Wining and dining and a lost(?) laowai

On Friday the four foreign teachers went out for dinner and a few games of pool, as we quite often do. We went to eat in one of the restaurants we like. As is the way, we don't know its proper Chinese name and so we call it 'The Picture Menu Restaurant' (I'm sure you can guess why...) Having the pictures means that instead of ordering the same dishes that we know how to order all the time, or even ordering blindly from a Chinese menu, we can actually try some new stuff that we like the look of.

We'd just placed our order and one of the teachers had gone to choose the beer, when a group of people came into the restaurant. All of a sudden we noticed that one of them was a foreigner (a 'laowai'). Rick's reaction was 'Look at that!' Not entirely polite, but understandable under the circumstances - there are seven or eight foreigners in the whole city and up to now we have met one Indian guy and there are of course us four foreign teachers. The other foreigners (we've been told) are here working for companies.

Anyway, it turns out that he's Brazilian and is here working for some company. We must invite him out for a drink or a meal some time. I guess it's pretty lonely being here by yourself... (Incidentally, he was as shocked as we were to see other foreigners!!)

Today we were meant to visit an organic pig farm, but instead we went to some government hotel in the middle of an artificial lake. I had a quick look at the room prices and it's not cheap. It was all a bit random, as life often is in these parts. We ended up eating our lunch in a big room which just had this one table in the middle. There were lots of government types and some people from Shanghai(?) There was also a presenter from the local TV station (I think!) We managed to escape the strong alcohol (more or less) and stuck to the beer, which was a good choice. The Chinese guy that had driven us there drank so much he was unable to drive us home! Fortunately, we got a lift with someone else instead.

Back to work again tomorrow. The weather suddenly got warmer last week, which is nice. Sadly, it got a lot warmer very quickly, leaving me no time to enjoy any in between warm-but-not-too-hot weather.

In other news: I'm still waiting for the first copy of my magazine subscription to arrive. I have visions of it sitting on a desk somewhere with someone wielding a black marker, striking out anything they don't like the look of. We'll see...