everybody's looking forward to the weekend!

Now that I’m a working stiff (Monday thru Friday, 7am or 9am to 5pm), I really appreciate the days where I wake up and don’t have to do anything. Sometimes, when my internet is working, I'll Skype home or dink around on the internet. This is not necessarily productive, but relaxing and talking to friends is important for sanity.

My weekends thus far have been filled with social gatherings and finding things that need to be found, mainly for our homes and stomachs.

One day, we went to work for a briefing and then attempted to find something to eat. We ended up off a main road in a dumpling restaurant with no English in site. Sara and I muddled through recognizable dishes while our companions located a place to sit. That turned into a laughable parade in itself, with Bethanie maybe kicking out the staff from their lunch room so we could eat. It turned out they just had their break and it was a definite part of the restaurant, but it certainly didn't seem like it when we wandered in and everyone with white aprons and hats hastily arose and cleared the area.

Bethanie texts while the others cheese.

One important Saturday, the Oregon Ducks played the LSU Tigers at 8am China time. I called my friend Brian to meet up and watch the game. He was able to use FaceTime with his parents back home to see the game in real time. It worked 8000x better than when we Skyped it several years ago. It was an hour-long trip on the subway to reach Brian's apartment, but it was worth it to have some good ole American football time.

 Brian! We both wore our jerseys.

 The big screen.

 Last weekend I went to a Chinese entertainment venue: a karaoke club. These are hotel-like establishments where you rent a room for whatever size party you have that contains a TV, a karaoke machine and a seating area. The singing is just for you, so it's not embarrassing (well, maybe it's still embarrassing) like singing on a stage in a crowded bar. You also drink a fair amount of beer. This particular place had kettle corn. It was incredible, needless to say. I love kettle corn.

 A Chinese song. Can you read that?

 

Getting my groove on with Cheryl.

Note on karaoke: if they don't have the official video, they just play random video clips from documentaries or what have you. One song featured pictures of Swiss people frolicking in the Alps somewhere for a tourism advertisement. Another, funnily enough, showed about ten seconds of the man blocking the tank at Tiananmen Square, which must have skated by the Chinese authorities. This is not an accessible clip in China, so I'm not sure how it got there...

It was Cheryl's birthday on night and she gathered all of us at a Uighur (Chinese Muslim) restaurant. There was singing, dancing and black beer! This was exciting because all beer in China is pretty watery and cheap. My Oregon microbrewery-trained taste buds are having none of it. The black beer was kind of disappointing, but it was a move in the right direction. Instead of being thick, it was like thin porter. Bizarre, but the taste was okay.

 

We had a few beers.

One of the dishes was a rack of lamb that we were instructed to tear apart with our hands encased in plastic gloves. Lamb isn't my favorite, but it worked I suppose. The other food was spice curries and veggie dishes, which were great. In the background, a man played love songs on a keyboard with the synthesizer setting on full blast. Lovely.

It's easy to find things to complain about in China. Very, disturbingly easy. But there are certainly things I like, I just find them hard to recall or name. I remembered one the other night, when right outside my window came the distinctive whoosh and bang of fireworks.

I. LOVE. FIREWORKS.

China also loves fireworks. The end. We're in love, China and I. For now.

Anyhoo, I'll have a blog post about my cousin's visit and our ensuing adventures. Stay posted. Stay happy and hungry.

Love,
ellen