probably overheated.

Once they finished, Mr. Dong, Steven and I headed downstairs to buy things. This would've been fun, but after I bought one X-mas present for Han Jie, I was starting to feel real sick. I told them I needed to go immediately.

This is where the pizza hut is, sorry I don't have a daytime photo to help you picture the scene more appropriately.

On the way back I felt my saliva starting to taste a little more salty than usual. "Stop the car." I studied the area in a millisecond, rushed to the most secluded area (VERY hard to find), and keeled over with saliva pouring out of my mouth. After about a minute of waiting, nothing happened. I'm pretty sure my stomach was empty at the time, so this was probably for the better. We floored it back to my place and I slept for the next 4 hours.

Ms. Han's "party" was happening at 6:30 that night. I woke up from my nap in time to look presentable, but I was obviously still very ill. The party took place in a theater strangely enough. This was one of those moments where you think you have an idea of what's going on, and then when you get there, you realize that you had been preparing for a word that wasn't correctly used...namely "party." The more accurate definition of what this was going to be was "talent show."

I saw Michael in the front row and sat down next to him. He asked me, "How are you feeling?"
"Like Hell. You?"
"I woke up at 2 this afternoon."
"Yup." There was a spread of fruit and sunflower seeds just for us in the front row. I felt like a king! Mustering the courage to eat something was tough, but worth it.

The show started off really weird. A group of strangely dressed people, obviously characters from either video games or japanese cartoons, performed a choreographed "walking around the stage" number to some Chinese rock music. I only recognized three of the twelve or so characters -- Cloud, Aeris, and Sephiroth from FF7 (i.e. some video game characters). I guess they started like this to give me the false impression that everything following it was going to be weird as hell. The remainder of the show was actually a medley of normal performances, including music, dancing, games, magic, and plays. Very entertaining...and it was fun to see my students doing what they enjoy. My only complaint would've been that the speaker volume could've been turned down a little in light of my situation. There were way too many occurences of mic feedback that hurt way more than they should have.

Wednesday (24th) -- Christmas Eve. Can you believe I had class on this day? There was much to do...

First, I did not want to teach. The illness had not passed, like I expected, and I mean, it was Christmas frickin Eve. So I woke up that day and started looking for two things: Christmas presents for my coworkers, and Christmas DVDs at the local DVD "store." I was only able to find one Christmas DVD -- The Santa Claus 3, starring Tim Allen and Martin Short. Check out the cover:



There was no way in hell I was showing anyone this movie. I wanted to ask the guy at the desk if he had any christmas movies, so I called Ms. Han and asked her what the word for "Christmas" was in Chinese.
"Sheng dan kuai le!" she yelled.
Equipped with my knew word, I asked the clerk, "Ni you sheng dan kuai le DVD ma?" I eventually learned that "sheng dan kuai le" means "Merry Christmas," and "sheng dan" means "Christmas," so I actually asked "Do you have Merry Christmas DVDs?" In other words, once again, I sounded like a clown.
He replied, "dfjksaafsdssdfdslaspdk- mei -skjaskdjsdfsdfasdfa." As soon as I heard "mei," I knew he didn't have anything.

So, I got the idea to show them a christmas episode of the Simpsons. While I was still in the store, I bought a few DVDs for myself, such as "Seven Pounds," starring Will Smith. Yeah I know it was just released in theaters like a week ago. It's out on DVD here now. Anyway I went home to try downloading Simpsons episodes. On the walk back, I saw a beautiful miniature bamboo plant being sold on the street. It seemed like a great gift, so I bought it and then continued home.

Downloading crap is always hell. My first attempt needed a password to decompress. The second download worked, but the episode was in Russian or something. My last try was cutting it close; I started downloading at 2:15pm (with class at 3:40). I then got a call from Steven telling me to be at the front gate at 3:15...so I didn't have enough time to finish the download.

My backup plan was two options. The first was to show them "Jingle all the way," starring Arnold Schwarzeneggar. I watched this movie beforehand just to see if it was watchable, and it sure as hell was not. But, it was Christmas related. My other option was to show them "Toy Story," but that really had nothing to do with Christmas. It was, however, entertaining to all ages and pretty simple, so I grabbed it and headed out.

I arrived at the gate and met Steven, Mr. Dong, and Ms. Han. We were going to take a group photo with the students together for the last time. It was pretty sad... I haven't seen any of them since.

