Foreign friends reaching across oceans to hold hands under the autumn nite sky while eating moon cake.
Saturday Sept 25th 6pm
So, Bond, at the last minute, as usual, told me that I need to go to this government dinner. So i got to dress up which was nice. I wore my Star Wars tie and two-tone shoes. They actually had real western style food which was great. This was a big celebration of the Moon Cake festival. They eat this cake stuff that is the chinese version of Fruit Cake. Its good, but everyone mails it to their friends thru the mail. its very funny. Like they can't just buy it at the store. Whatever.
After I cleaned up my room, I tried to iron some clothes. And of course, Bond hasnt replaced the broken iron I told them about 2 weeks ago and it leaks water everywhere. These little things just added to the shitty day i was already having and would continue to have that nite. So, i got water all over a shirt of mine and the floor. I called up Jolleen, the girl that is supposed to take care of my broken bed and other furnishings and pretty much yelled at her for not taking care of what I asked. I hung up and followed with a few curses on China and its people. Headed to get the bus at 5pm. It was John, Bill, Sean, Suzanna, me, and Mountain. It took us 1.5 hours to get to the Shangri-La hotel because the dumb bus driver got lost. So we picked up Alice at her place and she showed us the driver the right way. Then we stopped to pick up Dawn and Tanya, who walked to the hotel since it was a couple blocks away. The bus was stopped waiting for someone so we yelled at Mountain and walked to the hotel. During this time i mentioned to the gang that i was thinkin of bolting. They understood and some of them are thinkin about it to. Wouldn't it be awesome if we left at the same time. So the dinner and desert was great. Met some people. I picked up some cheese that we had another teacher buy for Peter and myself in Guangzhou. 2.5 kgs.
Basically it was an event to celebrate all the foreign teachers by the government in ShiQi. But it was actually to toot their own horn. They had some people do performances. And of course, the chinese had to play mozart and some european opera...I am in China cause I want chinese culture, not crappy renditions of European music. It was kinda sad. And there seemed to be more chinese than foreign teachers here. But i did get to stare at white people. It ruled. There will be pictures posted soon.
Then around 8pm I was like, i need to catch a cab back to Xiaolan to be a host at the party. But, Mountain convinced me that the bus was leaving in 10 minutes so we could all get there to gether.
I said ok. Sure enuff, 830pm came around and we still havne't boarded the bus. Then we had to wait for about 10 minutes while a girl from Shiqi changed her shoes and got a change of clothes, cause they ended up crashing at the house. Then we had to go out of our way to drop a teacher off at her shcool, then we headed to Xiaolan. I was irrate. I was mad because Bond was keeping me from being a host at my own party/bday party. And then to top it off the bus driver got lost again. And Bill, the Aussie, showed them how to get back. A foreigner showed a chinese how to get home. WTF!?!?!?!
While we were 40 minutes away from Xiaolan, Coco called asking where i was I told her about 20 minutes cause I thought we were. but we were 20 minutes in the opposite direction. I apologized.
We finally arrived in Xiaolan and the bus driver wouldnt take us to the house even though all of us were going there. So we gave him the finger and headed to grab a convoy of motorbike taxis. Thats when the nite took a turn for the worse.