Spicy frog hot pot.. thats what Im talkin about

I try soo hard to make time to write and post something new everyday, but whenever I get out of work there is something going on or someone wanting to hang out and go places. When I sit down to write I always have soo much to say and wind up typing for a long time so I usually do it late at night or early in the morning. Its now 11pm Sunday night and most of my friends have to work in the morning and I dont.

Anyway lets take it back to Friday..

After I got out of work a bunch of us met up at a small cafe/bar called Rosemary's for some pre-game drinking and talking before we went to the club. Its a cool place to hang out and have some western food or some drinks and a lot of my friends like it, me not as much. Im in China, so I would rather go to a tea house or a Chinese style place, you know.. So we sat and talked and laughed for a while and then some of us went and bought a bottle of Brandy to sneak into the bar so we didnt have to buy liquor to take shots there. The club we went to, and usually hit, is called Joy's and its pretty sweet. Its always packed on the weekends. Some of the people I was with know someone that works there so we called ahead of time and reserved a table in the center of the place, nice. By the time we got to Joy's we were all pretty tipsy laughing and carrying on, its a really fun and outgoing group. A guy from Whales, one from London, a girl from Kenya, a guy from Serbia, another guy from Africa somewhere, two girls and a guy from China, me, and Michelle. So we get to our table and order a bunch of beers. The way people eat and drink when they go out in China is by sharing, so you would order a bunch of beers for the table and some glasses and just pour from the community bottle. Or if you go eat Chinese food at a restaurant you order a bunch of different dishes for the table and share them all. As soon as our server left we cracked open the bottle of brandy and poured like 15 shots, lol. Some of us had two right off the bat.. :) Like Ive said before at bars and clubs in China people dont really dance like they do other places, and there is not really a dance floor. But of course us foreigners like to dance and get wild and eventually some drunk Chinese people will join in and give us beer and shit, its really funny. They come up and speak what little English or Chinglish they know and start pouring beer in your cup.. Chinese girls like to dance so when they see us dancing they come over and join, so at one point Im dancing by my friend Stan and we turn around and there is like 5 girls dancing behind us. Chinese people are kinda shy at first so you have to break the ice for them before they will warm up to you. We were with girls and didnt want to be rude so I just stayed dancing with them but Stan found him a lady. I learned another cool dice game people play at clubs thats really fun and involves drinking also. To complicated to explain. The Chinese are smart, they supply dice and shit so people can play drinking games and spend more money, duh why didnt we think of that. The bar had some girls dancing on pedestals with guards in helmets protecting them, and at one point Stan grabbed the helmet off one and switched it with Howards beanie hat.. It was hilarious! The guard got pissed at first but when everyone around started laughing and smiling at him he calmed down a little. Plus we were foreigners and he wasnt going to start anything. So after dancing and getting wasted till about 3 am I look around and cant find anyone I came with, but I knew some people had left and Michelle left earlier because shes kinda boring now with a boyfriend and all. As Im looking around a Chinese guy, dressed really nice taps me on the shoulder, says 'Hello', and starts pouring me beer. He was with a bunch of people, mostly skimpy dressed Chinese girls which was nice to see. The good thing was he could speak some English and at least understand what I was saying to him, for the most part. We talked for a min about where I was from and why I was here and then he asked if I wanted some drugs and wanted fuck some hott Chinese girls. I pretended like I didnt hear him because I wanted to hear him say it again in his broken ass English. And sure enough that exactly what he said. I told him I didnt want any drugs and didnt want any girls. Then he said 'ok how many you want?' Just fuckin with him I said 'how many you got', he laughed and said 'whatever you want'. The music was really loud so I guess he didnt hear me. I started laughing and put two and two together that he must have been a big drug dealer at this club and pimped girls as well, or just had too many to take care of himself and knew that these Chinese girls would be down for it. I just laughed with him and said I was with girls already and probably couldnt handle 3 hott Chinese girls. He thought that was hilarious and told me 'yes you can'. He was a really cool dude and obviously had some money, drugs, and hott girls, my kind of guy for sure, lol. I tried to tell him that I appreciated his generosity but he could understand. I then noticed Wendy sitting at our table by herself so I went and got her to bring to this dudes table. I asked her to translate for me what I was trying to tell him. We hung out with those people for a little longer and then found Alisha who had disappeared for a while. Me and Wendy took a taxi home around 4am or so because I had to work at 9:30am. Ouch. It was a really good night though, everyone had a blast.

