labor day holiday involves much labor, but was still a good holiday.

so, this past weekend was labor day in china. labor day used to be a golden week, meaning a week-long vacation for everyone in china. i remember being told "you definitely want to leave china, no one will be here." apparently that is NOT true for "three day" holidays (aka- we got friday off. sounds a lot like a one day holiday to me...).

our original plans were to go to this beach called xichong that's a couple hours away and spend the weekend in bungalows on the beach. i made the mistake of mentioning this at work and darren invited me, and all my friends, on his family vacation to xichong. i was able to say "that sounds like a lot of fun, but i have to check with all of my friends and they make very late decisions" and that worked pretty well. although, casper really wasn't having it. he probably asked me 5 different times on thursday if we would go with them or not. cause apparently casper and ben were also going on darren's family vacation? i think i've been jaded by the number of times american employeers have told me 'we're like a family here' cause these people seem to hang out A LOT. as a sidenote about work, i might punch them this week. i'm teaching them how to order food, and as part of that i brought in examples of real menus. they keep bitching at me about how this is too hard. i'm sorry, i thought you wanted to learn survial english? FOOD IS SORT OF IMPORTANT TO SURVIVAL. i tried explaining that they will never be able to really read an english menu but it is important to scan for keywords. they continue to bitch. i think wednesday i will bring in a chinese menu with the like 4 characters i can read highlighted and just be like "WELCOME TO MY DAY TO DAY LIFE, NOW TRY TO ORDER SOME GODDAMN FOOD IN ENGLISH." but you know, really nice like. we're family.

anyways, thursday night was supposed to be a night of epic drunkenness. jess, linda, and i decided to show up at pub quiz totally obliterated from the start. in preparation, we bought 3 bottles of wine. somehow or another, this in no way resulted in any of us being DRUNK DRUNK. just sort of tipsy. somehow or another a few us ended up back at one of the coordinators' apartment. she has this little puppy that she rescued and it is like, too precious. it's dumb as a rock and little and fluffy and white and just lays in your lap like a doll and lets you pet it. it was love. anyways, at some point i decided to have a rest and everyone kept thinking i was dead and trying to make me sit up and chat. then they started telling me i was purple, which really upset me, as i felt like i was 100% fine. so then i just got angry and started yelling "I'M NOT PURPLE!!!". her apartment didn't have adequate sleeping space, so linda, gwyn, and i cabbed it home. friday was super slow so we didn't make it out to the beach until the evening. and JESUS CHRIST was it crowded. traffic was absurd that day. the people that were coming to meet us all had to take cabs because the busses were so full no one else could physically fit on them. anyways, we then had a nice night at the beach drinking beer, but not getting drunk. things to note about chinese people at the beach: 1. pretty much every single group of chinese people (and there were many, many groups) built these giant holes about 3 feet deep large enough for 4-5 people to lay down in with the side facing the beach built up even higher. so basically, they were all laying around in holes, facing AWAY from the ocean. weird. 2. in the public restroom i noted two kinds of footwear. heels (what the fuck? who wears fucking heels on a beach? chinese women never cease to amaze) and barefeet (i'll pause while you vomit).

