Season's greetings to all!
What a great holiday season it's been this year! I must say that I hope everyone had a truly phenomenal time no matter what holiday you were celebrating or how you celebrated it. I always consider it to be Christmas time myself as I have always celebrated Christmas but I know that many people do different things so I wish to express my well wishes to you!
This holiday season for me was quite special because not only did I deviate from my normal holiday schedule, I celebrated this year in a completely different country with completely different customs and people. It was definitely an educational experience and it will be one to remember. Another great part about this holiday season was that I got to lay eyes on many of my family members that I haven't seen in eight months. I know that I have communicated with many of you via email, facebook and other messaging systems, but it's nice to have a face to oggle as I hold a conversation in real time via skype.
Let's see here, I think I'll break this down into a couple of sections including one about Christmas and one about New Years since they were both completely separate events for me. I also had a job interview last week which I'm still waiting to hear back from and I also managed to get out of town for three days or so to see the lady friend in her home town and escape the busy life of Shanghai for a few days. I also received some great news from the visa office as well, so that's not a problem anymore. So as they say in the biz, “let's get this show on the road!”
Well as many of you know, I was supposed to be heading home for Christmas to surprise most of the family which would have been a blast! However, I got caught up with some visa issues and alas, I had to stay in China. At first I was pretty bummed out because I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to be doing. I hadn't made any plans considering I thought I was headed back state-side. When my friends found out about my situation, they were quite kind and went ahead and gave me an invite to their planned festivity which was a huge luncheon planned with about 40 expats out here in Shanghai.
It had been awhile since I have been around 40 expats at the same time so it was to be honest a bit overwhelming for me but then I realized that they could all speak English and so I was in the zone making conversation with anyone willing to talk to the only American as well as one of the few who wasn't a student in the program that my roommate Giuliano is in. I made friends pretty quick and when we all sat down to eat, we were placed at three separate huge tables and the chatter picked up again about classes, holidays, traditions from different countries (I think that there were about eight to ten nations represented) and just some general banter. When it came time for people to ask about me, I was more than happy to actually talk to other people my age and talk about where I'm at in life. I was surrounded by good company no doubts about it.
When it came time for the meal, we all paid a flat fee and they gave us a BUNCH of food to eat of which I wish I had taken pictures but unfortunately I did not. We were at an Italian restaurant and they started off with some cold cuts and bread along with some shrimp salad which was tasty. Then they brought out the big guns in the form of a plate of fish pasta, spinach ravioli and of course some lasagna! It was all really tasty and I was excited because I haven't eaten Italian food like that in a long, long time. As people were finishing up, the manager came out with serving plates with each of the dishes on it to see if anyone wanted another helping of the pasta. I was foolish enough to ask for another serving of the lasagna not knowing that I was leading myself toward a path of destruction.
We were all lounging about drinking some glasses of wine and chatting for awhile after we ate and everyone was having a good time. Some people brought out some gifts that they had bought for friends and so we all exchanged gifts with our friends which was super nice. I was given a nice old school gangster-style fedora by my roommate Giuliano and friend Alessia which also came with a nice new belt that I really needed. In return I gave them each a few cups with dice so that my addiction for the game would be spread throughout my known associates mwahahahaha. As we all sat and digested and took picture after picture, the waiting staff again burst into action and brought out our third course. I had known before hand that we were going to have several courses but I didn't know the details and I should have read into them a bit more clearly because we were faced with yet another monstruous portion of food.
In Italy as I found out, during the Christmas celebrations, it's pretty much an all-you-can-eat buffet style holiday which will make the weak strong and the strong sleepy. The third course they brought out was a filet of salmon, some traditional Italian sausage, another traditional Italian dish comprised of chicken wrapped up in a tortilla, and the cherry on top was the healthy dose of mashed potatoes. It had only been about an hour or so since we had eaten the last batch of delicacies and now they wanted to shove this down our throats? I tapped out quite early after mostly focusing on the mashed potatoes that I had missed out on at Thanksgiving time. I don't understand how all the people at my table just kept putting the food down! I mean, some of the people there weighed all of 130 pounds and they put it away like it was their job! I think someone might have even cleaned up my plate for me haha. Well, now it was time for an espresso and a cigarette (not for me thank you) and some more discussions.
Only about 20-30 minutes later they brought out the final pieces of the puzzle which were in the form of a chocolate nutella pizza and a shot of limoncello. The nutella pizza was literally two very thin crusts with nutella chocolate spread in between them. That was also consumed hastily and I managed to get most of mine down before taking the intensely sweet shot of limoncello. I was fuller than I normally am on Thanksgiving and was ready for a nap at that point as I had also been drinking some wine and didn't get much sleep the night before.