Saturday's I have one class at 930 and another at 430. The 930 class sucked because I felt like shit and my students were bad as shit and didnt want to listen or pay attention at all. I wasnt in the mood for it so we just played stupid games the whole class and I did dumb funny shit to make them laugh and have a good time. After that class I waited for Michelle to finish her class and we went home because her boyfriend was cooking us lunch. He is a really good Chinese cook and makes all kinds of shit, sooo good and spicy. After we ate Michelle had to go back to work and me and Wendy went to the downtown area to find a tailor to get a pair of jeans and a skirt fixed. We found a small shop wedged between some buildings in an alley with an old couple who sew and tailor shit for people. We had them both fixed for about 4 bucks and they did a perfect job! After we walked around shopping for a while, talking, and seeing more of the city. She has a tour guide license and knows everything about China I think. She is also teaching me some Chinese. We then decided to go to a coffee/tea shop to meet up with Alisha. I had some green tea. I am becoming addicted to tea in China I think. I love going and trying different ones and relaxing in these posh tea houses for a couple hours. We sat and talked until I had to go back to work. My class only lasted an hour so they just waited for me downtown and when I was done we met back up and went to eat Chinese BBQ and Guilin noodles.

Chinese BBQ is different than American BBQ with meats and vegetables skewered on separate sticks and you walk up to the window, pick out a bunch of different things and they cook them and bring them out to your table by the street. They have some weird shit there too like chicken hearts, squid, and chicken feet. We got a mixed bag but not too too weird though. Everything was soo good and soo spicy, just the way I like it. By the way, I really like hanging out with Wendy and Alisha, they are a lot of fun and really good looking. They make a good pair and are a lot of fun together. When we were finishing up our fiends called and said they were meeting at Rosemary's for some drinks and wanted us to come. We didnt really want to but went for a min anyway to say hi. We left because we wanted to go to this other tea house to talk and relax. This place is called Shire and its on the 2nd floor of a building looking over the Li river, really nice modern place. The seats are like small couches and we just sat around drinking tea and playing this Chinese game, which they whooped my ass. Actually Wendy did, Ill never play that shit with her again thats for sure. Every time I was about to score a point she would kill me and ruin my chances, bitch. They though it was soo funny too. It was fun though. Wendy taught me how to write my name, or the translation of my name, in Chinese, which is 凱文 . The tea we had is my favorite so far, best Ive ever had really. I cant spell the name of it but it had dragon fruit, flowers, and some kid of nuts in it.. Oh my God it was sooo good. I could drink it many times a day everyday. We had like 4 pots I think, lol. We stayed for a few hours until Stan and them called us and made us go with them to a bar called Kaya to play foosball and hang out. They were already wasted when we met them.

Kaya is a small place with couches and one foosball table. The table is pretty cheap and shitty but we played for a while and me and Stan kicked some Chinese ass. For some reason I played extremely well and scored madd points. People were getting a kick out of how good we were and watched us play for a while. We stopped because we wanted to sit back down with our people. We stayed until around 230 because I had to go to work at 9 and the girls were still feeling shitty from the night before.