saturday i was woken up at the absurd hour of 11 am. by the time we were done lunching and got on a bus (after several cabs refused to take us), it was like 2. we went to a slightly farther away beach that charges for entry in hopes of beating the crowds. success in that the free beach we passed appeared to be standing room only, fail in that there was no possible way in actually beating the crowd. it was a nice day at the beach. we bought tubes and pretended to be on the river (although clearly that didn't really work). i covered myself to prevent myself from getting a tan, and didn't look like a freakshow as all the chinese people were either in tents, under umbrellas, or had BURIED THEMSELVES IN THE SAND. like, "hey, i have an idea! let's take the worst part of the beach and multiply it times 8 trillion!" whatever china. anyways, so we decided to go back to the free beach and do chinese bbq for dinner. we finally got on a bus, told them where we wanted to go, and braced ourselves for the ride. at some point, we realized the bus had passed the stop without stopping. the ticket lady seemed surprised. then we continued to pass stops we were supposed to be stopping at. by the time our screaming at the ticket lady resulted in a stop, we were about 30 minutes from where were supposed to be. so we just decided to go into town and get subway. it was maybe the most delicious subway sandwich of my life. also, the cookies were orgasmic. like, they were just china good. anyways, we were all feeling and looking pretty rough having just come from the beach, so we went to get xitou's (hair washes) which include a 20ish minute scalp and arm massage, and then a blow dry. the blow dry resulted in half of the hair stylists standing around my chair talking about my hair and me with ringlets styled with a blowdryer and round brush. i think jess has a picture. it was pretty classic. anyways, then we just went and got some beers at a bar and went home. all in all, a very sober but fun weekend.

sunday i went to the tailor and got a long dress made. i go in a week from today to get it fitted/pick it up if it already fits perfect. it's blue. i'm excited. then linda and i went to get italian food at this place we hadn't been before and OMG it was so good. like, it would be good in the states, which in china is like, to die for. they had foccacia bread and real salad and just wow.

anyways, at some point this weekend i got over 125 mosquito bites from my knees down. i look like a leper. also, i itch a lot. so everyone feel bad for me. also, my spellcheck randomly stopped working while i was typing this. so between being itchy and not having spellcheck notify me of my typos/gross spelling errors, i'm sure this post is basically impossible to read, and i apologize.

i miss and love everyone and hope all my seniors have a FANTASTIC senior week and CONGRATS ON FINISHING!!! drink one (or twenty) for me!

your loss. i'm double jointed.

ok, so i'll start off with a casper story. because everyone loves a good casper story, and i don't tell enough on here. as i think i've mentioned previously, casper is quite the bring it on fan. in fact, he think all 4 of them are quite excellent films. as there have not been many good movies out lately, his is having to enjoy his favorite movies again and again. clearly, this is why he has watch bring it on 4 at least 2 times in the last week. one of those times was at work? so when i got there around 10 and he brought his computer into the conference for me to set up my powerpoint, he decided to ask me a question. he asked me to explain the following line said to a jock with a girlfriend by a cheerleader (not his girlfriend) who is walking away from him: your loss. i'm double jointed. 

the double jointed conversation went something like this

me: uhhhh, wellll, double jointed is when your joints bend in ways that most people can't, so you're very flexible

casper: um, ok, so why would she say that?

me: well, some people find that flexible people are more..... attractive.

casper: oh, so it's like saying "i'm sexy" you can say "i'm double jointed"

me: NO. uhh....flexible people can you know, do things with their bodies that other people can't do.....

casper: [blank stare]

me: uhhhh....ok, basically it suggests you're good at sex.

casper: ohokwellthencanyoutellmewhatthey'retalkingaboutinthisscene?? [frantically presses play]

he also asked if me or anyone i know has ever been in a situation where say she likes someone, but that someone doesn't like her, instead he's in love with someone else. and that someone else is married. he wanted my advice on what to tell his friend who e-mailed him with the dilemma. 

in other big news, i got paid on thursday and as i am completely incapable of saving money in pretty much any capacity, i killed time on friday by shopping and, success of all success, I FOUND SHOES. CUTE ONES. ONES THAT FIT. ONES THAT I CAN WEAR ON A DAILY BASIS. 

anyways, so friday night we went back to the beer gardens. i was really hungry when we got there, but for some reason i didn't think the food was so delicious this time around. i kept trying things and they would be delicious, and then a bite would taste like fish and i wouldn't be able to eat that dish anymore. then by the time delicious things were coming out, i didn't feel like eating. don't worry though, there was plenty of beer. it's kind of one of those "i feel like i remember everything but can't quite piece the evening together" type of nights. i do know it ended in coming back to yantian, getting more messed up than we already were, and staying up til around 5 am for no reason.

