Advertisement
Published: December 31st 2005
In the spirit of Christmas, Travelblog hasn't been letting me update for the past two weeks so here are my belated Happy Holiday wishes for everyone, and best wishes for the coming year. Tonight is New Years Eve and I'm halfway into a bottle of wine and already plagued with the hiccups. It's going to be a fun night.
The last week has consisted basically of two things.. work and sleep. Spent my one day off DVD shopping with Danny and then at hot pot and KTV with Danny, Sophia and Fay. Other than that, it's been teaching the ELEs, watching DVDs and sleeping.
It snowed last night in Jinan, and much to my surprise, the snow stuck around. White everywhere. It's not so nice to walk in but it's lovely to look at and it quiets the noise of the city. Jinan is actually charming in the snow.
I spent the better part of the day today shopping in the New World Market with Kerry, and came home with a million bags in hand.
Christmas was definately something... unique, but I don't think would change it for the world.
I spent Christmas Eve with my favourite person in China, Yue. We planned to go to Spring Cafe for dinner but when we arrived, we found it was an exclusive buffet/entertainment night. We could have paid 200 kaui a head, but neither of us were prepared to do so. So we tried Pizza Hut, but the wait was over two hours. Ended up catching a cab to (where else but) Jenny's. Jenny's was definately in the Christmas spirit... Christmas trees outside, Christmas lights, and inside the staff were wearing their Santa hats and Mickey's Christmas carols were playing. We got the table right next to the speaker. Dinner was good. There's no one I would have rather spent the night with than Yue. After dinner (and dessert!), we went outside to snap some photos, then wandered our way down Wenhua Donglu to check out Pyramid (Yue's first time at a bar!). It was packed. Wall to wall. Danny, Sophia and Fay showed up but didn't stay long. They wandered their way over to a new bar by Carrefour called Power, I took Yue home then went home myself.
I woke up Christmas morning to a phone call from home. I have the best family in the world. Work was... work. Got home around 7 from teaching my last "My Face" class with the cutest kid on the planet, the Falldown Boy. I seriously want to kidnap him and bring him home with me. Made myself some dinner while listening to Marley, had a hot shower and made myself a date with ELF and the DVD Player.
So what else has been new these last couple weeks? Well...
I've made good friends with all of the staff at the nearby hair salon. Our water-heater was non-functional for about three weeks (fixed now!).. so I've taken to getting my hair washed and blow dried at the hair salon. 10 kuai, it takes forever and it's wonderful. Though honestly, I think they get more out of my 10 kaui than I do. Free English lessons.
I spent a Friday night with Jillian. Cruising Walmart. What can I say, I live the high life in Jinan.
Speaking of Walmart, I was in there the other day shopping for a sweater when I was coralled by a guy (a guy!) into the "Sanmoon" beauty salon where I was surrounded by about 10 women in pink and white suits, trying to persuade me in Chinese to purchase "Anti-speckling cream" for my freckles. "Be the white and the beautiful" is what the box said. I kindly said "No, thank you" in my best Chinese and b-lined out of there. I'm rather fond of my speckles, thank you.
Took my PRE class on a field trip to Quancheng Square one afternoon. "Scorpions? So horrible!"
I finally met our housekeeper. And with not a word of English or Chinese exchanged, we both had a good laugh over the copious amounts of Jonathon's weekly laundry.
Tuesday nights have become Yosemite nights, as Danny is now hosting a regular Foreigner Party there on Tuesdays. Met his American boss Mike last week, cool guy. Mike, Danno, Jon and I went out drinking after leaving Yosemite. That was a car ride to remember. We went to the Cafe Bar and Restaurant, cool little place with a nice vibe but possibly the worst bathrooms I've encountered. Fun night. Jon and I ended up carrying Danny and he passed out on our couch. ... again.
Couple days later, Jon and I went out for dinner then 6 kuai beers at "their bar". My drink had star-shaped ice-cubes. Jon drank. And drank. And drank. An 80 kaui drink called a "See You Tomorrow"... basically a hit-me-hard-with-every-kind-of-hard-booze-you-have-on-the-bar kind of drink. I can remember perfectly the "really?" question that faced Jon when he pointed at the drink name on the menu. After he downed that in under 30 seconds, no questions were asked when he ordered a second. We met up with Danny and headed to Pyramid for a while. For Jon's sake, I won't go into detail as to what else happened that night. It's now referred to as "the night we don't speak of".
The morning after... I won't go into much detail about that either, to save Jon public disgrace. Let's just call it a clean up morning. 221 kaui on dry-cleaning. And a dead hamster.
We had our Christmas party at Oma on Friday night. Nothing big. Danny and I hosted it, we played some ridiculous games, I fell flat on my butt playing musical chairs. That's it in a nutshell.
A couple good jokes.
. Blurple. The colour between blue and purple. Oooh one too many tequilas.
. SMALL BANANA! Scorpions? So horrible!
. Yellow Simon? Sea-men.
A few more random observations:
. I see these guys with wheel-barrows full of raisins... and strange round paper hats. I don't know where they're from but they're not Chinese and they're always selling raisins.
. Plastic bags full of vegetables hanging from the windows of apartments on the 6th or 7th floor. Reason being the family probably doesn't have a refrigerator.
. I may be somewhat of a local celebrity. The waitress from Spring Cafe recognized me as a teacher and told me she saw me on TV.
. I mentioned before the smell of corn... "la bons-a"... but I've also come to love the smell of roasting yams... Mmmmm.
Pet Peeve.
. People who stare into my shopping cart when I am grocery shopping or at all of the food during purchase. Westerners shop differently than the Chinese. We buy for a week or two, they buy for a day or two. Main reason being, a lot of them don't have refrigerators. But still, they look at you like you're insane.
Well, that's about it for now. I'm lost in a wine haze and can't concentrate to save myself.
Happy New Year everyone!
All my love,
Laura
Advertisement
Tot: 0.133s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 10; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0507s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Tyler
non-member comment
Happy New Year!
Enjoy it gal! See you soon