The weekend

As much as it pains me to say it, this past weekend was amazing. Even the slumber party on the train, albeit slightly traumatic in the moment, has left me with fond memories. Mostly of being the only girl with enough courage to participate in the booze fest that was happening in the next car. It's always hilarious to watch Bi Nike and Jin Biao, his roommate, and a bunch of other boys get absolutely plastered off baijiu (a rice liquor that is China's stomach-burning, single-distilled answer to vodka). I, personally, could not bring myself to have more than a few sips of the treacherous liquid.

So, we got to Wenzhou at 5.30am on Friday, hopped on a bus that drove us through town, past an airplane that now serves as a restaurant on the side of the road, to our ferry to Nanji Island. This was the first time that my roomie had a) seen a plane, and b) been on a boat. She had enough Dramamine to immunize all of China.

The beach was rather beautiful, shockingly...

Me and Alex (Liwei):

Beach:
The Chinese asshole who screamed and yelled at us for daring to put our stuff under the "canopies." It was probably 110 degrees that day. Heartless.
Lunch was really interesting. Lots and lots of fresh seafood - I indulged in freshly shucked oysters (and live to tell the tale). Here is Caili teaching us the snail sucking technique.
Here is Alex trying. And failing.

That night we headed back to Rui'an, another city, and stayed in a pretty comfy hotel - probably the only hotel in the city that caters to foreigners (who, btw, are not allowed to stay in anything below 3 stars). The Rui'an International Hotel of course had a revolving restaurant on the very top floor, obliging the Golden Rule of Chinese 4 star hotels, and yes, we ate there. Wasn't half bad. Our midterm "skits" were next... I'll spare you the details, but there were a lot of laughs, and I won the CET equivalent of an Oscar - a box of cookies, some of which were chocolate, all of which melted by the time I got back to Hangzhou. The night ended with a terrifying stint at a local disco/KTV (karaoke) club where some of our group seemed to get the impression that we were herded into a private room because they wouldn't serve foreigners at the bar. I am more inclined to believe that they just wanted to capitalize on this golden opportunity to rip us off. Which they nearly did, until I put my foot down (aka threw a fit) and we ended up having a better time drinking 40s of Tsingtao (and some shotgunning) on the sidewalk.

Saturday's creek swimming was awesome. We hiked up about a billion stairs to reach the highest (ok, the second highest) of the 9 pools, then gradually made our way down. Ok, we also took a break for lunch - see photos below of our lunch; "to go" has a pretty interesting interpretation in China) - and swam around in one of the lower pools. I was one with nature and - waaaait for it - kind of liked it. Except when the teeny tiny little fish started nibbling at my ankles. I did not like that.


Liwei and lunch:Us (Liwei (Alex), Tongtong (Antony), Baini (Jamie), Nike (Nick), and myself) at the beginning of the hike...
This was at the Pipa pool. Number 6, was it? That waterfall in the back was supposed to be a "massage" feature. We had a lot of fun saying, would you like to play with my pipa?
More Pipa...
Sports Illustrated photo shoot: Chinglish. The first line reads: "All the pools in this scenic spot have no bottoms with very cold water in it. Never enter them to swim." Oops.

Besides all of this outdoorsy stuff, the weekend was brimming with laughter, adventure, misadventure, mimi's (secrets), learning new Chinese slang, and butchering the language to make our own. Did you know that, in Chinese, to eat somebody's tofu means to flirt with them? Yeah, we got a HUUUUGE kick out of that one. Did you know that when you abbreviate Chinese words, like saying duibooch instead of duibuqi, you can speak Chinese without any local actually understanding you? Ni buzhid? Meiguansh.

So. Much. Fun.