saturday we just sort of hung out around yantian all day. evan came over around 3 and we started drinking. that was a huge fail though. somehow even though we all started drinking around 3 or 4, at no point was anyone legit drunk. we did go to this restaurant here called champs that has like real american food. i had a hot dog. it was goddamn delicious. i kept singing the hot dog (watch me eat) song in my head, but i decided not to bring it up at the dinner table haha. they also had paper on the tables and oil pastels, so we spent a few hours there drinking and eating and coloring. it was by far the most fun part of the night. good food, coloring, and funny conversation. oh, and beer. after that we went out to this club, but that was pretty lame. there were maybe like 3 people there that weren't there with us and the music was so loud you couldn't hear someone screaming in your ear so we had to sit outside and the weather wasn't super great. and none of us got drunk. and we were all pretty exhausted from the binge fest at champs. we decided to keep drinking and play monopoly back at yantian when we got home at like 3:30 and that didn't really work out cause we were so sober and tired. yet for some reason, gwyn and i stayed up til  5 am again. we need to stop doing that. it was still a really fun night though and made me realize i'm going to be so sad when linda and frank and mike and everyone else leaves me :(

anyways, we have a 3 day weekend this weekend (even though it should be a fucking week long vacation and i should be leaving on thursday to go to indonesia to get scuba certified on gili t, but whatever, i'll take what i can get). no real plans yet, but we were talking about going out and renting bungalows on this beach that's an hour or so away. ALSO we just found out that the beach by us is bioluminescent or whatever. basically, when you swim in it it glows turquoise. FUCKING COOL. and as it was really nice and warm on monday and tuesday last week... it might be getting warm again so it's BEACH TIME AGAIN!!! which is good news for everything but my tummy, however, i have started doing my silly workout tapes again, so maybe by the time beach season is over, i'll be able to wear a bathing suit haha. 

OH. and i've started the ball rolling on the visa thing. casper was pretty useless for round one, but i've been talking and i do have to leave the country and casper didn't mention anything about me working in the hong kong office, so let's just keep those fingers and toes crossed for TEXAS THIS SUMMER. seriously. anything that crosses, fucking cross it. i need to get drunk on the comal at least once this summer. 

finally, i'd like to end this blog with a moment of silence for bea arthur :(

cheap beer is clutch.

look at me! updating my blog again! lucky you!

anyways, i had an exceptionally good weekend. friday night a bunch of us went to these beer gardens and it was awesome. for one thing, the food was delicious. like, very rarely do i go to a chinese restaurant and feel impressed, as it's all sort of blended together at this point. but this food was really good. and fucking cheap. also, they had fucking cheap beer. there were about 20 of us there, and by the time we left we had finished 40 pitchers of beer. i think i spent about 10 usd to get really full and really drunk. also, the group of people there was awesome. i got to hang out with a lot of people i don't get to hang out with as much. and i think i might have managed to be really really drunk AND not make an ass out of myself (although, i guess i can't be 100% sure of that). time went by really fast too. like when people started to leave i was getting pissed at them for punking out early, and couldn't figure out why so few people wanted to go to the club afterwards with us. upon arriving at the club i realized it was almost 3 am and we were like the only people there. anyways, evan had decided to meet us at the club, and then got dropped off somewhere different than we were, so i had to go outside and try to figure out how to get him to where we were. then some chinese guy came up and started talking with me. he stood there with me for like 15 minutes having the stupidest conversation ever as my chinese isn't so great. i think mostly i just kept saying "my friend is coming" and "i'm drunk". then when evan's cab finally go there, he was like 'so is that your boyfriend?' and i was just like "....yes. yes he is. that's my boyfriend. right." but the guy still wanted to exchange numbers. then i remember thinking something weird about how i should put his name in my phone so that it would be displayed correctly as their last names go first. i'm pretty sure i just failed, but now i can't remember. anyways, hopefully yang wang (or wang yang?) doesn't turn into another creeper texting me "i love you" six months after the last time we've ever spoken haha. anyways, then everyone else were there with left and it was just evan, gwyn, and i. so after we finished our beer there, we came home and kept drinking and stayed up and watched the sunrise. i am fairly sure every sunrise i ever see in my life will be while drunk after an epic night out. i will always 'stay up' to see a sunrise, never 'get up'. because i'm just that classy.

