One of my fellow English teachers and my best friend here in Tongzi, Sunny, told a few students it was my birthday last Thursday and in one of my classes the students actually sang Happy Birthday to me in English!!! It was awesome.
Then the students gave me an eagle statue with one of those snow globe things that has a Chinese saying inside, wishing for a successful future.Then after school Sunny gave me a gift, a root carving of 2 love birds that her father-in-law made, and took me to dinner, courtesy of the school :) The director and Head Master of the school came, along with 4 other English teachers from my grade. We ate 'hot pot', or basically a communal bowl of boiling soup, where you throw in a bunch of different fresh ingredients, like 10 different kinds of mushrooms and other Chinese veg that I have no idea what it is. I guess the Chinese tradition is to make a toast every time you take a drink so i'm glad my little thimble size shot glass was being filled with red wine and not the maotai, Chinese spirits. Bottoms up! they say!
After dinner Sunny took me to a 'disco', or what they call disco, for singing karaoke, dancing, and eating Birthday cake! A few more English teachers joined us there, and so I got to embarrass myself in front of everyone trying to sing 'My Heart will go on', the one English song all the Chinese like... Then they sang me Happy Birthday on the karaoke and I got to blow out these cute Chinese sized candles on my Birthday cake. Haha, after all the drinks at dinner the guys were pretty drunk, so it was really funny to see my fellow teachers this way. And Mr. Jiang, the one who hired me, was so drunk he got cake all over his face and was laughing just like a little kid :)
A few Chemistry teachers from my school just so happened to be there also so I got to meet them and a few really nice girls, who go to a university in Chongqing. The girls invited to show me around Chongqing on a free weekend, its only 100 km from Tongzi.It was a really great night but especially on this day I still miss my family and friends from back home...
1 comment:
I am glad that they knew it was your birthday and you were able to celebrate it with others .... it's always hard to be away for a birthday; but, it's even harder to be so far away ...... Happy Birthday and Love from everyone here at home ...... Mom :o)
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