The weekend of embarassing myself in front of Chinese people and Koreans

For some reason this weekend turned into me doing the most random and often embarassing things in front of chinese people. On saturday ryan and i went to a concert at the vocational college because a guy we know, collin, was going to be singing a song. So we show up and i end up having to sit next to collin's very jolly chinese boss who thinks i'm just a totally crack up and kept handing me random fruit. Well, he decides that collin should get up and say a few words to the students and that it would great if i went up too. so i had to speak in front of all these kids, completely unprepared, and anyone who knows me knows i get soooooo nervous speaking in front of large groups. so collin sings his song and the students to all kinds of english and chinese performances. Then, of course this guy decides that ryan and i should get up and sing an american song. neither of us can sing and are suddenly desperatly trying to think of a song we both know. i suggested "you are my sunshine" short and sweet. we went for it and of course the crowd went nuts. it's a proven fact that all chinese students LOVE the song "You are my sunshine" just trust me on this.
Then all the sudden the lights start going crazy and nutty techno music starts playing and the students make a mad dash for the dance floor and in the hustle and bustle ryan and i as well as some other foreigners are grabbed as well. we are then stuck in a GIANT chinese conga line doing some psychotic version of a bunny hop dance. They all were loving every second. some of them looked so happy i thought they were going to have a heart attack and die right there in utter bliss. This chaotic dance went on for 20 minutes!! 20 MINUTES!!! Incredible.

Afterwards Ryan and i went to Bacchus...and mellow little bar were we could just sit and have a drink. We message marcos adn he comes out as well and joins us. so marcos and i are sitting there talking and all the sudden there's a commotion on the stage area and one of the waiters comes up to us and says " come, come on stage and play game" so we're like "ummmm how do you play" to which he replies " I don't know how to say in english...Just come!" yeeeaah. So now i find myself in front of a whole bar trying to pick up as many ping pong balls as i can in a minute only using a straw. I actaully did pretty well and ended up winning the ugliest stuffed bear ever. i did not however come in first. Marcos did! he won a HUGE HUGE lighter. it's pretty spiffy and slightly dangerous....but that's kind of how everything in china is.

So after that we went to Alibabas just to hang out and see who was out. There is a short little chubby chinese man who works in the pool hall there who has decided he has taken a liking to me. can you see where this is going....that's right... Literally being chased around the pool hall while he giggles in random chinese and tries to smack me with a little green towel.

Oh China.

Sunday was pretty awesome too. With thanksgiving coming i've been missing family and friends from home. I have no desire to actually go home. but i just miss them and wish they were here. The only food from home i've really super missed though is donuts. this might sound silly but anyone who knows me wouldn't be surprised. At school i would talk seren into late night donut runs and at home it was my poor mother i was always dragging along to fufill my cravings. I practically lived at Dunkin Donuts. Home sweet sugary Home. and you just can't find a dunkin donuts in china. so i have been going through withdrawl.

I've been hanging out with a really cool guy named Jack, and during the week he had to go home to Korea for a medical check up. he got back to Yantai on sunday and showed up completely unexpected at my apartment. The door opens and there he is standing in front of me holding up a box with big pink letters beaming the words Dunkin Donuts. I open the box and there they are.... real donuts...glazed, powdered, sprinkled, filled delicious fatty sugary goodness. i know i sound compeletly retarded but when i saw those donuts i was so excited you would have thought i won the lottery. He got them at the airport in Seoul, those of you who having been reading this blog may rememeber, is the last place i ate a donut. i even posted a pic of the korean dunkin donuts. Of course he probably thinks i'm a nut case now because of just how happy i was....but i don't care.

It was just such perfect timing. i had been feeling a wee bit home sick and then to have my guilty pleasure and comfort food from home show up at my door was awesome. i think it was God throwing me a bone after my bizarre saturday.

so on saturday a few of my students asked if i would meet them in the morning and hang out. they're nice girls so i figured why not. the showed up at my place around 10 am and we decided to just go for a walk. when we walk out of my building i heard loud music playing and asked them what was going on... they told me it was dancing. so we went over to check it out and there are about 200-300 chinese students dancing....and by dancing i mean formal waltzy two step kind of dancing. it was so funny to see them the girls told me that they a dance class and wanted to introduce me to the teacher who was also there teaching kids some steps. so i went and said hi and was they approach by a really shy boy who offered to teach me some of the steps. so there i was getting dance lessons from a chinese boy so nervous he could barely look at me. and of course seeing a foreginer dancing attracted quite the crowd but it was so much fun. defintly not how i expected to be spending my saturday morning.

i also recently had my first run in with chinese medicine. i had a blister open up on my foot and start to hurt very badly and i was afriad it was infected. so i went to a pharmacy juts to get a band-aid and the guy behind the counter sits me down looks at my foot and them mixes some kind of medicine into iodine and rubs it on the wound. it stung really bad but i figured that meant it was doing it's job. but it just wouldn't stop burning. within and hour half my foot and my big toe were completely swollen. so i figured it might be a good idea to wash off whatever he put on. and sure enough the swelling went down...not completely but i no longer looked like a freak of nature.

i realized that i have all kinds of photos of friends here that i haven't posted yet. so i thought maybe you guys might want to see who i've been spending my time with.

