Mike In China

Friday was the last day of Chinese class. We mostly reviewed and then learned family members. Family members in Chinese is very funny because they all sound like baby sounds: ba ba = father, ma ma = mother, etc. Everything is the same one syllable repeated twice. Because it was still raining we didn't go to Blue Lotus Cave (and apparently there is absolutely nothing about Blue Lotus Cave that is a cave, its just a park, but something obviously got lost in the translation...). Instead we went to a big book store and then walked around Gong Bei (kind of the shopping district of Zhuhai). Gong Bei is also the sketchy district of Zhuhai (especially at night) and we definitely saw some prostitutes. At first you couldn't tell, but I accidentally made eye contact and then they changed to a seductive stance and followed us down the street for awhile. It was funny and at first Will didn't believe me, but after they were walking circles around us and following us down the street looking at us funny he agreed with me. Friday night we decided to break the cycle of doing nothing and going to bed early so myself, Pablo and Will got an assortment of Chinese beers to try. Phoebe did a little drinking also (some pineapple beer that was quite interesting). The Chinese beer wasn't too bad (but don't worry I also got one Pabst) and it was all sold in single cans or kind of like 40's but I think they were more like 30's. We also got a little bottle of bai jiu which is a Chinese alcohol that is apparently really nasty. We drank the bottle between the three of us and it was pretty gross stuff, but it was weird because it didn't burn going down, it just tasted like skunky, skunky wine or something, but it was clear. Then Will and Pablo's roommate Nick had a bunch of friends over also and it turned into a mini-party. They were all teachers at the school and very "interesting" people. For example, Nick and his one friend started do some weird kung fu stuff at one point in time. The girls ended up going to bed and we went down to "Bar Street" with Nick and his friends. Unfortunately I was pretty wasted by that time seeing as how I haven't drank for awhile and all I ever eat is noodles, eggplant and cabbage, so going down to Bar Street wasn't all too clear. It was a really cool street though and we sat outside a bar and played a dice game. The whole street was all lit up in neon lights so that was pretty sweet. I think everyone thought I was even more wasted than I was because I was concentrating really hard on learning the dice game and figuring out the strategy so I was doing a lot of staring at nothing. Either way I ended up getting a hamburger made for me to try and sober me up. It wasn't too bad. We are definitely going to have to go back to Bar Street again sometime, but next time we will go before we finish a bottle of Stoli (which we got for $10 US) and a bottle of Absolute by taking group shots so I can remember better.