In which I get beat up by two chinese people, eat an entire chicken and party all night

Long story short, I had a pretty eventful birthday.

Let's start at the beginning.  The week before my birthday I was waiting at the elevator in my building when I saw this man holding a suitcase.  The guy looked like an American and he looked really... familiar.  I kept trying not to stare at him but still kinda staring to see where the heck I knew him from and then it hit me.  That was Professor Beech from Bemidji State University!

Turns out that the students from BSU on the China trip came in May, not June like I was told.  16 students, most of them my classmates or friends.  It was a blast having them here and (I'll be honest) really refreshing to have someone speaking midwestern English.

Thursday three of those students and I went to a massage parlor down the street.  It was my birthday present to myself.  I'd never gotten a massage before so I opted for the hour long full body one.  And it was the worst thing I think I've ever done.  This place was clearly meant to be a spa with massaging on the side... or maybe I just happened to get someone who didn't know what they were doing.  In any case, I walked out of there with a really sore back, more knots than when I went in and bruises on my stomach (why the heck anyone would think it was a good idea to rub someone's stomach like that, I have no idea.)  So... I paid good money for someone to beat the hell out of me.

This woman who works at the place where I tutor part time (actually, she and her husband own it) took me out for dinner and another massage on Friday.  We went to this Szechuan restaurant that seems to be a pretty popular chain.  I told her that I had no idea what most of the items on the menu were so she ordered a little bit of each so that we could try everything.  Things that were delicious: chicken hearts, squid, tofu, mushrooms, silkworms.  Things that weren't: chicken skin, chicken heads, cartilage, gizzards.  But I still tried everything once or twice because the fact that we in the west think of it as gross doesn't mean it tastes bad or is bad for you.  Then I realized... I've had chicken head, chicken neck, chicken cartilage and bone, chicken feet, chicken breasts and wings and legs... hearts, gizzards... I think I've eaten an entire chicken by now.

The other item that surprised me were the silkworms.  They come in a cocoon that you bite open with your teeth and then you just kinda squeeze/suck the worm out.  They taste like boiled eggs and have about that consistency as well.  Delicious as heck, really, but my hands were shaking so badly when I tried them.  I've got this lifelong fear of bugs and now I'm willingly putting one in my mouth?  Man...

After dinner we went to get REAL massages.  It was really fantastic.  This time we got foot massages since apparently the feet hold the key to everything else in your body.  Rubbing the right spot on your feet is supposed to be able to cure almost everything.  I don't know if that's true or not but the guy really went to town in a borderline painful way and when I walked out of there my back wasn't sore anymore.  Fabulous.

Saturday night I had my REAL birthday party with my students.  We went out to Karaoke, which is called 'KTV' here.  It's not like Karaoke in the states where you get up in front of the bar and sing to everyone.  Here you rent out a private room and get to control your own songs, song order, dance lighting, all that.  There was a super comfortably couch that we all lounged on, drank beers and ate some delicious cake.  I would add pictures but for some reason the picture uploader has decided it hates me.

Only one of the American guys came and he had to duck out early, but that's alright since we had a blast singing Chinese songs.  Surprisingly enough there was a good selection of English songs on there.  Everything from Sarah Brightman to Mumford and Sons to Lady Gaga.  Disco (one of my students) and I rocked the HECK out of a Linkin Park song and I learned how uncomfortably inappropriate Lady Gaga's 'Paparazzi' music video is... didn't really bother me but students in China are far more conservative and seeing Gaga make out with Alexander Skarsgard for two straight minutes induced a lot of awkward coughing and trying to look anywhere but the giant TV.

We started Karaoke at 9 at night and stayed there until 5.30 the next morning when we got kicked out.  Since the gates to the school didn't open for another half hour and we didn't feel like jumping, the 6 of us left decided to go out for breakfast to this porridge place.  The same porridge place with the Century Eggs that I declared war on.  Luckily I was able to get some normal Baozi... Just can't handle dealing with those eggs at 5.30 in the morning.

My throat was DEAD the next day and I was tired as hell but it was so. much. fun.  I would definitely do another night of Karaoke... just not any time in the near future.  It's been over a week and I'm still recovering.