then on saturday there was an all you can eat/drink pizza and beer thing. of course, we woke up saturday morning and someone mentioned sandwiches, so we decided to go get sandwiches for lunch at the same place the pizza thing was for dinner. we made the unfortunate mistake of taking the evil 103 bus and it took almost 2 hours to get there. then we ate our sandwiches and gwyn and i immediately came home to shower, had about an hour at home, and then turned around and went back. anyways, there was a really good crowd there again. i didn't really get drunk til after most of the people had left, but it was a great time nonetheless. we ended up going back to kofi's apartment, which is literally IN his school. and he has access to the roof. so we got to play on the roof and in a chinese classroom. which even in my impaired state and in the pitch black i could tell was like 80 times nicer than the classrooms at my school. 

anyways, i guess nothing too eventful happened, but it was just really nice to get to hang out with people i don't see as much. also, as much as i'm getting sad cause when the program ends most people are going back to the states, i'm also realizing a really good number of people will still be here. so now i'm getting excited about living in futian and getting to play with people during the week as well as on the weekends. 

i know, i know.

ok, so i haven't posted in a while. i know. things have just sort of been puttering on as usual here. and i started my new job and i feel like all i do now is sleep and work. which is sad, as even if you include my travel time, i'm now working like, 16 hours a week. but it splits my day up weird so i feel like i'm always napping. anyway, nothing too new there. my new job is pretty fun though. teaching adults is SO MUCH BETTER than teaching junior high kids. seriously, their english is total crap, but they TRY and when i ask them questions they ANSWER. they even make JOKES! it's amazing. oh, and then they buy me lunch. perfect. although, i've found that eating a meal with chinese people is just always, always awkward. they keep taking me to these weird places where it's like a mix of family style and individual dishes, and i never quite know what i'm supposed to be eating. the first time they took me out they got us all forks. they didn't say this was because they thought after 8 months in china i still couldn't use chopsticks, but everyone else in the restaurant had chopsticks and no one at my table was especially adept at fork usage. although, to be fair, i found it difficult to eat my dish with a fork as well (no, i haven't forgotten how to use a fork, however, the way they serve food here makes chopsticks much less awkward than a fork, esp as there is no knife). darren is the main boss, and i think ben is also my boss, and they speak almost no english. then there's lynn, and i don't really know what she does, but i think she's married to darren. she is taking expensive english classes and speaks the worst of everyone. then there's casper, and he's basically fluent, but still says weird chinglish shit to me all the time. and likes to disagree with me when i explain to him how to say something, usually using a movie like "bring it on" as evidence. in fact, i had a 20 minute conversation with him about bring it on. i tried to explain to him that only bring it on was popular in the states, and not the sequels. to be frank, he thinks bring it on 2, 3 and 4 are also quite excellent films. then the other day darren said "humped into me" instead of "bumped into me" while reading a dialogue. it was funny. anyways, i'm still looking forward to it being less teaching and more... whatever. i spent a couple of days last week polishing english, however, it was way harder than i anticipated. for example, "more jarless in capacity" is supposed to be "increased stability". and that was one of the sentences i had to fix that made enough sense to remember. but i get to go to egypt. i just keep telling myself that. egypt. 