I got to class, showed them some of the movie, and then headed out the door. While I was waiting for the elevator, five of the girls from the class told me they had a Christmas present for me at their dorm. These girls are so adorable. I walked with them there and they were all locked arm-in-arm the whole time. We got to the warehouse that they live in and they gave me a box of chocolates. So cute! I wanted to say "thank you," but it wasn't enough, so I told them "I'm going to give you a hug!" They were clearly confused, so in the moment of confusion I grabbed THE most shy girl in the group and gave her a hug. Her face turned bright red. Then the other four girls understood and screamed with laughter, running over to hug me. It is definitely a fact that every girl in China is adorable like this.

In the meantime, I'd called Ms. Han and told her to meet me at the dorms. She, myself, Steven and Mr. Dong were all going to "xiao xi tang" (small restaurant) to celebrate my first Christmas in China. Afterwards, Steven had made reservations at a KTV, which I had seen around the city but didn't really know anything about. We got to xiao xi tang and we ordered the usual -- peanuts, something green, and a hot pot (pictured below). I was still feeling pretty uneasy, so I only ate three bowls of rice. Oh speaking of which... Hunger is often measured in bowls of rice. If you eat only one bowl of rice but you've eaten everything else on the table, you'll hear "eat more!"

To the left of xiao xi tang. It's located in the middle of a residential complex.

The entrance to xiao xi tang. It's seriously a dude's house.

A hot pot inside xiao xi tang. Very delicious, but you have to be careful...normally many of the ingredients are not meant to be eaten. Typical ingredients that can be eaten include: meat (watch out for the bones), carrots, potatoes, cilantro, and hard tofu

We finished dinner and headed to the KTV. On the way, I asked what it was. It's a place where people reserve rooms to stay in for a few hours to sing Karaoke together. So...that's how I was going to spend Christmas Eve night. That's the way it is here, except the KTV's are even busier at around midnight. The mission is to go out and party, not stay home and wait for santa claus. I actually got a few drunk text messages from my students wishing me a merry christmas. One was in Chinese haha.

Anyway back to the point, we were at a KTV and that was that. That's how the four of us were going to spend the next four hours. The staff brought some beers to make singing a little easier. Even though I was still recovering, it was welcome. Also, the music selection had some English songs, so I wasn't completely on an island. I mean, I was the only one who would choose English songs. My coworkers were only choosing sad, slow Chinese love songs to sing. It was sad! I wanted to hear happy songs, so I was only choosing the fun ones that I know really well. "September" (Earth, Wind & Fire) was a hit. But then after me, it was back to tearjerking slow Chinese music. BLEGH. Thankfully, Ms. Han is trained in classic Chinese-style singing, so it was cool to mix it up and hear her sing a few of those classical types of songs. It sounded like what you hear on the radio, very professional.

I was tired of this after about an hour and a half. Maybe its my slow attention span, but I just can't put up with that crap for too long. Definitely an interesting experience though, and it was funny to see my bosses singing. We headed out, and the traffic was even worse than before. Again, the party was just starting for Wuhan. For me, it was done. I had a plan in the morning...

X-mas week (part 1)

I haven't kept in touch with anyone back home for the past week or so. This post is an attempt to justify/be payment for that. Also sadly, I did not take a single photo this week, despite the insane number of opportunities.

Weekend (Dec. 19th-21st) -- On the upcoming Monday, there was to be a final exam for the small class. This would also be my last class with them, which was a pretty big downer. I got pretty close with most of the small class because everyday I would make them tell me stories about themselves and I would often tell them (choice) stories about me. We had also spent tons of time together and usually had a great time doing it. It was easy to be successful in their class.

The weekend was fairly eventful, I met with my favorite "zhong guo ren" (Chinese person) Han Jie everyday for various reasons -- Friday we went out for drinks, Saturday I helped her buy shoes (thank you Bravo TV), and Sunday we had dinner with students from the big class to celebrate some winter festival that was happening that day. Apparently the tradition is that you have to eat "jiao zi" (dumplings) that day in order to ensure health during the winter. Jiao zi is a small dumpling that is usually sold on the street; they make them right there in front of you, throw them in a huge pot of boiling water, and then serve them to you in a bowl of hot water so that it can cook while you are holding it. So I guess it's pretty obvious that eating it definitely has a warming effect.

