jINhua: Not doing work...again.

Last night was looking like a really low key night. Mel came over around 4 and we watched Juno; I hadn't seen it since it first came out, it is hilarious! Then like we normally do on the weekend we were too lazy to make dinner so we went into town for sushi. When we left the sushi place we were on our way to go catch a cab and continue with our night in; but that did not happen. As we came out of the sushi place a Chinese guy said hello to us and I almost just said hi and walked on by him thinking it was just another person who wanted to say hello then we realized we actually know the guy. He played in the band at the Cactus (the bar owned by the Canadian guy), his name is Shy. He now plays at this other place called Joy's. So we told him we'd go there for a bit and watch. It was 8 and he didn't go on until 10 so we thought that we'd listen to a couple of songs and then go home, we were so tired.

But like most things it did not turn out how we thought. We ended up hanging out with this one group of Chinese people. The girl kept coming over and telling us to go over there and we kept saying no until she literally dragged me by my arm. They're all about buying large amounts of drinks at one time and having them on the table unfortunately a lot of the time it's rye mixed with iced tea; not very good. But the people were pretty entertaining; the girl who came over and got us was actually crazy (in a funny way).

Then someone tapped me on the shoulder and it was one of the Chinese girls who we've ran into a few times now. It's funny because she always comes over to see us but she can't actually speak any english other than to say she loves us. So that's always entertaining. Shy did a good job singing and then our friends were switching bars. So we all went to this other place where the proceeded to buy a case of beer and sit it at the table; I can't imagine if people did this at home what would happen. Then five minutes later people were bringing more and more food over and handing us chopsticks. I had the most delicious fish I've ever eaten and none of the people could tell us where they'd gotten it from, so I will probably never get to happen again. Today Mel and I were laughing about how quickly our plans had changed. Then I laughed even harder because I was reminded of my one teacher I had in high school. I had Mr. Collins for Gr. 9, 10 and 11 English and he was OBSESSED with the Beatles among other things. And every year I had him he mentioned at least 5 times one of the Beatles, I think John Lennon, famous quotes about how life happens when you're busy making other plans. I wonder if my students will remember some weird thing I was obsessed with and talked about all the time without even knowing I was repeating myself. Probably.

Today I went into town for lunch and read my book for awhile. Then when I took my cab home all that kept playing on the radio was "If you're happy and you know it clap your hands.." I thought I was going to go crazy; I think that song is even annoying if you don't speak english but the cab driver did not change the station. Now I'm going to catch up on some of my tv shows and hopefully go to bed early. As of today I go to Thailand in two weeks! I'm super excited. But I have also been extremely unproductive this weekend so I need to actually do a lot of work during the week this week!

This is one of our friends Craig who also teaches in Jinhua. This is on thursday at the Red House

Mel had just tried some "fruit" that we now think is actually closer to chewing tobacco

This is her realizing that the fruit is really more like chewing tobacco. The guy on the right is Shy, the singer and the guy in the middle spoke no English and gave Mel the fruit. He was upset when I didn't want to try it. But as Mel took it I kept singing the song that played before or after Mr. Dressup "don't you put it in your mouth don't you put it in your mouth, though it might like good to eat......you can get sick, really sick, really ick..." She didn't listen