Expect Anything to Happen While in China

Normally, each Aston English school will host a trip for all its teachers, CT's (Chinese Teachers) and FT's (Foreign Teachers); usually this trip is hiking up a mountain together, but my school wanted to be different so we hosted the 1st Annual Autumn Sports Day.  I was really excited for this get together because I remember when I first came to China and met everyone for the first time, I had been so nervous! Now, though, I knew all the CT's and wanted an opportunity to mix with them outside of school.  

China, in general, is usually very unorganized, so never expect anything to go smoothly and that goes for our sports day.  We all arrived thinking we would just play whatever games we wanted, but no we soon were divided into teams using colors and letters and numbers (how did this work? it really didn't there were teams of eight and teams of five and even a team of two).  I was the Blue team/H team with some of my fellow CT's and a guy who works in another office for Aston.We all thought we were going to play badminton first, but they changed their minds and shuffled us to the bowling lanes where we waited to get our clown shoes (luckily they had my size I'm a 43 in China).  

Once the game began I realized that most of the Chinese people here didn't know how to play, most ran so fast they fell onto their bums.  I began showing them how to bowl correctly and after a few tries my team was decent.  I hadn't bowled in about 10 years maybe more, but I remembered the gist of it.  I was pretty good, I scored an 86 overall, which was the highest score on my team.  

After bowling we moved on to playing badminton, which I had never played, but soon I too got the hang of it.  We were playing hard trying to win against other teams, when they announced this was just practice.  After I heard that I took a break and played some ping pong with a fellow FT, which I was horrible at because I always hit the ball to hard.  

Once practice was over they lined us up and had us do a relay race where we would get a balloon from one end then once at the finish line blow it up then pop them when everyone was finished running, we got 2nd place in that race.

Finally, the badminton competition! We picked two of our best players, which of course wasn't me, to go into the championship round.  We almost lost the last round, but we pulled through and managed to steal 1st place.  We were awarded with gold medals and plaques, which was totally awesome.  The next day I was so tired and sore I could barely move.

Yesterday, all the FT's were invited to go to a new restaurant opening downtown and since the person who owns Aston is the owner of the new restaurant some of us were expected to make an appearance.  The new restaurant was very big and the ceremony was super nice.  Many government officials came to bless the new restaurant and they even brought very extravagant gifts, like the jade dragon in the picture.  I was completely undressed, as none of us knew it was going to be such a big deal, so I looked like I was 6.  They even had a ribbon cutting and two rounds of fireworks.

It took us 2 hours to get food, because the restaurant was so busy and the owners wanted to stare at us.  We couldn't understand a lot of the things that were being said around the table, but most times someone would translate for us.  The restaurant serves hot pot, which I'm not very keen on because it never settles right in my stomach, but I ate it anyway.  Near the end of the meal we were given VIP discount cards for whenever we decide to return.  It was a cool day, but one where most of us nearly starved.