Chicken heads and skype.

We'll start with yesterday....

I was woken up at 9 am by contruction workers who were instaling new heating pipes in my apartment. Terrific.....

Maggie came along and stayed in the begining to help translate information that the construction workers needed to give to me. Good thing she was there in the begining, too, becuase the construction workers were smoking in my apartment. I asked Maggie to inform them that smoking in my apartment was far from ok. She did, and they stopped smoking. After a while, Megan came over. She was comming over to use my internet to download movies to her computer for the movie class that she is teaching at Chengde Normal College.

Maggie eventually took off and went back to the medical college. She did call periodically to make sure that everything was ok with the construction workers. Once Maggie left, the construction workers kept trying to smoke in my apartment. I kept telling them in Chinese that, "Smoking is not ok". I think they thought I was scolding them about smoking in general, and just laughed. They continued smoking and throwing the butts on the floor. It was very aggervating. They also made a HUGE mess in my apartment that ended up taking me four hours to mop up. Oh well, I guess, I have heat for when it gets colder.

After the construction workers left, Megan and I went to Meghan's apartment to meet up with Chris and Travis. We decided that we should find a restaurant for dinner that was less akward than the hot pot restaurant from the previous night. We walked down restaurant street and found one. Restaurant street is a street near our apartment that has about 10 restaurants on it that all look decent. I can't pronounce the actual name of the street, so Restaurant Street works well. The place we chose to eat at started off very well....

We sat in a small private room that was along the side of the restaurant. We ordered the spicey chicken and peanut dish that we all liked. Also, we ordered some noodles and beer. We decided to try a soup like dish, too, that had chicken, cabbage and other vegetables in it. When we were about half way done with this soup dish, the head of the chicken (eyes and all) floated up to the top. It was, um, well, disturbing. I think that my sister Dori and her boyfriend Ben really would apprecaite this dish when they come to visit. (Sorry Dori, I had to throw that comment in there.)

After dinner, we decided to go back to the hotel where Chris, Meghan and Travis are staying and pick up a couple beers along the way. Meghan and I stopped at my apartment to get her computer while Meghan, Travis and Chris stopped at a convient store to pick up five cold beers. We met up at the hotel. Of course, however, half way to the hotel it started to pour. Megan and I continued to walk toward the hotel but figured that if we saw an empty cab along the way, we'd flag it down. We found one. We got in, and told the cab driver the name of the hotel. Not until half way there did I realize that the cab driver never started the meter. When this happens, that means that the cad driver is planning to over-charge us. Meghan and I have taken a cab to this hotel before, and the cab ride for the whole distance was 6 RMB (or $1 US). This time, the cab ride was approximatley half the distance, and the cab driver was trying to charge us 10 RMB. I at least got him to come down to 5. However, from now on, we will make sure that the cab driver starts the meter right away each time we get into a cab.

We all met in the lobby of the hotel, and tried to get onto the elevator which also had about 10 Chinese people on it. When we all got on, the elevator starting beeping and saying overloaded. Therefore, the five of us, plus a couple of the chinese people got off. However, the elevator kept saying it was overloaded. It was hilarious. Two hotel employees came over, had everyone get off the elevator, then get back on one by one until the elevator said overloaded again, then made that last person get off. We just stood outside the elevator (waiting for the next one) and was entertained by the entire scene. It was quite the production just to get the elevator to move. Oh well, something always entertaining here in China, I guess.

We stayed for about an hour at their hotel having a beer and chatting. We tossed around some teaching ideas and started to make some tenative travel plans. We have some school breaks in October then our holiday break in January. We are planning some trips to Mongolia, Handan, Beijing, the Shizz, and Thailand. I am extremely excited for Thailand and Mongolia.

Chris, Meghan and Travis had to go to their school today to go and help welcome the freshman. It sounded like they had to stand with the rest of the faculty and shake all the incomming freshmans hands as they arrived. Chris said that he feels like he is just being shown off to the incomming freshman...that they are only there to show these students that the school has foreign teachers. It will be interesting to see how that went for them!

Oh, and also, Maggie texted us saying that her friend (who we met the night we invited them to the KTV) wanted to take all five of us for Chinese BBQ. We are all meeting at 6 outside the Chengde Medical College affiliated hospital (about five minute walk from Meghan and my apartment) at 6. I am very curious to see what Chinese BBQ is like. We were told by Matt, the foreign teacher we met at the KTV, that we have to try it soon! I am not sure if it was a good or a bad thing the way he was sayin it, so we'll see how it goes.

Also, I got Skype hooked up in my apartment on the computer that is running. I am trying to set up times to talk to everyone, so please let me know when you are going to be on skype and we can try to set up times weekly, biweekly, whatever for us to chat and catch up.

Hope all is well over where you are....