Snowing in Guilin, WTF??

Shit it got cold as hell today in Guilin and it even half ass snowed for a min. Just barely flurries but it was the frozen version of rain so it counts, right. The coldness here feels a lot colder than back in Jersey(yea and Im an English teacher), its a wet cold and it goes straight to your bones. I even had to go out and buy a winter jacket today bc what I brought wasnt cutting it. I wound up finding a fake Nike one for 30 bucks that is pretty nice. Its an xxl and back home it would prob be a medium, maybe a large. It will keep me warm though, but I here that if I get caught with it when I come back to the States I will get fined or some shit bc its a fake version of Nike.. IDK. They also had the same exact jacket with an Adidas logo on it, wish I had my camera bc that shit was funny. The lady I bought it from told me and Michelle that we were soo beautiful bc we were really white. She meant it as a really nice compliment but I dont like to look really white so it wasnt really a compliment for me, I need some sunshine!!

We get this lady to come clean the apt every couple weeks and she charges 10UN an hour. Which is like a dollar something. She will clean and do whatever around the house for this price so we have her do the laundry sometimes too. Its soo nice. She was here for like 5 hrs the other day and cleaned everything possible for like 7.50USD, crazy! Gotta love it though.. The f-in washing machine in the apt blows and I think its broken bc it doesnt clean for shit, so she washed the clothes by hand.. haha. Better her than me right and shes more than happy working. We also give her all our empty beer bottles as a tip and she gets money for them. That works out for us too bc we dont have to drag 20 bottles down 6 flights of stairs and find somewhere to bring them afterwards. Shes the best, maybe I should get her an Xmas present or something..

I was talking to my friend who recently went back to Kenya to visit her family about medicine in China. She has asthma and most of her family does as well so when she went back she stocked up on medicine for them. Turns out the inhalers and shit are like 1/4 the price as they are in Kenya. All medicine is cheap here. When you get sick and go to the doctors the visit is cheap as hell and the prescriptions are also bargain price. I havent been yet, hopefully I dont have to. I got a cold sore the other day and had Gou go and get some medicine for me and that shit worked like a charm. Back home it would have taken like a week to clear up, but with this shit it was gone in a couple days. Drug companies in the US are complete BS. They dont really care what the best drug for a particular illness is, they just care about money. Its way different here in China. It really sucks for Americans thats for sure. This is why I didnt follow my initial college plan to go into pharmecudical sales, I didnt want to be one of those dirt bag pill pushers. China's problem with medicine is they kill tons of animals to use their body parts for traditional medicine. Some of the animals are now endangered now bc of this. China and animals dont mix well, they kill them all, poor Pandas.

Speaking of animals, we went to the Guilin aquarium the other day bc I heard it was one of the best in China. It turned out to be really shitty unfortunately. They had a lot of cool freshwater fish including archer fish from S America. These fish shoot water from their mouths at flying insects or insects on branches above the water to knock them down and eat them on the surface. Pretty cool fish. They also had a bunch of different species of catfish which were also cool. As for the turtles.. There were a bunch of sea turtles in different tanks, which most were way to small for a huge ass sea turtle to swim around in. Soo sad. Same went for the other species of turtles they had there, the tanks were so small the poor turtles could barely turn around. Chinese people really dont give a shit about animals. Ha, the so called reef tank was probably 3000 gallons and was horrible. First of all there were only like 3 different species of corals in the whole thing and most were dying or really stressed out. They water was also murky and looked like the tank was crashing bc of all the death. The fish looked ok but a lof of the cleaner wrasses were bust picking organisms off the other fish which is never a good sign. I wish I could have tested the water, Im sure it was all out of whack. Most of the fish in the tank were clown fish too, and not Perculas (nemo) the other species of clown fish. Im sure they had some 'nemos' in there but they prob died long ago. Pretty disappointing reef tank. They had a few nice looking puffer fish in various fish only saltwater tanks that looked healthy, but again the tanks were way to small for the fish. There was a really big shark and sea turtle tank that you walk under through a tunnel, so you can look up and see the fish swimming above your head, which was fun. I found a styrofoam container that had some dead fish in it so when we were above the tank I threw a big piece in and all the sharks went nuts, it was awesome. We though we were compromised so we got the hell away from that part of the aquarium in a hurry. The next exhibit was an enclosure for seals, there were 3 of them. The enclosure again was too small for 3 f-in seals and we were pissed so we didnt really stay long to watch them. The best part of the place was the Koi pond, of course the native Chinese prized fish. They had a nice water feature with waterfalls and all kinds of rocks to hide around. This place even had a small alligator that you can hold an get a picture with for money. They alligator just sits there with its eyes closed and tape over its nose all day. We thought it looked drugged, poor guy. I wanted to cut the tape off when the guy who handles it wasnt looking, so the alligator could get his revenged but Michelle wouldnt let me. There was a little show while we were there where Chinese girls dress up like mermaids and swim in a big tank with the fish, it was pretty lame though. That was about it for the worst aquarium I think Ive ever been to. It cost 60 UN which is kinda expensive for China, cheap back home. I wanted my money back..

