the shaky, shaky game!

So this week was awesome!  it was a short teaching week because of the previously mentioned holiday and started out with my friend Nellie's birthday dinner.  Super fun, met some of her friends who also live in Huzhou.  It was a grand mix of Chinese, Americans, Turks, Spanish, Australian and Canadian + delicious cake! pictured here:

I met more girls, Senat and Maria, this is really exciting for me because though i love hanging out with Gino and John, they are boys.  In case there was any confusion.  And they talk and joke like, well, 15-year old boys.  i find this funny most of the time but sometimes i need another feminine perspective to say "that's disgusting" so i know i'm not completely overreacting.

Anyway we had plans to all go to Shanghai for the weekend, but they fell through and instead we ended up partying it up in Huzhou.

Gino and i were invited to Penny's (our assistant and chinese teacher) cousin's birthday party Saturday night.  It was awkward because her whole extended family was there and only Penny speaks English to a certain extent.  We sat at the kids table and tried to tell her cousin, Niu, thanks for having us in a melange of Chinglish while he tried to tell us "nice to see you".  We were told not to bring a present and instead we were given gift boxes full of Chinese bakery deliciousness.  We also ate tons of seafood, including crab legs and a dish called Huzhou very valuable fish. Food was great, and this birthday meant an even larger cake but in the same style as the one pictured above, hen hao chi!

So, Penny has been asking us every weekend if we want to go to KTV with her and we finally said that we would do it after the dinner.  The condition for doing karaoke in China or anywhere for most people is to get loaded.  So we went to a grocery and got some alcohol and prepared to make fools of ourselves.  Little did we know that Penny is a KTV professional.  She has a really pretty singing voice but she only picked slow ballads in Chinese while we made a mockery of the whole thing picking songs from Ace of Base, Mariah Carey, Tears for Fears and we even found Bad Touch by the Bloodhound gang...ridiculous.  It was midnight and we were closing the place down yelling down the halls "I swear by the sun and the moon and the stars, I'll be there..." All-4-one.  i think Penny was thinking what have i done, i've created karaoke monsters!  Even though the boys protested at first it ended up being really fun + they give you tea, watermelon and popcorn with the price of your room!

Side note: every bar in China serves watermelon as a snack.  sometimes there's popcorn or sunflower seeds, but there's always, always watermelon and cherry tomatoes. Always.

Penny went home, maybe a little bewildered by the effect that the combination of whiskey and singing had on us.  John, Gino, Nellie and i then all went to a couple bars and i was introduced to the shaky, shaky game.  Another bar staple.  Through my very thorough chinese lessons i have learned how to count in Chinese.  this is very important for this game.  And by counting i don't mean just the words for the numbers but also how to count, meaning they use different hand signals.  i will demonstrate my proficiency in counting Chinese style with this video:

so basically you have dice in an upside-down cup and you shake them, hence shaky shaky.  you try to guess the total number of dice of a certain number, like four, sixes or five, threes.  whoever is wrong loses and has to drink.  Suffice it to say i kicked John's ass and it was all thanks to my new sister Cho cho.  Since we were four foreigners in a Chinese bar at 1am we drew a little crowd.  We met the owner and we were served copious amounts of watermelon.  There was good music and the place was pretty full, we sat at the bar and the bartender girls began joining in on our game speaking Chinese to us. Cho Cho began to help me as i had never played before and was losing early on.  The only things she could say in English were "very good!", numbers 1-10 for the shaky shaky game and when we won she would give me high-fives, hug me and call me "sister".  

Word of warning, the peace sign will be used abundantly in any and all photos of people in China, drunk or sober, doesn't matter. At 3:30am after spending 20 kuai a bottle on beer that costs 3 kuai in the grocery it was time to call it a night.  Luckily we were really close to the school and just walked home. night well spent in the Chinas...