Archive for November, 2008
Excursion to Hefei
We went to HeFei 合肥 to celebrate Bullet’s birthday. He just turned 21 and we went to his hometown so he could visit with his parents. The ride there took about an hour and ten minutes. Bullet, Brian, MiaoMiao, and myself sat in the back and talked. Along the way more passengers got on the bus. One woman who came and sat in front of us works at our school. Brian spent time practicing his chinese with her and getting direction from Miao. When we arrived we caught a ride from Miao’s father to the hotel. Brian and I grabbed a room, Bullet knew the manager on duty and was able to get us a discount. We always tell Bullet that he is the Mayor of HeFei. We decided to go walking down one of the roads that has alot of shops. We saw a temple which I snapped a shot of, and we stopped in a book store. Brian was looking for some books to read.
We weren’t there long and ended up going to a video arcade. Lots of games, brian and I played a shooter and racing games while Bullet and Miao disappeared into the back. Brian and I found them playing a crazy game of chance that lets you win coins to play with. At first I lost a lot but then the luck kicked in, it was kind of like pinball and if you got them into certain holes together you could win between 2 and 30 coins to play games with. We played some basketball games, I beat Bullet, Brian beat me, and then when we were leaving we saw a guy making over 700 points and beating the game, it was crazy.
We also had a nice dinner. Of course as is the custom we had plenty of beer and Chinese wine to celebrate. Dinner was nice, lots of things to eat. I was not terribly hungry because I had a large lunch so I ate what I could. Earlier in the day when we arrived we had dumplings and bread and I could not tell you that I had ever had a better dumpling.
After dinner we went to a local club, it was loud and busy. We used are awesome brute force(haha) and secured a private booth. Ordered up the beer and had some fun. Lots of dancing, we also saw a couple other foreigners there, Brian spoke with them and learned that they were electricians there doing some contracting work in the city. We hit up two more of the clubs and then headed back to the hotel. Bullet, Miao, me and some of Bullet’s friends went and had some BBQ then called it a night. All in all it was a good visit. The only downfall is that it had started raining the day before and rained the entire time we were there.
When we arrived back home in Liu’An 六安 I had to teach a couple classes which was fun. It had stopped raining but now the weather is starting to cool off. Nothing like back home in Minnesota, but cool enough to wear a jacket. Cheers folks!
