DaJiaoWan

This weekend was an interesting one. As some people noticed on my facebook status, I was supposed to come up with an "American dance" for my colleagues and I to dance to. Why? Because every year some of us in my division go on a mini weekend vacation and at that vacation we have playful performances and competitions with the finance department and with whomever else goes. Supposedly every year the finance department out-dos HR and Operations, so this year they wanted ME to come up with a performance, mainly a dance. I was told that I am "very special" here and that's why they would like ME to make something up. Weezy would have been great, but too bad... his genre isn't really "dance", so I came up with a dance for a Korean song I like which is popular in China called "Sorry, Sorry". Disappointingly, we did not get to perform because it was storming outside when we were all supposed to have a barbecue and dance. Instead some of us went to KTV! I like KTV more and more. You can drink, sing, play games, whatever! The rooms for karaoke were right next to the club, so of course we went there too and danced and played drinking games. I think I had a little TOO much fun.

Pirate Ship ;)

Anyway let me start at the beginning. On Saturday we left around 12PM and got to the "resort" at about 6PM! The bus ride was only supposed to be 3 hours. The air conditioner from the ceiling was dripping on one of my friends from work so I told myself not to sit in that spot on the bus ride home! When we got to DaJiaoWan (the name of the beach) we went swimming. The water was super salty but not too cold, nor crowded! What a surprise. Our hotel was nice, supposedly the nicest one in the area. Then we all went to dinner and ate seafood. Some things I tried were crab, shrimp, fish, and crab soup? After dinner we were supposed to have a barbecue outside and show off our

performances, but the rain killed our joy and so we decided on KTV. Almost everyone was tired, so only about 10 of us went to KTV and we had a blast. We drank, sang, danced, got to know each other better, etc etc.

The next day Jessica, my roommate in the hotel, woke me up before 8 and we got ready to go to breakfast. Breakfast was rice soup (nasty... I don't like this stuff and don't get how people do like it so much), vegetables and noodles, and maybe some seafood, I can't really recall, I had a big headache to say the least. A boat ride followed and that was fun. We were supposed to be fishing but instead we just threw a net in the water and caught some random sea animals... squid, octopi (I think the plural for octopus is octopus, but I like OCTOPI and since it's MY blog, I'm gonna use THIS word) crab, mini-crabs that people use as pets (oh yea, they're called HERMIT crabs), and random others. Later we went to the beach again and swam. The waves were HUGE on Sunday, much bigger than on Saturday, and I swam out really far... once again no girls crossed the first warning rope, so I was like, "I'm a badass, that's right". Oh yea and I was badass because of my bikini. No girls there wore one.

On the bus ride back, I sat on the second of the two buses and guess what? It was raining so heavily that the air conditioning started to drip on ME. I was the only one who sat under it, boy am I lucky or what?. So Jessica complained for me and since she is a semi-lawyer (she studied law or something like that in Hong Konf and does lawyer-sy stuff at MIDEA and she offers me advice about work) she did a good job. I told the tour guide if she didn't make it stop I would sit in her seat in the front, and she could sit under the drippage (also a new word for all ya'll out there). Of course the stupid cloth she placed over the air conditioner (which was more like a lace fabric) didn't hold the water and so I took her seat. She warned me that seat did not have insurance but who gives a shit? That nasty acid water probably could hurt my legs (point taken, I'm being dramatic here, but sometimes you need drama in China to get your way). I was thinking that it would be kind of funny and ironic if we got into an accident while I was in the front, uncomfortable (dry though) seat, and guess what? The bus started swerving because we got a flat tire... and this happened RIGHT after my thoughts... I think I'm magical or something. Nevertheless I quickly switched seats and we had to wait an hour before the tire got fixed and THEREFORE we were on the road for six hours. Nice end to a nice vacation. Oh right, and I should mention that I prefer not to take Chinese tours for a few reasons (my division rented out a tour guide and therefore we took a tourist agency to this place). One reason being that tour guides don't really care about you because they already have your money, so if you don't want to do something or you want to go somewhere else, it's really up to the driver to decide whether or not he will drive you there (this happened with us after fishing. We wanted to go swimming and the driver wouldn't take us at the time). Also, on the way home, we stopped at a stupid touristy site to buy authentic Guangdong food which was entirely overpriced. What a waste of 45 minutes that could have been spent driving. The best part is that these tourist agencies get money if they bring their tours through here!!!

I had dinner that night with my new friend Kobe who is making me speak Chinese, at least at restaurants, so this is good for my language practice!!! Soon I'll be able to say a FEW sentences! YES!

I am trying to improve my life style and prepare myself for the REAL, real world, by waking up a little earlier than normal to work out. Today was Day 1. I jogged by the river and did lunges and random things like that. I'm going to incorporate Tai Chi into this and maybe Kung Fu, and ta-da, I will be in shape in NO TIME. I realized that when you are displaced, somewhere that is not where you are used to, it is MUCH easier to change around your lifestyle and habits... because you are somewhere NEW and somewhere EXCITING. So I fool myself into thinking, you can ONLY do this in China (exercise, eat healthier) and I only have six more months, so I plan to lead a much healthier life from now on (sorry, this does not mean I'm stopping drinking) bahahahha.

Lastly, an update on the baby across from me. I wrote a nasty, NASTY letter in English and asked Kobe to translate it for me, making sure to preserve the bitch tone. I asked someone at work to make sure it still sounded mean and they said it did. Then Kobe advised me that I should just talk to the family first (and if that didn't work, we could give them the letter AND complain to the management) and he would obviously help me and translate for me. He told me that maybe the letter would lead to an embarrassing situation between me and the family, and they ARE my neighbors and this IS China... and so I took his advice (with much hesitation) and the mom and dad were totally cool, apologizing and saying they felt sorry for me, that their child wouldn't play in the hallway anymore in front of my place, and that they would try their best. The baby is so cute and chubby that I couldn't be angry, and I love old people, so I couldn't get mad at the grandma either (who actually is the loud one with her friends who are blabbing outside my door in the morning). So they were all smiling at me and being nice and supportive... The next day there was no noise, but then yesterday the grandma was being super loud with her friend, so I just asked them to be quiet. Surprisingly I didn't yell even though I was angry, because the grandma was smiling at me and looked so guilty, like a little kid who forgot that they were messing up! Soooooo as Kobe said, "You cannot punch someone smiling at you" and I couldn't yell at someone smiling at me! So, I'm going to try smiling more and maybe that will get me EVERYTHING I want (tee hee hee). Attitude is everything. (If you can't beat them, join them?)

Another famous Chinese quote: "There are no ugly women. There are only ladies who are lazy".

Tomorrow-- my first Chinese (Cantonese) wedding reception (this should be interesting although most people say to not get my hopes up, but I have!)