Work today was ok, a lot better than I figured it would be. For the most part my kids were good and didnt give me too much shit. I am getting a cold though so I kinda felt like shit all day with a stuffy nose but whatever. I had a new class to day which is older more advanced kids like ages 13-15. This class lasts 3hrs and every other teacher hates it and dreads going, so I have been worried about it for a while. I figured I needed to get the kids to like me first off and be interested in what I had to tell them or teach them secondly so I didnt plan shit and went in just wanting to try and have a discussion about whatever they wanted. I told them about myself, where I was from, what I like to do, and why I was in China and then I had each one tell me their name and something interesting about themselves. I wanted to see how much they could speak and understand before I went any further. Surprisingly they were really good and could speak and understand quite well. There are a couple girls who are the leaders it seems because they know the most English. After they each spoke a little I asked them straight up what they wanted to learn and what is the best way for me to teach them, trying to find out how committed they are to this class. They didnt know how to respond because they never had a teacher that asked them this before because their Chinese school is really strict and boring. They gave me some feedback and then I told them if they had any questions about where I come from or where Ive traveled to ask. They loved it. We talked back and forth for about 90 mins about America and China and differences between countries, what I like about China and what they like about America. It was pretty cool, because I learned some stuff, they learned a lot and we had a good time. We then took a break. After break I had them get out their books and we went over the chapter they were on. Instead of having them do work and write a lot we read out loud and I told them if they dont understand a word or phrase to just stop and ask me, or if they have any question about anything to just ask. All in all it was a good first class and I think they like me. Light years from what I expected it would be like.

After class I was going to meet up with Wendy to go to another tea house/restaurant to relax and talk for a while. I took a taxi until we ran into a parade/festival going through the street that nobody knew about. After waiting for a couple mins I paid the driver, got out, and hopped on a motor cycle taxi because they drive on the side of the road and dont wait for the traffic at all. I finally met Wendy and we walked to the tea house. We ordered some fruit and flower tea with apple, orange, flowers, and some other fruit in it. It was amazing as well. This establishment was totally chill too. They had water features throughout the whole place and the tables were on little islands and it was like a river was running past the tables. Even the bathrooms had river type canals in them and water falls everywhere. All the decor was modern and natural organic spa feeling.. Really cool place, Ill definitely be back there and bring my camera next time. Its amazing what you can do when you can buy materials for not a lot of money and labor costs are so cheap, unlike America or Western Europe. The Chinese know how to design and create Chi or Feng Shui in their spaces thats for sure, with water and plants everywhere and a natural organic feel. Totally my kind of style.

We stayed there until Michelle got out of work and called inviting us to a 'welcome Kevin to the school dinner' since one of the other teachers just got back from a short vacation. They always go for what they call a 'hot pot' dinner. Sounds fun and I never had it before so we met them there. Heres how it works: you get a private room with a granite table that has a whole in front of each persons chair and a burner under the whole. Everyone orders their own pot of water with different spices and a main meat in it that they bring and place in the whole over the burner. Me and Wendy each got the spicy frog one, which they actually take a bull frog and chop it up bones and all and throw it in the water. The table then orders a bunch of different vegetables and meats, which you boil in your soup pot, and then take out and eat once they are cooked and seasoned from the water. We got lamb, Kobe beef, dumplings, potato, lotus(flower) root, bunch of other vegetables and tofu. Tons of food. They bring everything out raw, place it on a lazy susan in the middle of the table and you have to cook everything in your individual pot. Pretty cool way to have dinner and it was delicious! So much fun to go and eat and drink with friends. Ill be back there for sure.. The frog was definitely a chopped up bullfrog with the skin and all, it almost made Michelle throw up, but I liked it. It took me a couple pieces to get used to chewing on frog and spitting the bones into a small bowl they provide but it 'tastes like chicken' :)

After dinner some of us went back downtown to catch some of the parade festival which was a Guilin cultural welcome tourists party, the translation is a little funny. It was pretty elaborate and the floats were so bright and colorful. There were sooo many people too! It was pretty crazy, definitely a big deal for the city and if we would have known it was this big before we wouldnt have went to eat 'hot pot' because it takes a while to eat. When the parade ended Wendy had to leave to go back to the school she teaches at :( and Michelle and Gou didnt want to do anything so we just came back home, bastards.

So that brings me to laying in bed at 1am now, thinking to myself 'what a weekend' finishing a shitty glass of Chinese wine. I still think about these cheap ass full body massages we are supposed to go get one of these days. I found out you can stay in your room all night like a hotel room with a bunch of friends, crazy. People get like orgy's going on and shit in there too I think.. Dont worry Ill make it there soon and youll read all the juicy details.. maybe ;P