As I tried to take a quick nap, there were twelve bodies a bustling as a game of bingo was being organized and prizes were being arranged for the victors. We all took our seats and started a nice game of bingo in which my roommate Giuliano absolutely dominated and took home a couple of DVD's and the grand prize: a miniature statue of Mao Tse Dong which now presides on our coffee table haha. I had to cut the game short because I actually had another event to attend with another group of friends who had a nice night planned. I said some quick goodbyes to my new found friends and I was off to catch a taxi.
As I arrived at the address I had been given by my friends, I walked into a restaurant and was welcomed by a table of warm friends and food fresh from the oven. Needless to say, I vomited on the spot! Ok, ok, ok, I'm kidding! I didn't really lose my lunch but one look at the food and I knew I wasn't going to be able to fit another morsel in my over-stuffed belly. As I hugged everyone around the table, they asked me what I would like to eat and I told them I was just going to settle for a beer and start from there. They were doing a dinner version of what my friends and I had done at the Italian restaurant which was essentially a set meal with several courses for a flat fee. I informed the manager I was not going to partake in the eating so that we wouldn't get charged for another portion and settled into a glass of Hoegaarden which was great for Christmas.
After a couple hours of story-telling and laughing until our ribs hurt, we left the restaurant and headed for a friends house where I passed out the remainder of my gifts for my friends (more cups and dice) and we all settled into some nice seats with a few drinks and I played a few Christmas songs on guitar as we all sang along or just sat there and listened. I'm sure that many people were in the same mindset as I was and although we were all together and singing about Christmas, I could see through their expressions and knew that my friends were all thinking about home just like I was. Although it seems a little nostalgic, it was really nice to be surrounded by the closest thing to family that we each probably have out here and I can honestly say that it was the next best thing to actually being home for the holidays.
We all called it a night around 10pm or so so that some people could make calls to their parents via skype and whatnot and I headed home with a surprisingly heart-warming feeling that really resonated with me. I was whistling Christmas tunes the whole way home on the subway and when I got home I settled into my bed with a book and read til I fell asleep wrapped in a blanket of Christmas spirit.
The next few days went as normal with my regular teaching schedule as only one of the children really even celebrated Christmas. It's kind of a fad that has been catching on because many people out here strive to be like Americans or other westerners (I have no idea why as I think that traditional Chinese customs are awesome and think that the Chinese only get the poisoning aspects of capitalism through the western ads they see) but only a few people celebrate it and it's mostly the younger generation. The Chinese Christmas is coming up with the arrival of the lunar new year and I'm excited to be taking a part of that in the very near future.
After the week had just started to seem like another normal week, it was New Year's Eve and oh boy did my friends and I have something special planned for it! We were pretty eager to be in one of the biggest cities on earth to bring in the new year and what do you know, it was quite a blast although it was also quite anticlimactic at midnight when no fireworks went off where we were all pretty sure they should have. However, we barely even remembered it was New Year's Eve with how much fun we were having during the hours before.
A few days prior to this, some friends and I decided that it would be a great idea to have a sort of scavenger hunt theme to New Year's where everyone has a list of things to do before the stroke of midnight and it all has to be documented via photographs. Originally we were going to split up into teams of two and have a little competition but as the night drew closer, we decided to go at it as a group and just have a blast which in my opinion turned out to be the better option.
Let's go over a few things that were on this list to be accomplished before the countdown began:
First thing was to ride the subway while hanging from your legs which was executed quite nicely by our good friend Stuart shown here:
Next up was what is referred to as “planking” which has taken over England and some other countries by storm. The idea behind planking is that you lie down stiff as a board with your face down and get a picture of it. The interesting thing is that you do it in public in weird places and people usually do it for decent lengths of time. Here is my attempt at it while on top of the exit gates of the subway:
Another thing we thought would be fun is to get a picture with a police officer. Well, most of the officers didn't want us to get a picture with them so we had to sneak this one with my buddies Sean and Bryn as the officer wasn't looking:
Then we all did a plank with a Chinese buddy we found who was ECSTATIC to meet up with us and wanted to hang out with us for as long as he could. This was drawing a pretty big crowd but it was fun. Oh ya, we bought Minnie Mouse light-up ears right before this picture and we wore those for most of the night which was a good time:
Another challenge was to get a kiss from a Chinese person. Bryn went for it with our newly found friend, we marked it off the list and kept heading to the center of town:
We managed to snag a picture with a Chinese security guard which was a good time indeed. Here is my good friend Chris with him:
Here is just a picture of where we were during the majority of the night. This is the Bund and I've shown some pictures in previous posts and told many of you about it but simply put, it is just a majestic place to be. Here's the gang with Bryn taking the initiative and knocking out some more items on the list. Hey wait a minute! BRYN!!!! That wasn't on the list you silly, silly Brit...