annnyways, on the non-job front... last weekend jess, linda, audrey, megan and i went to hong kong and macau. hong kong is a mecca of delicious and comfort, but gd it's expensive. as is macau, or at least the venetian in macau is, as that's the only place we bothered to go in our 8 hours there. but dear god, that place, so wonderful. it's like everything you could ever need in one place. oh, and a casino. but seriously, an array of delicious food, bars, shopping, and a 5 star hotel. it would be almost a quarter of my (combined) salary to spend the night there, but dear god, so, so tempting. perhaps it's time to start loitering outside the bentley dealership.....

then this weekend we all went out to longgang. such a painful bus journey. but actually pretty nice once you get out there. anyways, saturday we had a cookout in the park and it was so, so fun. it was maybe the most gorgeous day we've had all year, and the park was really big and nice. all of the usual gang was there, and then a bunch of people we don't see as much. i bought a margarita that came in a souvenir glass complete with a neck strap when we were in hk, so i used that to drink my jack and coke. hands free! i got so drunk, the highlight of my night was rolling down a hill. then we went back to frank's apartment and my drunk ass joined in a poker game. the boys made it a for money game instead of a for drinks game like i suggested, so when i got first place i got 150 kuai! the whole day was so much fun and really reminded me of summer.

speaking of summer, still no news about my summer plans. but i'm asking casper soon. i keep forgetting, but i don't want to get totally fucked. i was talking to some people on saturday though, and they said you do have to leave the country, but you might not have to be in your home country. so i might just get shipped to hong kong for a couple weeks, which would at least be a (distant) second. missssssssss y'allllllllllllllll

good news/bad news

so, the good news is i got the job! yay! after years of applying for and not getting good jobs/internships that i was more than capable of doing, i finally made it. and it's way cooler than anything else i've applied for, so i'm feeling pretty vindicated at this moment. and even if the job ends up sucking, it will sound really impressive if i ever run into someone i dislike :) only 3 more months of teaching then i get to move to futian and travel the world! 

the bad news is my last remaining grandparent, my mom's dad, is dying. it shouldn't be too surprising, he's in his late 80's and has alzheimers but i've always thought of him as invincible. he was diagnosed with lung cancer a few days ago and was given months, maybe weeks, to live. it's hard to believe i'll never see him again, but i'm trying to look on the bright side that i won't have to remember him like this either. i really wish i could be there for my mom. this is another reason i'm so glad i got this job. my mother is probably more ecstatic over it than i am (she's already e-mailed everyone she's ever known in her life) and it's nice to know that even if i can't be there, i can give her something positive to focus on right now. 

anyways, no more sad stuff. i love and miss you all and promise to visit as soon as i can work it out. although, it might have to wait until after i go to EGYPT!

premature celebrating? maybe. but !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so i got an e-mail from the company i interviewed with yesterday. perhaps i am over analyzing it, but if i don't already have the job, i am at least a very strong contender. basically i am going to have a meeting (not an interview) with the general manager tomorrow to discuss a final working schedule and salary. a finalizing meeting sounds pretty fucking great to me. also, he told me yesterday to save my receipts from my travel to and fro and if i got hired they're reimburse me. he then mentioned in this e-mail that i should bring them with me this time and i'll be paid if i'm finally hired. again, this could all be super premature, but i feel like being optimistic right now. so i'm going to say that they will hire me on the spot as soon as we work out a schedule and agree on a salary. FUCK YOU TEACHING JUNIOR HIGH! I'M GOING TO EGYPT. (hopefully. again, really trying to keep myself in check on this one.) anyways, like i told jess, either as celebration or consolation, i plan on getting super shitty very, very soon.