Alright, now I've got to get back to real life.  I found a cockroach last night and today I'm making the trek to the store to pick up some chemical weapons to destroy their clans.  I like my cockroaches like I like my Spider Jerusalems.  Stuck in obscure comics where I can think about how cool they are and how I wouldn't mind having one but MAN the second I see you in real life, you're getting hit with a shoe.

In which I celebrate Labor Day and go shopping!

For some reason Blogspot has been a little wonky.  Everything loads except for the text box here... kind of the important part.  Ah well, we're up and running now!

First of all, I have to say that the kids I tutor (not the ones at the university, the younger ones) are weird.  I entered the building last week and saw that all of the white boards were filled with pictures of a super buff Pikachu.

I'd be impressed if I wasn't so confused

Clearly I missed out on something important.

Two Mondays ago it was Labor Day, so no school!  That same week was Children's Day (no afternoon school for the kids) and Youth Day (no afternoon school for 15-23 year olds).  Since we had three breaks, everybody was out partying, playing music in front of the dorms, I'm pretty sure all of the Russians in the building (of which there are a lot) went out to the clubs for the ENTIRE week.

I guess you could say that it was a week... *puts on sunglasses* without class.  YEEEEAAAAAAAHH *cues CSI music*

Man, I need to get off the internet.  Anyways, one of the girls I tutor invited me on a Labor Day picnic with her family.  We went to a park and the weather was absolutely beautiful.  The park is called "The Shenyang Exhibition Garden" which is super fancy talk for "Look, man, we got flowers and not much else to justify spending 35 yuan per ticket".  Although, to their credit, the flowers were beautiful.

There was also a theme park in the middle of the garden.  Rollercoasters, haunted house, games where you pay money to shoot at something and never win a prize... the whole shebang.  It was really cool, but of course they have some little things that prove that either Chinese people don't research American culture or they just REALLY don't give a crap.

There was a 'Pirates of the Caribbean' themed ride.  Innocent enough, right?  Well, they had posters from the movies hanging up all over the ride and then they had this little gem.

Also, I'm pretty sure there were no licensing fees paid to Disney for usage here

If you don't know, after the success of the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' movie, some people decided to make a porno that was sexy-pirate themed.  The poster with all the girls wearing not much but corsets and a smile?  That's a pornographic film.  There are posters advertising American pornography at a children's theme park.  Classy.

They also have a space ride where you can climb inside a fake spaceship and it'll pretend to launch into space... pretty cool, if you think about it.  They had one in Disneyworld that was ABSOLUTELY the bomb and I would go on it again in a heartbeat. (More like an hour and a heartbeat...the lines at Disney were pretty damn long)  However something about this Spaceship just didn't seem right.

Sorry about the Shaky-Cam, I was practicing for a career as a Hollywood Filmographer 

I know it's a little difficult to read, but they name they gave that ride is "The Challenger".  I was laughing and trying to take this picture, so the family I was with asked if I was interested in trying the ride.  I told them, "No way, I'm a teacher.  I know how this story ends."  They didn't get it.

Later that day I went out with a student to get my shopping on at the Night Market.  It was really sweet, we spent much money and came back with much loot.  I can't remember if I talked about fashion here or not, but it's this great mix of military-chic and gothic-lolita.  Friggen perfect.  Clothes are cheap, food was cheap (1 yuan for whatever you want barbecued on a stick) and it was a beautiful night for shopping.

Something that's greatly disappointed me in the school here is the plagiarism.  Apparently plagiarism is common in the University here and it's totally accepted.  Teachers know the students do it and they just do nothing. I'm appalled!  I had to grade about 400 papers on my student's favorite movies (write 5 or more sentences about absolutely anything about any movie) and over half of them are stolen right off of the internet. I gave my classes the talk about how it's unacceptable to do this in my class and if I catch anybody copying another paper again, I'll fail them out.  Of course that's a bluff, I can't take any action against them because the university doesn't have a plagiarism policy.  But I think I got them scared!

Now it's back to work, back to correcting papers and in a few hours, back to class.  I've started falling into a pretty stable routine so the past couple of weeks have totally flown by.  Can't believe it's almost my birthday ALREADY!