Piiiiiizzzzzaaaaa!!!

Saturday Rebecca and I took a weekend trip to the city of Huizhou (Hway - Joe) to stay with Martin and his wife Amy. Huizhou is on the way to Shenzhen/Hong Kong and it took about 3-4 hours from bus stop to bus stop. When we arrived in Huizhou, we literally stopped and got off at a spot on the highway where Martin and his friend with a car waited to pick us up and drive us to Martin's apartment at the school. After a quick settle in to the apartment, we went for a walk around the high school campus where Martin and Amy teach. It was a very large school and to us it looked more like a college campus.

Later Martin and Amy fixed us a good lunch at their apartment, and then Rebecca, Martin and I took a city bus into the city where we walked around. We walked through a pedestrian shopping street free of traffic and also along a lake. At one point we entered a large mall and one of the first things I saw was a Papa John's pizza. Jackpot, I knew where I was going to have dinner! After roaming around the huge mall for a little bit, we went back to the Papa John's to have dinner. I ordered a 9" pepperoni pizza and a bottle of Heineken that came with a frosted glass. It was a very expensive meal by Chinese standards, but about normal for a comparable meal in the states. It was very delicious, made with real cheese and it was definitely authentic, as much as Papa John's pizza can be. It was the first time I've had pizza for about 2 months, since coming to China.



Today there was a guy outside of the school gates playing electric guitar. He was obviously pretty poor and was playing for money. Rebecca called me on my cell phone to let me know about the guy at the gate, so I went there, but decided to run back to the apartment to grab my camera and my guitar. I attempted to play along with him on my guitar, but it didn't work out too well since I think he was tuned a full step down from what mine was. He had a generic stratocaster hooked up to what looked like a homemade amplifier. I was surpised to see he was using a multi-effect pedal that was pretty much the same one I used to have for my bass guitar. I listened to him play and sing a few songs and then sorta asked him if I could play using body language. I played a little bit of "Red House" and part of a solo from "Suzie Q" then handed it back to him. He said "xie xie lao shi" (Thank you, teacher). I put a few yuan in his bag and left. I ended up getting a couple of short video clips of him playing with my digital camera, which has a video function. I figure now that I have an 8GB card I should take advantage of it and capture some video as well as audio. Maybe when I return I can edit it all into a short documentary of sorts. I'll definitely try to get some video of the crazy traffic over here.