The best way to start an evening...some good street food.

Natalia and a would be Shaolin monk...otherwise known as the coolest kid ever.

Simon and the beautiful Tommi . She's a singer at a bar called Bacchaus which also has a philippino band that does western songs. the have a set list middle aged motehrs would love.

Me and Jess

Smooch

Natalia and her famous pout...it's contagieous

Ryan and random crazy girl. hahaha i love thsi picture

Me and an adorable korean named Jack who's been teaching me to speak some Korean and so far i have to say it's waaaaaaay easier than chinese

I have no idea how to spell his name...but all you really need to know about him is he is a Dancing Machine!

Natalia and Jess looking perrrrty.

Jack and i giving into to the call of the big mac.

Oooooooh Natalia

Micheal, he works behind the bar at alibabas

and lets me hang out in the back room and play with a puppy that lives there.

Big smiles from me and mark

Me and Sophie

Barbara and Natalia 4-EVAH!!!!

I bought the coolest pair of puppy mittens which quickly turned into a herd. I had the light blue pair but when Nate bought his we decided to switch one each. in china, his and hers stuff is really popular. it's not uncommon to see a couple wearing a matching outfit, so when ever we are out people think nate and i are a couple just because our mittens match.

Marcos, my favorite Spainard

marcos and jess looking cute

Me and Lucy.....i let her borrow one of my mittens....they keep your hands warm when holding a cold drink.

Natalia and i busting a gut

Me and Simo

Barbtron 3030 and Rhino

Korean kids are just waaaay too much fun.

Halloween in China

So despite the fact that china doesn't really celebrate it, i managed to have a really rgeat halloween. all week long i had halloween themed classes, and taught the students all about our kooky traditions. i even brought in candy and made them all say trick or treat. in one of my speaking classes we even told ghost stories. in other classes i had them tell me about chinese superstitions. they really seemed to get into the spirit of things. the bar we tend to go to, Alibabas, had a pretty awesome halloween party. a bunch of us actually went earlier in the day and helped them decorate. jess and i decided to have a joint costume which, if may say so myself, was pretty spectacular. we were Yao Ming. i was the top half and she was the bottom.

me and jess being awesome

jess, simon and dale

Ting Ting, me and maggie being adorable

Deanna, me and rachel

me and jess with natalia

mark rocking a handle bar moustache as a slutty 70's runner

Miki, the owner's girlfriend who makes me delicious drinks

Alibaba's staff..Stella...Chubby...and random girl

oh simo...the best beetlejuice ever

PawMan and Yao Rumbling

The beautiful Marcos

Nick and dale

Natalia (the perfect MIa Wallace) doing her famous pout

Rhino and Barbtron 3030

Me and my mummy

The boys

Shenoa giving me some love

Scary scary micheal

Gangstas

marcos freshening up

Maggie double fisting

David, Jess, and Natalia...and her syringe

Dancing like a fool

creeeeeeepy mark face

That's right...we're the coolest people you know.

i know this is a little backwards but these were the shots from decorating the bar.

mark and ryan hanging spider webs

Carving Pumpkins just like a proper halloween


Chubby and his scary knife


Belinda carving her pumpking with a dart piece


Miki and her meat


Daniel hanging the Pig's heart

And that was halloween. soooooo much fun!

i went to a basketball game on campus this week, which is kind of funny since i never went o basketball games back home. one of my students in my soph. speaking class, Gonser, invited me after class and told me it the last game in a tournament against different years of english majors. when i got there it turned out that the opposite team was made up entirely of boys from my junior writing class, one of my favorite classes, so more of the kids from the class were there. i was a bit torn on which side to root for since i had students on both sides. It was sooo much funny. they even taught me a chinese cheer. my junior boys ended up winning and they had me pose with them for their victory photo. now they've me invited to be a part of their badmington tournament.

I finally went to a KFC. i can't believe how popular they are here. Especially since they're kind of a joke in the States. A couple students took me today...it actually wasn't too bad...and so far it has managed to not make me horribly ill. Which is incredible because everytime i eat at one back home it haunts me later. we'll see how i feel when i wake up tomorrow.

Ugh tomorrow....where did the weekend go.....