It wasn't easy to find free time. For some reason the big class students are a little more outgoing...meaning they want to do stuff with me outside of class. Also Han Jie is a starting to get less flaky, in fact most of what we did this weekend were her ideas, but who knows how long that'll last. Regardless, my time to plan the exam became more limited, which sucked because it took about 5 hours to make.

Monday (22nd) -- Gave the exam. All of the students were told about this last week, but, like usual, four of the really unmotivated students strolled in about 30 minutes late, holding bowls of soup they'd brought to eat during class. I wonder if they were surprised when everyone was quietly taking their exams? These tests are also stressful as hell because even if you tell them the consequences of cheating, like getting thrown out, they'll cheat anyway. I could go on a tangent now about why I think this is the case, but I won't bore you with that. Basically, proctoring sucks. The oral exam also included a conversational part, where I had to speak with each student individually for about 5 minutes. In the afternoon, I taught a writing class to the big class.

Monday evening was...an odd one. The university planned a dinner for all of the foreign teachers which was to be held at this nice ass hotel:

From Wuhan

I was excited about the free meal and, surprisingly, the opportunity to meet other foreigners. Every chance to speak English normally is something that I don't take for granted nowadays. It's probably seems shallow, but I like dressing up and going to these types of things, tryin to act classy and adult and whatnot. Of course I'm kindof a joker, but it was hard to stand out at this party. I was going to go to this dinner with Michael.

I will dignify Michael with a paragraph of summary. He's the other foreign teacher who works in my office, but his students are going to Australia instead of Canada. I'd met him about a week before this dinner, despite the fact that we'd been working at the same place for three months. He's 45 and I'd guess 5'11", 230 lbs. This guy is fuckin unreal. Every time I've seen him, he's wearing a tweed jacket with no shirt underneath, shades, and a long, white wool scarf. I learned about all of his accomplishments, how much money and how many assets he owned, and enough about his life story to write a small book about...and I didn't even ask! For example, he graduated from Stanford, has at least one masters degree and two PhD's...one in philosophy, the other I don't know. He also owns real estate amounting to around $5 million, including a house on Madison Avenue. Foreshadowing alert: much of what I learned about him was after about 3 glasses of wine and a few very heavy rum & cokes, so forgive me if some of the details about him are blurry. I like his company I guess, because company is so hard to find, but the guy's ego is bigger than Anne Hathaway's grotesque mouth (sorry, watched brokeback mountain again recently).

The dinner was entertaining. I wanted to just relax after having dealt with that exam and teaching that day. Michael, myself, and two of our Chinese colleagues attended. Having Michael around as someone to talk to was good at first. He immediately made friends with the wait staff by paying them money to make sure he "didn't see the bottom of his glass." After the first 5 minutes of the dinner, a waiter refilled his glass. I hadn't drunk alcohol in a while, so I kept my pace relatively slow. I also realized that my colleagues weren't having much fun, not only because they had no one else to talk to, but also because Michael was flustering them by complaining about the job. At one point, he saw that people had brought friends, and asked why his girlfriend wasn't allowed to come. Ms. Ding said she didn't know, and that it was probably OK if other people were doing it. Hearing this frustrated Michael, so he immediately called his girlfriend and told her to come over. I couldn't wait to meet her!

In the meantime, he talked to a couple that was sitting at our table for about 5 minutes, and then headed off to get more food and socialize. As soon as he left, I looked at the couple. They looked at me. "Who is this guy?" It was a good ice breaker, especially welcome since they seemed like a nice couple to talk to. The man, Justin, was from Canada, and his wife Louanne was from China. There was obviously tons to talk about. They asked me where I was from. "Pittsburgh." I asked where Louanne was from. "Wuhan." Then I asked Justin where he was from. "Nova Scotia." I know where that is. "Sidney Crosby!" Maybe I've been to the Penguins' website a little too much. If hockey and being in China weren't enough to talk about, there was always Michael. Justin asked me if I'd ever heard of a book called "The Game," written by Neil Strauss. Believe it or not, I'd actually heard about it and know a little about the contents of it. Basically, Neil Strauss is a pick-up guru, and he wrote a book on how to pick up women. I could go on, but it just seemed like Michael had read about this too and was putting it into practice all night. But, Michael wasn't really a poster child of this book...I'd say as far as examples go, he was more like that mutated fetus from "Total Recall" that was growing out of a dude's chest.

