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Yesterday was a busy day. After a full day of class, my tutors met me to go to the bank so i could exchange money for our shopping venture on Sunday. We walked there, it was hot, i was not wearing appropriate shoes and we weren't sure how far the bank was. So we kept walking and walking and walking... we passed many banks, but there was only one I that would exchange my travelers cheques. Despite the pain i endured to get some renminbi, I was glad to have a look at another part of the city. At some of the intersections here they have big circular walk ways raised above the street so that pedestrians don't have to wait for traffic to cross. We finally made it to the bank after about an hour of walking and we were able to exchange some money, which was a process itself.
We took a taxi back because my feet were hurting and I had to wash up for the wedding reception. When I got back I went to hop in the shower and found a very long and intimidating creepy crawler in the shower. I don't recall ever having been
Chen Chen
I always thought that this meant peace, but here it means "victory". Zhu Chen did it in class waving her hands and we thought it was hilarious. We do this a lot now when we are excited. such a drama queen, but that thing was frightening! I made one of the boys get rid of it, but first i got a picture.
The wedding reception was held at a hotel. When we walked in there was another bride and groom posed to take pictures with their guests, Jiang Yi and her husband were after them. She was stunning. For the reception apparently it is common to have a host sort of guiding the evening along, which made it seem sort of like a game show. When we entered the banquet hall, everyone turned and stared at us, excited by such a large group of foreigners. Above the stage was a flashing sign that said wedding and looked like it came from a vegas casino, and the curtains were gathered with mickey and minnie mouse plush heads.
We sat in a separate room from the banquet hall and some other professors that work with our program came to eat with us. We drank a lot of Bai Jiu, a popular chinese alcohol, with Lao Huang. First he toasted all of us, then Jiang Hong toasted each level class, and then we each proceeded to approach our
professors and toast them. We drank a lot of Bai Jiu, which is very strong. Lao Huang is an expert on Chinese Alcohol Culture and encouraged a lot of drinking. He sat beside me and we talked about Hampshire, and Maine and my friend Ralph from school (he spent a semester here). Lao Huang liked me because I could drink a lot and kept toasting him. One of the students, Parimal, can't drink alcohol because of his medical condition. That is sort of a problem here because Lao Huang likes to drink and is very encouraging and demanding, especially for the guys, to continue drinking. I tried to tell Lao Huang a couple times that Parimal couldn't drink because of his health, that it was dangerous for him to drink. But Lao Huang just looked at me, gave me a disproving look, and told us that alcohol is good for his health and would make him stronger... I tried.
There was a lot of food and I tried to eat as much as I could between the drinking to keep from getting too drunk. I'm surprised at how very not drunk I was for drinking so much, I mean,
I was happy... VERY happy. But it has been a very long time since I have drank shots, that weren't tequila, and so many of them. At around 10, the waiters politely kicked us out of the hotel so they could clean up and go home. We decided it was still early and we were all ripe from drinking so Mike took us to a foreigner bar not to far from campus.
The bar was called American Pie. Inside it had a fake rock climbing wall and a funk band. When the band wasn't playing they played R&B music. We played a drinking game when we were there. It involved 6 (i think) die and a cup. It kind of works like the card game bullshit. You put the cup over the die on the table and shake them up, then you tell the person what set of die you have, for example "I have two fours" and the other person tries to one up you, either with a higher pair or a set of threes, etc. When you think the other person is lying you lift your cup and the person who was lying has to drink. It
was a fun game, and a fun bar and beer only cost 10 yuan... so thats like $1.50-ish.
I was really happy to sleep in today, since every day i get up early to get in some additional study time before class. Today has been relaxing, we spent a lot of today out. We went grocery shopping and out for lunch and explored a little bit. Now I am going to do some homework and figure out what we're doing tonight.
Love you all, hope you enjoy the photos.
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