That night we went to our friends bar for my friend from Kenya's going away party. I met an interesting older man from New Zealand there who owns a company that makes natural sweetener from a local fruit. He sells this sweetener to companies in the US such as, Pepsi, Coke, and a couple gum companies. We talked for a while about how he started it and what his goals for the company were. He said he is opening another 5 million dollar plant in a couple weeks and his plan is to employ about 20,000 local farmers in 2 years. Pretty impressive. He also used every part of the fruit and has virtually no post processing waste. He using the parts of the fruit he doesnt extract the sweetener from to burn and use as fuel. His only by product is carbon. Oh and the sweetener has zero calories! I didnt get his number but we did talk about my background and marketing degree a little, might be something there in the future. I wound up leaving kinda abruptly and forgot to get his business card, but Im sure Ill see him again.

After that bar I went to meet some of my Chinese friends at a club called T-Bar, its pretty sweet and they play good music all the time. We drank and they tried to introduce me to girls that were 'paid' for by one of their other friends who had already left. I dont get why these Chinese guys like to pay for girls to hang out with and take home.. Its kinda lame I think. I told them I wasnt interested and went to find my own chicks to dance with. We ran into a couple of guys from Nigeria who wanted to buy my beer for the rest of the night, so I chilled with them until we were the only ones in the club other than the workers and the DJ, who started playing rap and hip hop for us. We were gettin down, bustin out gansta moves on the dance floor and dancing with some of the girl waitress's and shit, it was fun. All the staff members were watching us dance and getting a kick out of it, some of the men tried to mimic our moves, soo funny. The Dj at one point brought me into the DJ booth with him and showed me all his records and equipment for some reason.. It was good shit. They stayed open until we decided to leave and as soon as we walked out the door they turned off the music and turned on the lights, so I ran back inside and said 'just kidding, we are back!' Of course most of them didnt understand, but the DJ started laughing and went to grab a record. I told them 'peace out' and bounced. haha. Good times.

The following day at school I had my student make Christmas cards that I could hang up around school. They loved making them and most of them turned out really nice.. I did this with two of my classes, one 6yr old and the other 13-14 yr olds. I had to tell my younger students what to write inside, and I let my older ones write whatever they wanted. A few of the 14 yr old girls got together and made one card written out to me. It was the nicest one and I kept it. They said they loved coming to class bc I was cool and handsome. They also said I was a good teacher and they are learning a lot in class, which feels really good for me. I dont get any feedback from anyone at school about the job I am doing bc most dont really care I guess. Its weird. Anyways it was nice hearing it from them. Another older girl wrote the card out to me as well and it was along the same lines. Its a little weird though when young students write to you that your so handsome and we really like you and this and that. Flattering but awkward.

The next day was our school Christmas party which was held at a nearby 4 star hotel banquet hall. Pretty nice place. We had a huge Chinese buffet which was really good and a talent show with some of the students. There were about 300 people that came and about 30 different performances. Anything from a young kid on stage singing 'head, shoulders, knees, and toes' to one of my 3yr old girls playing the violin to a whole class singing 'Deck the Halls'. There was even a little boy doing magic. Chinese talent shows are pretty lame and the kids really arent that good at what they perform, but its cool. Its more the parents pushing them on stage so everyone can see that their child is the center of attention and can play something or sing something. They are worse than American beauty pageant Moms I think. The whole organization and planning for this party and performance thing was pretty shitty or non existent so me and Michelle were laughing a lot. Oh, and Michelle wound up being the MC for the whole thing which was really funny bc we were both hung over as hell from the night before. All the students had fun though and I guess thats all that matters, plus we didnt have afternoon classes that day so that was sweet. Other than the few Xmas songs some of the kids sang and the few people wearing Santa hats, there was no Christmas feel to it. It was more of a dinner party than Xmas party. But whatever it was fun hanging out with some of my little students out of class. I have one little girl who loves me and follows me around everywhere. She likes sitting on my lap and hugging me and I have to always tell her that its not good to be doing that. She doesnt get it and her parents didnt seem to be bothered by it, little awkward for me though. The last act of the talent show was me Michelle and a couple of her older students reading 'Twas the Night before Christmas' . We got a bigger applause than any of the other performers got for some reason and I didnt think we did that well, I felt like ass.

So my Bday is in a day or so and Im having a party at one of the nightclubs here which will be fun. We know the manager and he hooked us up with a table even though the place was just about booked for Xmas Eve. They will play a happy bday song and bring the cake out with fireworks on it at some point too, cant wait! In China if you have a Bday party you are expected to pay for all the alcohol and shit at the club, which blows. Good thing Im an American though, lol. I sure as hell aint paying for all the people that will show up.. We are also having a Xmas party at my apt on Christmas which is pot luck so everyone will bring something. We went out today and bought a Chinese BBQ cooker and charcoal so we can make traditional Chinese BBQ. That should be fun. We ordered tons of meat too. Ill be sure to take a lot of pics from both events. I probably wont post again until after Christmas so I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe Christmas and I send my love from the East. Hopefully Santa can find me over here.. :)