Christmas… Or Something Like It…
I'll start off by saying that not many people celebrate Christmas in China… Shocker! However, the foreign teachers and I did the best we could to bring the American/German tradition of Christmas to China, at least for ourselves.
The students are all familiar with Christmas and every single one of my classes wished me a "Happy Christmas." The students were really great. They gave me some AWESOME gifts. Most students will give their teachers apples for Christmas, so I got 30+ apples… But, some other students went the extra mile and got me some amazing gifts. A couple of students got together and got me a miniature mahjong (a Chinese poker game) set. It was extremely kind of them and I cannot wait to learn to play it (and probably lose all my money…). Another student here at Jinjiang, not my own student, gave me an extremely impressive painting done by his father. It is a very old painting, I think about 30 years old, I couldn't really understand what he was telling me about it (his english is not very good). But check it out for yourself…
It is a beautiful piece of artwork. Definitely need to get it framed. I also got a lot of other random gifts from the students. I guess I've been good this year...
As is usual here at Jinjiang College, the foreign teachers and I had to do another performance…
We decided to do a few Christmas songs for the students. Thankfully this performance was not quite as big as the first performance we did. Maybe only 3-5 thousand students packed in a massive auditorium.
Some pictures:
I FINALLY got a picture of my students taking a picture of me.
And this is the auditorium with me looking like an idiot… It was completely packed with students…
Here is the video:
Pretty spectacular performance if I say so myself
In order to actually celebrate Christmas the right way the foreign teachers and I had a brunch and did secret santa. It was pretty great. I got a cribbage board from my secret santa and now we play just about everyday. It's awesome.
It was a delicious brunch. We had eggs with tomatoes and green peppers, some hash browns, a type of pita bread with homemade humus, and of course, mimosas. A nice taste of American food.
Christmas wasn't so bad. But, I did totally miss my family. Nothing makes you appreciate spending the holidays with family more than not actually being there. I was able to video chat with my parents on Christmas eve and day. So that was nice. Still wasn't the same though.
And now… New Years…
New Year's Eve
Well this was an absolutely epic New Year's Eve. James and I went to Chengdu to celebrate the new year at the clubs and bars. There were a lot of people out celebrating which was nice. We went to the club district that we usually go to so we could celebrate with foreigners and Chinese people.
In this picture, I was in the center of the club district where they had a few live bands playing. It was pretty cool and we spent some time out there before going into the clubs.
We finally went into the club, and well, after about 45 minutes of being there, I almost got the shit beaten out of me…. Want the story? Ok. Here we go:
We went into a club that we have been to many times. Every time we go there people always want to drink with us because we are foreigners, it's awesome. Same thing happened this time. A group of girls called me over to their table and we went to drink with them. I thought nothing of it. We drank a lot of beers with them and some liquor. About 30 minutes after we started drinking with them I soon realized that I am paying the bill…
Basically, these girls work for the club. They lure in foreigners to drink with them and get them to rack up a large bill to pay. That's exactly what they did to me…
When I realized this, I told all my friends to leave, thinking that I can just go to the bathroom or something and sneak away without paying the bill. Pretty sure they figured out what was going on because when I looked down to text my friends, I looked back up and all the girls were gone and four bouncers were just standing in front of me waiting for me to pay. Well, shit.
So, I spend the next hour with my Chinese friend arguing with the bouncers (Great opportunity to practice my Chinese!). We successfully get the price down from 750 RMB to 440 RMB. I didn't want to just pay all this money, so I demanded to get some free bottles of beer if I'm going to pay this bill. After an hour of arguing, they get really angry with me (understandable).
The four bouncers FORCEFULLY pushed me through the club and out the back door to an alley behind the club. They pushed me around a little bit and I finally agreed to pay. Definitely did not want to get beaten up on New Year's Eve.
So we go back inside so I can pay. I'm pretty furious by this point. I am swearing and yelling at them as I was paying the bill. When it comes to sign the receipt, in the signature section I wrote, "FUCK YOU" in all caps. I then proceeded to give them the middle finger maybe one inch away from their faces. They didn't appreciate that very much.
All four of them grabbed me and pushed me FORCEFULLY through the club towards the back door once again. At this point, I thought to myself, "Well, I'm definitely getting beat up now." When we get outside I pushed one of them against the wall and then all of them grabbed me and pushed me very hard down the back alley. THANK GOD my Chinese friend came out of nowhere to break it up and get me the hell out of there.
We then go to another club where a lot of different Chinese people want to drink with us and I drink for free the rest of the night. Pretty epic night. I had an awesome time.
Safe to say I learned my lesson...
The End
Hope you enjoyed the stories. Once again, sorry for the lack of blogging in the past couple weeks.
P.S.
I got a hair cut...
Until the next time….
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