Weekend Shenanigans

Greetings Everyone,

Well, another weekend is in the books. This one was not quite as busy as last, but it was easily as much fun. Friday night Ben took us to a restaurant he found that specializes in curry dishes. It was pretty good, and not too pricey. I'm sure we'll be adding that one to the permanent rotation. Then we walked down to McDonald's for milkshakes.

Sometimes you just can't resist the call of Golden Arches. :-) Actually, it was the only thing we could think of that had enough calcium in it to help quench the curry fire burning in our esophagi, and yet not contain lethal amounts of melamine. Yeah for kidney stones!

(P.S. Apparently the plural form of "esophagus" is "esophagi," at least according to my spell-checker it is. I had no idea. See, this blog teaches you things. ;-)

After milkshakes, we wandered around town for awhile, before entering a music store. It was pretty awesome. I think I might buy a snake-skinned Chinese banjo. It looks something like this:

Pretty sweet, huh? We played around with all sorts of Chinese instruments. John put on a mini concert on the acoustic guitar and then pounded away on the drums for awhile. David met a woman who said she would give him gu zheng lessons. The gu zheng is probably my favorite Chinese instrument. I guess it could best be described as a Chinese harp. It's an incredibly emotive instrument, and it has such a distinctively Chinese sound to it. Here's what it sounds like (in a scene from one of my favorite Chinese movies):

The Gu Zheng Is My "Hero"
(he starts playing around the 2:10 mark)

And here is what it looks like:

It looks almost as pretty as it sounds. I really hope David does take up the gu zheng. That would be super cool. Then he could play background music for us when we have duels in the rain on Saturday nights. :-D

The other big event this weekend was another BBQ. This time it was Kevin Di Palma, Mary Jane, and myself accompanying the students of the Finance and Trade University (FTU). FTU is a small school about ten minutes from our campus. Maryknoll tried to send teachers there this year, but things fell through. Kevin and I have been hosting English Corner over there every week for the last month or so, and it's been a lot of fun. The kids are really great, and super appreciative. They remind me a lot of the kids at Beihua.

This weekend Angel, a teacher at FTU and our main contact over there, invited us to accompany her and a group of her students for a BBQ. It was a group of senior accounting majors who will leave for an internship this November before graduating in July of '09. They were all girls, but some of Angel's male colleagues accompanied us to help even out the ratio a bit. We played lots of games (including a water balloon toss, my idea of course), sang songs, danced the tango, the cha-cha, and even some waltzes, and some of the girls put on a short skit. I had brought along my iPod so we were able to listen to some good music for a change (Chinese music pretty much consists of pop, pop, and more pop). All in all it was a stellar day.

Waiting for the next performance

I think the best part of the trip for me was the fact that none of the girls could speak very much English at all. So we had to converse in Chinese the whole day. I felt kind of bad for MJ and Kevin, whose Chinese skills are still a work in progress, but I had a great time. I realized that while having such a large group of Americans around is comforting, it sure doesn't help my Chinese at all. I hardly ever get a chance to converse in Chinese these days, outside of class. And yet I am always pleasantly surprised at how, when forced into a situation where I have no choice but to speak Chinese, I always manage to communicate better than I would have guessed. I'm going to have to find more ways to replicate that in the future if I really want my Chinese to improve.

I'll leave you with some pictures from this weekend. Hope you enjoy them.

On the bus!

Kevin, MJ, Angel and Un-Named Male Colleague

I'm pretty sure this bus is older than I am.

Angels' colleague singing the Official Theme Song of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games, "Beijing Huanying Ni" ("Beijing Welcomes You!")*. He couldn't remember all of the words, so he had to hold a girl's combination cell phone/MP3 player to his ear to catch the lyrics.

My Partner in Crime

We were in charge of playing music and running sound together.

Our "Angelic" Host

This little guy ran around all day charming all the ladies. They were COMPLETELY wrapped around his little fingers. And he knew it too.

Here he is blowing kisses to the camera (no joke).

"Peace out bro!"

EAST VS. WEST: I wonder who will win?

I wonder if I can get fired for this photo? Technically she's not my student...

K.O.!!

Here come the reinforcements!

Let's beat up the foreigner! Yeah!

After the fight, everyone is friends again.


As Always, I Remain, Your Faithful Servant,

高占阳

*(For anyone who is interested, here's that song I mentioned before, with semi-decent English subtitles: "Beijing Huanying Ni" ).