Trivia in China

On Saturday night I was invited by some of my schoolmates - Matt, Joseph and Greg - to attend an evening of trivia at the only expat restaurant in Shijiazhuang - Christ's Church. Owned by a Belgium guy, this place apparently, only make money on Saturday nights when the 30 or so foreigners in town gather for some mindless fun. Besides me and my fellow Chinese language learners, there are a gaggle of English teachers in town. None of them speak any Chinese. Yours truly speaks more Chinese than they do, and I've only been here for 2 months.

At any rate, the game got underway at about 9:00pm. The first question - Name 5 Bond films staring Roger Moore. Where was Mel when I needed her most!

We didn't win - probably got 5th place out of 5 teams. But we had fun.

Our first field trip

On Friday, April 6 my language school went on a short field trip. We went to the temple I had already visited with my family, out to see the pear blossoms, and to pick strawberries. The only exciting thing that happened was that our bus broke down and to compensate for the hour we had to wait, the tour guide bought us all ice cream.

Me and Zhou Zhou - my Chinese sister amongst the pear blossoms

Me crawling through the small door into the strawberry greenhouse.

My schoolmates, Matt and Greg (wo de tongxue) picking away!

My Chinese Family

Here they are!

My Birthday - Shijiazhuang Style

I celebrated my 26th birthday in simple style on Saturday, March 31, 2007. After a day of studying, my Chinese host family took me to a nice restaurant where I got my very favorite dish - kung pao chicken. Er-ren (the 3 yr old) behaved most of the time. There was a period where he kept poking me in the back, saying "ding dong. ding dong;" to which I replied, "wo bu shi men" (translation - I am not a door).



Here I am at their home cutting my birthday cake. It was quite tasty!