Tuesday, October 9, 2012

June 1; Happy Children's Day!

Day 117
For the Comparative Literature class that I'm taking, each group has the chance to present their cultural findings with the class after doing their cultural experience. This week, Tanjin's group was presenting. She went to watch Peking Opera with her group, oh joy. There was way too much Peking Opera stuff in that two hours. Although my eyes were hardly on the presentation, Tanjin presented like the bauss/baws/boss she is!
lunch - yumm!
Veggie Burger = 15 RMB ( ~$2.50 CND)

 After lunch, Cat and I journeyed to the 798 District (Chinese version on Kensington) to get key chains with the subway stop that we stayed near (Xi'erqi). When we got there, we found out they were sold out. Such a bummer! I think it's a good time to remind you that I live in the middle of nowhere. Someone buying a Xi'erqi station keychain is like someone buying a Bessarion (Toronto reference) station key chain. Really, who wants one? At least we got to check out the art zone again.
Oh yes, also today was Children's Day. Kids usually get special treatment from their family today and my students had a half day school. 

The family got together at the Canadian bar, The Box for dinner.
No one actually has a tattoo, it was just a fun sign they put up.
The service was amazing although wait time was a bit longer than other places... but with the bar dog (Hulio) and free movies made it totally worth it. I tried their poutine and it was actually satisfying.
Poutine = 35 RMB (~$5.50CND)

Earlier this week, TanG suggested we go to Destinations to celebrate children's day and that's exactly what we did.
Destination!
Photo Cred: Tanjin
party gang plus Zhang!
Photo Cred: Tanjin
Cover fee: 60 RMB
Comes with a free drink and their special for children's day was a badge with a red scarf.
I'm not gonna lie, I was really excited for the red scarf. We entered and saw a whole bunch of well dressed dudes and a bar with shelves full of stuffed animals. There were a lot of nice loungish areas, a decent sized dance floor, and tacky music but the vibe was fantastic.
Flaming Lamborghini 
drinking his Lamborghini
Once in a while, dancers would go on stage to their degrading thang. A really interesting experience.
 Oh, if you haven't guessed yet, Destination is a gay club.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

May 31; fighting off the end

Day 116
It's the last day of May and we're coming to an end.
Most of our extra curricular classes, like kung fu, calligraphy  and paper cutting had already ended. It was our last Mandarin class today and we ended with watching the movie Ip Man. The story takes place in China  during the Japanese invasion. The movie is actually based on a true story and the hero of the story is actually the mentor of Bruce Lee. So it's a bit of history, biography, and a lot of action.  It won some awards, so it must be good right?  I thought it was an alright movie, not exactly my cup of tea (i prefer rom-coms).
Jeeze, I can't believe it'll be June tomorrow. 

Friday, October 5, 2012

May 30; one direction is the wrong direction

Day 115
Uncle Heys is convinced that Tanjin and I love One Direction.
 Why? 
Because we're all singing that one song: What Makes You Beautiful. 
The truth is... 
it's a catchy song, not gonna lie, but love is not even an overstatement. It's just a false statement.
(also, it annoys people around us and sometimes that's what we do best)

May 29; dinner with Juno

Day 114
As a small token of my appreciation for all the hard work my girls did for my surprise party, I made them dinner. 
Photo Cred: Tanjin
and then we watched Juno (one of my all time favourite movies).
I love the ease of dorm life. 

May 28; Failure to Mail

Day 113
After 113 days, I was finally getting around to mailing my postcards. With everything written out nicely and addressed, all I was missing were the stamps which I had to buy at the post office. There's something called China Post and so we mistakenly thought that it was a post office. APPARENTLY, it was a bank. Then where the hell is the post office??? I was hoping my postcards would make it to Canada before I could.  Ugh, we gave up for the day and found a bakery to eat away at our feelings.

We continued to eat away at our feelings and then ended up having a movie night to help brighten the dampened day because China was frustrating us again. Tanjin's Choice:
I'm a sucker for chick flicks.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

May 27; post-birthday non-shenanigans

Day 112
My day began shortly after coming home from last night's event. I taught, showered, and caught up with the rest of the gang at Pyro's. While I was doing that, poor Tanjin was getting poked by thorns. One of her students decided it would be cool to throw his shoe into a bush full of roses. Really? A bush full of throny roses? Kids do the darnest things.

I went to Berney's for dinner (yay for home cooked food!) and he made one of my favouriteees.
seafood spaghetti already prepared =)
So the plan after peeling a basket full of mangoes, was to make cheesecake. We ended up making this instead:
mango cake/pudding. 
reason the cake was in a frying pan. 
So after an hour, the cake didn't exactly mold properly... but it tasted sooo much better than it looked. 
Fact: Mango flavoured anything can never taste bad.