Smoking

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Okay I know I keep changing my mind, but the thing I currently miss most about home is the smoking ban. On Saturday night we went out (as the video attests) but had decided to try a few bars, rather than just heading to KTV. There are only three bars in Tonglu and we went to all of them, for a total of about 15 minutes. The first one, SOS, was the busiest (but very small) the music was okay actually. Well, we only stayed for two songs and they were both Lady Gaga, but, you know...it could've been worse. However, after just a few minutes my eyes started streaming from the smoky haze that filled the room. We had to leave pretty quickly because we all found the atmosphere pretty disgusting. Then we tried 7 bar which used to have a club next door but is now just a lounge bar. It seemed nice actually, and we will go back but it's more of a sitting-down-and-having-a-grown-up-drink kind of a place, rather than lets-have-a-dance-and-look-silly which is what we wanted.

Lastly, we went to a bar in a hotel. In the lobby they were playing western music videos but the staff were totally gowned up in Chinese costume and the music in the actual bar was very Chinese and there were only about 4 other people there. So we gave up and just went to KTV. After 13 days working without a day off we were all shattered and there wasn't a lot of singing, but we did have a good night and it managed to have an early enough night so that Sunday wasn't a write off.

Sunday, after a long lie, we wandered over the bridge to the cheaper side of town, bought some shoes then went for facials. My knowledge of Chinese now includes the words, 'spots', 'lots' 'not good' and 'long eyelashes' (Rach not me)

So the smoking thing is gross. Even today I went to the noodle shop for lunch and people were smoking inside. Sometimes it bothers me more than others, but I just hate coming home stinking of it. Interestingly, when I talk to my teenage classes they all say smoking is a bad habit, yet so many people do it here...

Oh, and today I made peanut butter and jam sandwiches for one of my classes. I *think* they went down well - kids and sugar - I guess that works well in any language 😊

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