st. paddy's day shenanigans and a heads up to my bitches in tejas

so, the job interview got moved from friday to monday thus will go last in this post. thank god it got moved to, cause i would have a been a zombie on friday. i was literally tired like all fucking day. anyways, i wasn't really planning on doing anything friday night to sort of rest up for saturday, but when invited out to dinner in the city, i went. i'm not really sure how i convinced myself that dinner with kate, frank, and evan wouldn't turn into late night drinking, but i did. anyways, we had dinner and drinks at this vietnamese place with awesome sandwiches and then went up to 3d bar where we used to drink after class. 4 towers of beer and a few shots of soco later we met some other foreigners. they teach at an international school, but unfortunately their fucking obnoxious boss was there. he was this short fat australian man who kept saying really vulgar inappropriate things to kate and i. at some point frank and i got in an argument with him about walking up to girls and saying 'wanna fuck?' is not an effective strategy and no one you would actually want to have sex with would ever say yes to that proposition (esp from him). anyways, at some point he said something having to do with me and kate and frank just lost it and started yelling at him and we had to leave cause kate and i were afraid frank was going to hurt him. can i just say, it is really awesome to see someone just completely call someone else out for being a huge dick. 

anyways, then saturday was the pubcrawl. we were a bit late, so they had ran out of hats. i was distraught, but luckily the hat was too small for most of the guys' heads so gavin gave me his. we also got a t-shirt, but i lost that before we even got on the bus. who cares though, cause i had my stupid cat-in-the-hat-esque hat. anyways, it was really, really fun just riding the bus and chatting with people and drinking free beer, and then the bars were fun too. at one point there were these really intense sparkler type fireworks passed out to all of us drunkards. you know, cause who doesn't celebrate st. patrick's day with fireworks? and who better to give them to than a bunch of foreigners who take "all you can drink" as a challenge? i also had a delicious double cheeseburger with my beer. as i smuggled beer off the bus and then drank a number of them in mcdonald's. don't worry, i shared. frank and i also got our portrait sketched, which is now taped to the wall of linda and kate's living room. my favorite is that i was holding a can of beer when we got sketched, and the guy drew these crazy looking bottles in both of our hands, even though frank didn't even have a beer. i then made it in and out of d club only consuming one tequila shot, and we all managed to get back on the bus to luohu at 1:30 am. for some reason in the taxi ride home i decided it was a good time to steal the headrest cover that says "saturday" in chinese and shove it in kofi's pocket. because it clearly fit better there than in my giant bag that previously had 7 beers in. i couldn't tell you why we stayed up so late after that, but i drunk facebooked taryn at 6:30 am. success. 

i was woken up at 1 on sunday to frank calling me asking me to help him collect evan. apparently they weren't as hungover as me to start with, so at lunch they helped welcome jess's cousin to china by introducing him to baijiu. and then drinking 3 bottles of it. when i arrived, evan was laying on the sidewalk. it took us an hour to get him him. it was a 5 minute walk. fail.

anyways, today i had my interview. i'm not sure how it went as the language barrier makes things awkward, but i really hope it went well, as the job sounds awesome. basically until july i would teach my colleagues survival english and then after that i would travel with them and speak for the company when they need an english speaker. apparently i would also summarize things, but i was unclear on what exactly those things would be. moral of the story, if i get this job i get to travel all over the world for about one week a month. in july they're going to egypt, then after that to nairobi, the philippines, northern europe, etc. when i wasn't traveling i would be working around 9 hours a week. anyways, at first i felt like the interview was going poorly because he was having me watch videos and summarize them (which seemed super easy) and then saying "that's all?" after i finished, even though he only asked for 4-5 sentences. then before the last video he was like "you know, you only need to give 4-5 sentences" so i was all kinds of fucking confused.  then he was like "if you get the job when can you work" and we worked out hours and pay. then he said "we can't hire you until you meet the general manager. are you free wednesday?" anyways, we'll see. fingers crossed. 

as a heads up to that, however, there is one downside. i probably wouldn't be able to return home this summer. i don't know that for sure, but i imagine they'd want me there in the weeks leading up to their first big trip. i'd also have to pay for my flight myself. anyways, that means it might be as late as christmas...or chinese new year the next time i get to come home. again, i don't even have a job offer yet, much less the job. but i am sort of realizing if i want to quit teaching and get a real job, it could very likely mean no river trips for me this summer. anyways, i love you all and will keep you updated!