Relaxing Weekend

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We had a great weekend!!!

It started off on Friday 9/11/09 at the Teacher's Day Banquet. We were picked up by the head of the English Dept of our high school, Catherine, in her Buick. She drove us to a nice restaurant that was about 10 minutes from our house. The other Senior 1 teachers were calling Catherine during the ride there cause we were late, supposedly. Once we arrived at the restaurant we went to the second floor into a big banquet hall. The banquet room had about 10 round tables that had 10-12 people at each table. The VP of the school gave a speech in Chinese(no clue what he said) then others continued to give speeches and toast everyone. It is customary for the men to get HAMMERED at these dinners and the women just drink a little. The food was Cantonese and was OK. It was hilarious to see all these male teachers proceed to drink, drink, drink until they were very red and stumbling drunk. Pete and I had some wine and beer. The Chinese drank beijou(white liquor) and Pete had 2 shots of it. He said it was AWFUL, tastes like rubbing alcohol, it is over 100 proof alcohol. After we toasted the VP to remember all those Americans that lost their lives on 9/11/01 the banquet was ended. Everyone headed out by 8pm.

We got back to our complex and invited the other American teachers in our program(CTLC) that live in Longgang over to our house to have some drinks. Kathleen, Jason, Alex and Matt all came over to have beer and whiskey cokes. We got to bed around 1am after a good evening hanging out with our friends.

Saturday we got out of bed around 11am(reminds me of college) and lounged around until 2ish. We went and had lunch at one of our favorite restaurants before the internet company came to install High Speed Internet. Our contact teacher, Wilson, came over to translate for us then helped us look for used bikes. We were unsuccessful at the used bike shop since they all looked like they would fall apart once we rode the bike away.

Pete and I took the bus back to our part of town and bought a mattress pad/pillow to make our bed a little more soft. The Chinese really like HARD beds. We had dinner at trusty old KFC then headed back to our apartment.

Pete decided to go to the bike shop around the corner from our house "just to look" at what they had and their prices. I went back to the apartment cause I was sick of looking at bikes. I was in the apartment for about 30 minutes and thought Pete should have been back by now. Then shortly I got a call from Pete to come outside. Yes, he bought another new bike, but this bike was for him and I got his 5 day old bike.

So we both have bikes again! We each have 2 locks, one to lock the wheels and one to lock it to a pole or fence. Pray that neither of them will get stolen this time.

Last night we watched the 1st NFL game of the season Steelers vs. Titans. It was very exciting to watch on NFL.com with no commercials and no half time break, just straight football. It only took 1 hr and 57 min to watch the whole game with the OT. LOVE IT, we can watch all the NFL games this year anytime throughout the week. Pete of course had to pay for it but well worth it since our cable ONLY has Chinese channels. Our Mandarin isn't that great YET.

Today, I taught one class of preschoolers and one class of primary students at A+ English. It is a private language center where parents pay for English classes so their kids will speak better English. Students in China start to learn English in school starting in Kindergarten. I was there for 2 hours today during their Open House and made 400 yuan= $58.82, not bad for 2 hours of work. There were 5 kids in the preschool class and 11 kids in the primary class. The owners, Eric and Abby, husband and wife were very excited for the high turnout of kids/parents and said the feedback on my performance was great. Hopefully I can start to work more hours per week for them once they get enough students signed up. It is only a 10 minute bike ride away or 2 bus stops.

Tonight we went for dinner at Raindrops Cafe. It was recommened to us by Catherine, Head of English Dept at school, cause they serve western food. We got pizza and a club sandwich with fries. We also got 3 cokes. The pizza was 42 yuan=$6.17, club sandwich with fries 28 yuan=$4.11, 3 cans of coke 75 yuan=$11. There was no listed price in the menu for Coke and I thought Pete was going to kill the server. Well we learned our lesson to never order Coke without knowing the price FIRST. Funny thing was that we could have had Carlsberg beer or Guinness for the exact same price as our cokes.

This week we start our Chinese classes every Wednesday and Friday afternoon. THANK GOD we need it and Pete is SUPER excited he got Rosetta Stone working again.

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Comments

[paulette]

forget Coke - drink booze
Hi, Alyssa learned in Rome that bottled water and soda were more expensive then wine - So, that's when she started drinking wine......