And now, for a special video blog.

It's been pretty busy over here. As I mentioned last time, summer courses started, which means I'm working 6 days a week. When I have any free time, I pretty much want to do nothing except lay around or drink. Consequently both of those have been happening a lot lately, but that's not to say I haven't been doing anything.

I forgot to post a video I took last time, when we went to Shanghai. I don't really know what else to say except this was an advert in the back of a taxi cab for my school. It also is pretty much a clear rip off of Super Mario Brothers, so I thought that was cool. Sorry for the shaky cam, the taxi was not cooperating. Also listen for the YOLO shout out.

It was also the dragon boat festival a few weeks ago. I don't really know what the dragon boat festival entails. Apparently there are dragons. And boats. And maybe dragons that look like boats, or boats that look like dragons. I don't really know. But what I do know is that the local lake around here decided to pull a pretty swanky stunt where they shoot a ton of water in the air, and then project flowers onto it. "That sounds cool Weg, do you have a picture?". NOPE. I have a video.

With my one day off this week, I decided to go into Hangzhou. What I thought would happen is that I would spend a quiet day by my lonesome. I got up early, and biked there - which by itself is no short feat. It's maybe, 15 miles or so? Well apparently told someone I had this idea before hand, and I got a call from two separate people about when we're meeting up. The conversations pretty much went like:

"Hey where are you?"
"Oh I'm in Hangzhou for the day. I'll see you tomorrow."
"I know you're in Hangzhou, where do you want to meet up?"
"Wai... What? How do you know where I am? Get out of my head!"









So, right. My day was spent drinking tea with the two new teachers, Sean and Carrie. I mean, I'm not complaining. I still got a few cool photos, and Sean was violated by a snail. I flashed the traditional snail gang symbol, and he was kind enough to spare me.

I also tried to go to this discount clothing warehouse. Key word "tried". I asked a bunch of cabs to go there, and every one refused. I figured "Okay, my Chinese sucks. Maybe they think I'm asking them to go to Beijing or something". So I brought it up on my phone and showed them the symbols. I finally got one guy on a tuk tuk (those rikshaw like things) who agreed to take me. I asked how much. He said 100 RMB and it would take an hour and a half. Apparently this place is REALLY damn far out. Honestly it didn't look so bad on the map, next time I'll bike there.


Someone else mentioned how they don't see enough photos of what I do. I mean, it doesn't come up much in class that I can say "Let me get a picture of everyone to show to my friends in America". Anyway we had an activity recently where we needed to get photos of everyone being happy...

Sad...

Angry...

And this one. Well, this is just everyone trying to jump at the same time.

Also with my really young ones, we're learning about food. We usually have a song at the beginning and end of class. I like to mix it up though, since they've heard the "default" one a billion times. For food, I could think of no better closing song to class than this:

<tap tap> Is this thing on?

At work we're in full swing for summer courses. That means the kids work harder to cram in all their homework in 6 weeks, and we have to work harder to keep up with them. So during that time, I only get 1 day off a week. Yay.

This is what two foreigners outside a police station look like

It's actually not so bad. The week before two of the guys and I decided to pop on over to Shanghai to check it out. What was unknown to us at the time is that I was travelling with one of them "illegals" taking all our jobs. After checking into the hostel, we get a call from the front desk asking for one of our companions. They inform him his visa expired a few days ago.

"Ah well, sorry about that."

"No problem. We've informed the police."

WHAT?! China, what is with your hotels? The last one I stayed at complained that Yllen had entered the country from Hong Kong. Now for this one, they call the cops for a few day old visa? I'm thinking you don't have a department of immigration, and just wait for someone to get a room for the night. BAM! That's when they get ya.

Arrr, matey!

So we go down to the police station to pretty much stand around and look guilty. It turns out the punishment was nothing more than a slap on the wrist and a "You shouldn't have let it expire." Whoah! For real? Yeah, that was my mistake. I thought I wanted it to expire. Xie xie."

Most of the Shanghai stuff is things I've spoken about before. The Bund, some shopping, whatnot. We did manage to stumble on this bar, and it turns out to be the Captain Bar Aaron and Lindsay wanted to go to. Honestly, we weren't even looking for it. What are the odds?

Other highlights: We ate at a place called the Yummy House, which was pretty yummy. Next door was a tea shop authorized by the HanLin Tea Room. Yeah, so you know that place is legit. That night we went to a club where a black dude was trying REALLY hard to reinforce every negative stereotype about him. And well, that's all I'll say about that publicly.



Even the return trip was unfortunately a bit of an ordeal. We missed our train because we were drinking (oops), so we had to catch a later one. Upon getting to Hangzhou, we start looking for a cab back to Xiaoshan. We find one heading our way, but it was 10 RMB a person.

Immediately I am skeptical. I know a taxi from the train station to my door is about 45 RMB. Why is this 10? Because it's a van packed to the brim with Chinese families. So we're going back to Xiaoshan, this time with 14 people and their luggage in a minivan. Why? Because China. What's that you say, random Engrish shirt girl?

I agree, you should sell all your clothes and keep your thoughts. Right now I'm thinking about eating some ice cream. Do you think I should go for "Rub the almond of the card" or the "Turkish fibert"?