Teacher's day at my school got me a lot of flowers and cards from my adorable students. Every time I walked into a classroom on Friday, the entire class would jump up and shout, "Happy Teacher's Day!" and one student would run over with a card or a bouquet. It was absolutely adorable and made me blush; I didn't know how to react! So I reacted by giving them no homework for the weekend :)Earlier in this blog I posted about meeting an extremely eccletic group of Canadians (and others) at a club I went to on Saturday. We had all exchanged numbers. On Wednesday, Patrick texted me asking if I wanted to join him and Jeff (both guys from Canada) for dinner at a Korean BBQ restaurant in the middle of Beijing. Thinking this an innocent and lighthearted invitation for dinner, I decided to go, even though I knew I would have to take a taxi home that night on my own as I had six hours of class the next day. I got off at the specified station around seven, where I met up with Patrick and Jeff and their friend Nancy. While Patrick just moved here, Jeff and Nancy are also teachers in Beijing, which was kind of interesting. Both of them work in different kindergartens with schedules that start late in the afternoon and end late in the evening. Hearing this made me happy the latest teaching period I have ends at 5:10pm.
Something I haven't mentioned yet is that being a white person in Beijing, you are automatically given special priveledges by the Chinese people. Numerous times I have been offered seats in the subway, or seated in a prime window seat at a restaurant, or been given things. It was weird in the beginnng but you get used to it very quickly. At the Korean restaurant we were seated in our own private room, and as none of us knew Chinese other than Jeff, he ordered. We received a truckload of food that was put on this inverted disk of a grill, completely different than the Korean place I had gone to with Shannon and Damon the week before. We were also presented with six bottles of soju and three beers.
Soju is a Chinese liquer that I had never tried before but now love. It is odorless and tasteless when mixed with beer or soda, and ranges in alcohol percentage from 20% to 80%. The six bottles were 20% but as the night progressed, the percentage increased. Having dinner with these guys for the first time, I didn't want to disappoint and of course NEVER refuse free alcohol (sorry mom!) so I drank with them. I don't think I have laughed that hard in a very long time. We spent five hours in the restaurant getting progressively more liquered up and talking about all the adventures the four of us have been in travelling. Patrick and Jeff are best friends from Toronto, so we were able to talk about things from home that I loved. They are all around my age as well. By the end of the night I was completely drunk and holding my stomach in pain from laughing so hard. I made it home by about 12:30am, but the next day I was definitely hurting. It was worth it though!
Tonight I'm heading back out with them tonight. They are taking me on a bar crawl through Beijing. I'm scared!
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