As for my normal, human-powered bike, I've taken a couple of nice rides around town and a short ways out into the country side the past couple of days, seeing lots of cool sights and scenery. The weather here has been absolutely gorgeous the past few weeks, so what better way to enjoy it than on a bicycle? As I've mentioned before, my bike here is heavy and slow, but still a joy to ride around - and I just keep in mind that it's good training for the riding I'll be doing when I get back, and that riding this old clunker now will make my bikes back home seem really awesome when I return. I plan on leaving it here in the apartment for the next group of interns to use, but I want to remove the sweet bell and take it home.
Yesterday Rebecca and I decided to head down to one of the parked-boat restaurants to get some good duck meat. While we were eating a man from one of the adjacent tables sat down at ours to talk to us and ask us a few questions, so we talked to him what we could with the little Chinese we knew. He gave me an expensive pack of cigarettes, and then told us that he would pay for our meal. Sweet! I should have ordered a beer if I would have known that would happen. I'll probably save the cigarettes for a gift back home or something.
Tonight Rebecca and I went out to dinner on another parked-boat restaurant with the headmaster of our high school, Mr. Chow, along with the English teach Lily who assists us, her husband Tom (who drove us to and from), the headmaster's wife (an English teacher at the school) and son, and some others from the school. The headmaster's son was about our age and he spoke English very well, so Rebecca and I spoke to him a lot during the meal. He wanted us to come visit him in Guangzhou, so we may take him up on the offer and try to go there our last weekend or something. He was very interested in and knew a lot about American culture, so we talked about a few things like music, movies, and how I really got into the show Prison Break since coming to China.
At the dinner tonight the headmaster brought a bottle of baijiu (bye ji-oh) and gave everyone a little bit. Baijiu is a very strong, clear grain alcohol. I love beer but I am not so much a fan of hard alcohol, but at least they didn't drink and toast as hard as the last time I had the baijiu with the other headmaster from the rural middle school. This time we could sip on it as little as we wanted after each toast, and not have to slam a shot. We had some interesting food for dinner, whole shrimp, some raw fish that wasn't bad and didn't taste raw, some little fried whole fish that weren't too bad either. I mostly stuck to the normal noodles for most of it - it was a good meal but not something I would want to have everyday.
Afterwards Rebecca and I walked downtown for some ice cream and then to the riverside area where they have dancing and carnival activities every night. I decided to try out this big inflatable cylynder that you can crawl into that was set in a shallow pool of water. I had some fun running, flipping, spinning around in it, though it wasn't the best idea on a full stomach. It was a ton of fun and I plan to do it at least one more time before leaving.
So we're set to go to Hong Kong this Thursday. We'll be leaving our city on a bus that leaves at 8 am and should arrive in Hong Kong sometime in the early afternoon. We'll be spending 3 nights in Hong Kong in our free hotel near the airport(thank you Rebecca's Mom!!!) and return to Wuhua (Shuizhai) Sunday. Our main purpose of the trip is to get our business visas renewed. Our visas are only valid for 90 days before a renewal, and we are in China for 100 days, so we have to exit the country to renew our visa and re-enter it, thus the trip to Hong Kong. We also plan to take a day to visit Macau, which is an old Portuguese colony and a short boat ride from Hong Kong. We plan on getting Japanese food, Pizza, and Portugese Food mainly, and whatever cool, good cuisine we come across in Hong Kong. And hopefully not Swine Flu...
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