Banquet, Football, and I love Slingbox!

Hey Everyone! It's 3:45pm on Monday afternoon and I just finished my one class for the day. So much has happened since my last post, but I'm not going to go to into detail on that. A quick run through includes: Internet broken, good week of classes (mostly), Beach party where a ton of people stayed at our place, I never went to bed the night of the beach party because people kept calling me, Because I didn't have internet, I stayed awake and went to my office to watch the first Wisconsin game, and other than that, thats about all since last time. Of course that is not true, but Im just going to talk about recent events. First of all, the slingbox works GREAT (and is one of the focal points of this post).

Anyway, last Wednesday was National Teacher's Day in China, so our school decided on Friday night to hold a banquet for all the teachers to show their appreciation for all of their hard work (in the first 2 weeks of teaching). If you don't know anything about Chinese banquets, here is a quick summary of what they are like. Sit down, introduce to "big wigs" who are in attendance, have millions of dishes sitting on a lazy susan, and spend the rest of the night walking around toasting with everyone and drinking a ridiculous amount of wine and baijiu (look it up on wikipedia). That really is about it, but ours included something special: a performance was to follow the banquet. One day before the banquet, we were not only notified that there was a banquet to attend, but we were also notified that we had to do a performance during the party portion of the banquet. Zoie and I prepared the Cha Cha song (because it has the dance moves in the song and it would be fun to teach the teachers). That being said, we showed up at the restaurant ready to eat a meager amount of disgusting food, and drink who knows how much disgusting alcohol. As time passed, the Chinese people at our table played their favorite game "Get the Foreigner Drunk." Although they lost, and got a LOT more drunk than I did, they did succeed in making me drink that disgusting baijiu and several glasses of terrible China wine. It came time for the performance part of the show and I could see that Zoie was not too excited to do the Cha Cha dance in front of 100 teachers. Needless to say I wasn't too excited either. With that being said, I decided to take one for the team (because everyone knows I love attention and I love when Chinese people cheer for me). I decided that instead of doing our stupid Cha Cha slide, I would stand up in front of all of my fellow colleagues and sing a song in Chinese. It was a hit, and I know what youre thinking: I really hope I got that on tape! Luckily, Zoie did, and after you finish reading the blog post, please watch....Enjoy!

The next day, Zoie and I met a group of about 8 other people in the city for an all you can eat and drink Japanese tepanyaki dinner. It was wonderful. All the free sushi and hibachi beef and beer and saki and everything you can imagine that can be cooked on a stove and topped with garlic deliciousness was devoured by me that night (and 9 other American gluttons). I had to cut the night short though, because I had a date with my Slingbox and computer that night to watch college football until I fell asleep. About an hour and a half after arriving home, the Wisconsin game started. It was a tough win that Wisconsin finally pulled out around 3:45am here. Although Zoie was sleeping the whole time, I continued to yell and scream at the screen, and pace back and forth during commercials and timeouts. I even think Zoie sleepwalked in here to ask me what happened during the game when I yelled....but she doesn't remember. As my game fantastically ended in the 2nd overtime, I debated watching the Michigan-ND game which was being DVR'ed from the Slingbox. I decided to get some sleep so that Zoie and I could watch it together in the morning. I got about 6 hours of sleep, and woke up to run the my computer to watch the 2nd half of the USC-OSU game. I know I'm crazy, but college football is one of my favorite things in the world, and watching it makes me feel like I'm home! Zoie woke up quite late Sunday morning, but that didn't keep us from watching the Michigan game. I was so proud of her because I never expected her to want to watch the game in its entirety. She even got mad when I would accidentally fast fwd through a play or 2. Even though I had already seen the score, I watched the game with her anyway. It was an extremely exciting game to watch. After watching the game, we decided to head to a grocery store about 15 minutes away. We were so excited to discover that this store sold BONELESS CHICKEN and it was EDIBLE. It also has a great produce section, and a good frozen section. Finally, we can make normal dinners here! Last night we made a chicken and vegetable stir fry and it was delicious. Today I made a dumpling and Hot and Sour soup for lunch and that was delicious as well. We can't wait to make more exciting dishes. We are getting sick of the fried rice and noodle dishes we get everyday from the cheap shop nearby. After dinner last night, we hung around the apartment for a little while, watched some of "How I Met your Mother" (we have now watched all of Seasons 1-3 which is over 60 episodes) until we were getting tired. Because my sleep schedule was off, I was still wide awake. And lucky me.... the Red Sox game started at midnight here, and the Cowboys season opener started at 1am. Even though I had to wake up early, I stayed up to watch the Red Sox win game 1 of the Double header, and the Cowboys begin to dominate the Buccaneers in their season opener....Before I continue, let me recap this weekend in sports: Red Sox, 5 wins in a row! Wisconsin, double overtime victory against a good team to stay 2-0! Michigan, Big win over ND! Cowboys, Big win to start the season. This is about the happiest I can get with it comes to sports, but believe me, you will see all of these teams lose on the same day sometime, and I guarantee I will not be very happy.

This morning, Zoie and I woke up early to head over to the Kindergarten to discuss our schedule for the rest of the semester. We are both working for an hour on Wednesdays and Thursdays to make a little extra cash. Although the amount we are making is not very good, it should be a very fun experience. The kids are extremely cute, and an extra tepanyaki meal once a week cant hurt either! But I'm doing it for the kids...I promise! After the Kindergarten, Zoie and I came home to lesson plan for the rest of the week; it is very nice to only have to plan one lesson per week. It makes our easy job that much easier. We then had lunch (see above) and went to class. Zoie is on her way home from class now. I just walked back a little while ago in the POURING rain. So that brings me to now. We have plans to meet a friend about 15 min away for a surprise party, and then I want to come home and watch the new Entourage episode. That is my plan for the evening. As for the rest of the week? Chinese class starts Wednesday, as does the Kindergarten teaching. Should be a pretty decent week. I am hoping to go to HK this weekend for Rosh Hashanah, and attend a service there. Haven't figured out all the logistics yet. Anyway, my fingers are starting to hurt so I am gonna head out. I hope you all enjoyed this blog entry, and enjoy the video at the end. If you are reading this, then COMMENT. I love to hear from you. Hope all is well and talk to you soon! Miss you all!

Daniel