Thoughts, In No Particular Order

It's been quite a strange day. It's Teachers' Day in China today, and we had to put up an item for it. Being People of Very Little Talent we decided on a gimmick i.e. a midget show. It worked well as people were pretty enthusiastic, they said they'd only ever seen this kind of thing on television.

After that we went for a dinner with the usual raw soya sauce prawns, eel, fried frog's legs and pig's trotters and sea slugs and all sorts of unidentifiable (but delicious to a certain extent) things.

Then we came back and Rhys and Jeni wanted to go to a club because it was Friday night. So I went to a Chinese club for the first (and probably the last!) time in my life. It was a strange experience, but I think the most overwhelming feeling I had was one of sadness. It was sad seeing the girl in the next booth hanging around with a bunch of half-naked guys and it was sad seeing the slightly off-his-rocker guy smoking a receipt (!) pole-dancing in front of the room. I just felt that people there could have had different lives had the circumstances been different. I don't really know how to express what I felt, but it wasn't positive :o(

We had a really good chat after that and stayed out til about 1, and I found out more about Wales and about Chinese people too, from perhaps a more unbiased perspective.

And I was not surprised to discover that Julia was a Christian. So, *hoping hard*, I might actually get to go to a Chinese church this Sunday, if the activities the school's planned for us don't clash with the morning service. I really hope not, because I've been hoping to go to a church since I got here.

For all that I think Mr Zhu is really funny and lively and moley (he has a humongous mole just above his chin) I was devastated when he forgot my name when he toasted me today. Well!!!!