Will's Birthday and Nanjing Friends

Nanjing is like my home away from home (from home). We had three weeks of VIA in-country cultural training and language classes there, and they city is really awesome. In my opinion, it's not as crowded as other cities in China and the people are nicer. Also, three VIA vols and all my friends from training are there. Anyway, so I went back two weeks ago for Will's birthday. It was SOOOOOOOO fun! :) The night before his birthday, we went to all-you-can-eat Japanese food and we combined to eat 21 dishes, I think. It was Benihana style, with the chef right in front of us cooking special for us! We had steak, unagi, shrimp, scallops, beef wrapped around mushrooms, more steak, lamb, and then of course sushi, sashimi, miso soup, curry stuff, hand rolls, tempura, the usual. I had six orders of sashimi, tuna and salmon. The night was amazing. Best meal I’ve ever had in China by FAR. Oh yeah, and it was all you can drink too! But we didn’t drink very much cuz we wanted to taste our food. Haha… I did try sake for the first time ever… I was disappointed. Haha.

This is Wang Dong and Weng Fei. They were two of the language partners that VIA hooked us up with back in August. What started out as set-up conversations quickly developed into some awesome friendships. There is a crew of like 6 guys who all study/live together at Nanjing Normal University and are going next year to the University of Maryland to study law (I might be off on this). They have all graduated from really good schools across China already. They’re SO SO SO SO awesome and teach us lots of cultural stuff. They hang out sometimes with Will when I’m not in Nanjing, but they always make it a point to get together when I’m in town. :) It’s SOOOO FUN! We go out to eat and just sit around and talk stories for hours. In Chinese! Before, I wasn’t following a lot of it, but now I can! They speak English really well too and can explain stuff to me if I don’t get it. :) In the picture above, we are going out shopping for food for Will’s, Wang Dong’s, Weng Fei’s, and Yun Feng’s (another language parter) birthday celebration. It was SOOOOOOOOOOO fun! Everyone made a dish – Wang Dong made these Coca-cola chicken wings that were ono, Yun Feng made this steamed rice with ono sauce and veggies inside thing, Will made CHEESEBURGERS (WOOOO!) on this mini bbq grill thing that they bought before (SOOOOOOOOO ONO! And we got to eat the leftovers the next day too, haha!). This picture is all of us cheers-ing (ganbei! 干杯!) and that's Will's supernice apartment.

SOOO, in China there is a tradition where you always cake the birthday boy/girl (as in, eat your cake, save your frosting, and then smack the birthday boy/girl in the face!). It was SO hilarious – Will wasn’t even suspecting it, and someone came up from behind him and got him SOOOOOOOO good. J And then everyone started caking everyone and I ran away to finish eating my cake (no like waste you know!? also so no one would cake me). I came back to take pictures and I thought it was over and I was safe and then I turned around, and Wang Dong was coming at me. hahaha… I turned my head and took the cake straight in my ear/hair. What a mess… haha… but then after we all washed off (just stuck my head under the shower) and it was fine. J Cleaning up the next day was not that fun, but Will did most of it, so yeah. Sucks that since the get-togethers are usually at his house (it’s a nice house), so he always has to clean. Oh well.

Then we all went to KTV (karaoke)!!! It was so much fun! J We sang songs in English and in Chinese and everyone had a good time. The cool thing about this birthday party was that there were an even number of Chinese people and foreigners, and so we did a lot of talking both in Chinese and English. I am really happy that we’ve made some Chinese friends and that we’re not just hanging out with Americans, cuz that would defeat some of the purpose of coming to China. We all struggle a lot with whether to hang out with Americans just because it’s easy and semi-fun or to stretch ourselves and maybe have to fight through awkwardness to hang out with Chinese people. I am really glad that Wang Dong and co. have turned out to be such good friends of ours. They are so much fun and this night of a million birthdays was amazing!