Holla

July 13, GXUN, Weird BBQ place across the street

Typical Friday: class went good in the morning, I ate some nice lunch, and then an afternoon activity. That night, all the teachers (us, and all the Chinese teachers) went out for a big dinner at a local place on campus. Holy crap. So much amazing food. But that was just the begining. Then they brought out what has been dubbed "the party killer". It's some type of rice wine/liquor that all the Chinese teachers were getting krunk off of. We, being the good American Teachers, did not drink anything, but instead drank the orange drink, my personal favorite beverage so far. We had about 20 different people come to our table and raise a glass, but thing is when you cheers someone, you're suppose to drain your cup all the way. They have little shot glasses of the party killer, and we have full cups of orange. We drank sooooo much orange it wasn't even cool. We learned some cool Chinese drinking games and hung out with alot of the schools high rollers, so it was pretty awesome. Tired, full bellied, and having to pee, we headed back to our rooms.

Oh wait. There's more. As soon as we get back and visit the squatty (the accurately named waste water reciprocals) we were asked out to a "secret place" with some of our students. So we said what the heck, and walked across the street to one of my now favorite parts of China. The Bar-B-Q. Now, you're thinking BBQ like chicken, ribs, burgers, all covered in some brown sugar and ketchup concoction. Oh no my friends, this was real BBQ. The BBQ of gods and men. Every kind of meat imagineable, flame grilled, with flame grilled veggies. And incase you were wondering, yes, everything was on a stick. The fish was amazing, and hands down, the best tofu I have ever had in my life. This tofu was meater and better than most steaks I've had. Now let me describe the layout of this place: 4 walls enclosing about 2 acres of land. No ceiling. Along the inside of the walls were giant grills and coolers, and the entire interior of the place was plastic chairs and tables. This place could easily seat 500 people without thinking twice. This place was also like a big bar, and had a bunch of new drinking games. If you've seen Pirates 2, that dice game they played is a huge drinking game in China. But being the good American Teachers that we are, we stuck to water. So here we are at this amazing place with all this amazing food infront of us, but we had just eaten, so we couldn't fully appreciate it. Shame. We got back and went to bed. Friday night - Check.

July 14, GXUN, Asian Expo Center, Some old park, some museum, Downtown Nanning
Saturday morning. Sleep in time. Not. We had to be on a bus by 7:30. When I say we, I mean the whole camp, so we had 5 full charter buses to take us around town. We went to this big Asian Expo Center. It was pretty cool looking. We were only there for about 30 minutes and it seemed like every student wanted to take there picture with me. It was cool. We rolled out from there and headed to this really awesome park. It was on the top of this mountain and there was this cool tower and zip line and all this different crazy stuff. I'll try to figure out the name of it and let you know. After chilling there for a couple hours we went to a nice museum in Nanning. Saw all these old Chinese things, and they even had a couple old chinese temples that we were able to walk through. After a bit in there we loaded up and came home.
But that wasn't the end of the day. Me, another teacher, and about 4 guy students caught a bus and went to the City Center. Best dude's night ever. Nanning is alot like a normal city, but a little bit more spread out, but at the same time more people. We walked around for a while, had some really good street vendor food, and had a great time with our students. We came back exhausted, and finally went to bed.

July 15, GXUN, City Center
For the first time since I left Salisbury, I've been able to sleep in. It was marvelous. Once the team woke up, we had a team meeting and then went our seperate ways. I hung out with a bunch of students and one other teacher. We went to McDonald's, Wal-mart, and just strolled through the city. It was weird. I was around things so familiar and at the same time, nothing was familiar. We get back to campus and as soon as we do, 2 girl teachers ask me to go to city center with them, so I dropped off my treasures from wal-mart, turned around, and headed back to city center with about 8 students, and a total of 4 teachers. Long story short, we went to Wal-Mart, girls took forever, and we got back late past curfew. I was not happy, but hey, I'll live. It was my choice to go. As soon as we got back, we went to bed. Woot.

July 16, GXUN
Woke up, got ready, did a little lesson planning, taught my class English, and then had lunch. Nothing eventful happened. Then around 2:45 we had our afternoon activity which was superhero themed. After that, had dinner with a bunch of students, came back, and we had a culture night. Superheros. Our goal was to watch the incredibles, so we broke the students into 3 groups, and used 3 computer labs. Needless to say, my computer lab had issues. We put the DVD in, and it started showing Pirates 2. In Chinese. It was wierd. After an hour and half of tinkering, we fixed it and began to watch the movie. We only got half way through before having to go to bed, but we should be able to finish it tonight.

July 17, GXUN
Woke up, got ready, did a little lesson planning, and came to the computer room to write some e-mails. Today should be a good day. I have alot I can teach today and the afternoon activity will be over by 4:15, so I should have some nice, needed down time tonight. Oh wait, I have to plan for the Olympics tomorrow, and the Culture Night on Thursday. So we'll see. I'm mentally exhausted, but I'm doing alright. I love it here, but it will be nice to come home. Hope all is well back in the states.