Michael's wife showed up and met my colleagues. I didn't really see her coming in, so I knew I'd see her as soon as we were introduced. I turned around. "Damn." I don't know if I said that outloud, but these days, it's not like it matters heh. She was actually pretty hot though. Good for him. At this point, he was pretty drunk. He told her he wanted to go around to every table and introduce her. She looked at me. "Sounds like fun!" She definitely wasn't going to go along with this, so he went to all of the tables himself. Another opportunity to chat it up with the nice couple at our table. The party was settling down, and a Chinese host told the room the nice version of "get out."

Ten minutes passed, and the wait staff was starting to clean everything up. -doong doong doong- "Ladies and gentleeeeman." No way. Was it the Joker? Nah, but I turned around and saw some joker slouched over the podium adjusting the mic. "You may remember me as the guy who just visited all of your tables. We are going to go carousing after the party, so if you're interested, you can meet us at the hotel bar." I knew what to do. I looked at Justin and Louanne, and they laughed, "If you want, we can grab a coffee or something." I was alright. Michael is definitely rough, but I felt like going with him was at least good for a story. Plus he was buyin the first round. I was down. Justin & Louanne and I exchanged numbers, and then I headed out with Michael and his girl.

We went to the hotel bar -- "the Piano bar." I was appalled to find no piano in the place. We decided instead of buying a round of drinks, to get an entire bottle of Bacardi rum and a bottle of coke. With only us three, it was gonna be a hell of a night. I can't believe I'm saying this, but thank god some French people showed up. They were actually really entertaining though, and spoke English ridiculously well. I mean, they were French of course, but it was interesting to hear about what French people do.

By the end of the night, we'd ordered and finished a second bottle of rum. I made my own drinks -- 1 part rum, 1 part coke. Is that how you're supposed to make them? Well they tasted good, but damn. I guess I haven't drunk in a while. This is bad for two reasons...first, because my tolerance is that of a 15 year old girl's, and second, because I've forgotten how to drink. I got back to my apartment at around 2 am and immediately went to bed.


Tuesday (23rd) -- The next morning I had one of the worst hangovers I've ever had. I got up at 6 am couldn't get back to sleep. 7 am, first vom in China. I also didn't have drinking water in my fridge, so I was waiting for 8 am when the convenience store downstairs would no doubt be open. This wasn't good. First, Han Jie had been planning a big student "party" for this night. I also got a call from my boss at around 11am saying that one of my students wanted to take me out to lunch at noon. Thankfully, I didnt have classes Tuesday because Han Jie's party was a pretty big deal....

...to be continued...

Views

Just in case your didn't see the pictures link, they're here. I took a few more recently, namely a few views that I have from the three places I spend the most time in...

The first few pictures are of both of my teaching buildings. In the first picture, teaching building 5 (where I teach the small class) is in the center of the foreground, and teaching building 1 (where I teach the big class) is looming in the background. BTW, chinese lesson for today, "background" = beijing. I learned that when my coworkers were in the middle of a conversation about photos and I thought they were talking about going to Beijing (my basic understanding of Chinese only allows for me to assume simple-minded conversations, but at least it's progress from nothing. Still, I probably look like an idiot hehe).

Teaching buildings 5 (foreground) and 1 (background)


Big classroom (Teaching building 1) view 1. I teach on the 18th floor.


Big Classroom view 2. The view is of the East Lake and some of Hankou District


Another picture from my class. It can be pretty distracting sometimes!


From teaching building 1, taken at around 8 AM. That's right, I'm awake then.


View from the small class (teaching building 5).


The only decoration in my classroom. I recommend taking a closer look at this one.


This was taken from my apartment. I took it because there's a group of kids playing badminton on the roof of the building, without adult supervision. Not to sound like a mom. It's just like, they're pretty high up.


A picture of where I buy fruit, most notably the you zi and pineapple. You can see the you zi's; they're the big, round, yellow fruits in the middle.


Speaking of, when you buy a pineapple or you zi, they peel it for you. What a country! The service is top notch every time.


This is where I live. My apartment is visible, I just don't know which one it is in this picture. Somewhere in the middle.