One of the items put on the list by the American was to shotgun a beer with a Chinese person. For those of you who don't know what that is, first you poke a good size hole in the side of a beer can near the bottom, put your mouth on the hole, then tip it upright while simultaneously opening the can and then chug the contents. It was fun to find a Chinese pal who wanted to join in:
This one wasn't necessarily on the list but when I saw some Chinese girls walking around drinking beers, I just felt compelled to get a picture with them. They didn't mind at all!
Bryn had started being funny and put Stuart up on his shoulders because Stuart is the shortest of all of us and Bryn is the tallest. Some Chinese guys started doing it to once they saw Bryn and Stu doing it so then Bryn ran over and got this guy up on his shoulders which was hilarious:
A thing that I had really wanted to do was to get a picture with a little Chinese girl since they're so dang cute! When I saw this girl with her mom I ran up and asked her in Chinese if I could get a picture with her and her daughter since she was the cutest thing ever. The mother agreed but the kid didn't seem that enthusiastic about it:
Then for some reason we all decided to bust out into the Macarena and see if anyone would join in with us. It's a simple dance but we don't know the words to the beginning moves so we just basically sang something along the lines of “digga digga digga digga digga”... “digga digga digga digga digga” and so forth until the end when we all shouted “HEEEEEYYYYY MACARENA!” Well, we got a lot of stares but no one jumped in so we abruptly stopped to thunderous applause (hahaha yaaaaa right) and we grabbed as many people as we could around us and threw them all into a picture. We got quite a few involved so that was cool:
Then the countdown started and we started singing some songs as loud as we could although they didn't really hold any bearing to New Year's now that I think about it but it was fun none-the-less. The clock started ticking and we all shouted the numbers as the descended until the clock struck midnight and a resounding “Happy New Year!” in several different languages was heard around the world.
Afterward, we stuck around for awhile and knew that getting a taxi would be very difficult so we walked around for awhile and then a few members of the group decided to try their luck with the other thousands and thousands of people trying to get a cab. The nice thing was that the city was still alive and everything was still open. Food places were packed to the brim and we grabbed some provisions and headed out on an interesting walk. Two of my buddies and I were pointed in the “right” direction by one of our Chinese friends and we decided to enjoy the vibe that was still thick in the air as we walked home.
Fast forward two hours. We were lost. We had been aimlessly rambling for some time and didn't even realize that we weren't close to home until we took a good look around and were completely lost. No taxis were stopping because they all wanted to head back to the main part of town that we had just been in and so we finally managed to find what's called a “Black taxi” or an illegal taxi which is basically someone who just drives you to where you want to go for a set amount of money. These situations usually aren't the best but it was just one guy in his van and we were three able-bodied guys who could have taken control of the situation if need be. It was a fun and crazy ride as we zoomed through the streets and then we got out, paid the guy and we all crashed HARD! Here's us in the van:
The next day I headed to the bus station to catch a coach down to a city called Bei Lun to see none other than Miss Acall whom I have mentioned before in a couple of posts. Below is a video heading across the huge bridge I mentioned in my post about the Chinese wedding which we crossed on the way. When I got there, I met up with her friend who is nicknamed Watermelon and we headed towards the city where Acall and I were going to have dinner with her parents. Acall and I are just friends who enjoy each others company so her parents weren't suspicious of me when I went over for dinner which was good to not have any pressure during the meal. It was definitely an awesome dinner and her dad is a riot!
Acall's family and I started off with introductions and I was talking with her dad a bit while Acall went to the kitchen to help her mother with the dinner preparations. Of course we were also drinking some white rice wine as is customary at a Chinese dinner with new acquaintances. We were talking about what I was doing in China and what he does now that he's retired and all the while eating some food and drinking some rice wine. It was really nice. I was on my best behavior... for the first part of the meal. Acall and her mother finished cooking so they came to the table and joined us. Acall's mother was quite shy and she didn't talk much but I made sure to ask her some things and of course praised her cooking which was quite delicious. We all had a glass of a different type of Chinese wine, this time a yellow one and we all brought our glasses together with a clink and set back to eating.
Her father kept drinking the potent rice wine which I had stopped drinking after two small glasses although we both continued to drink the yellow wine as well. At one point he started telling me an absolutely hilarious story about when he used to have an American colleague many years in the past and he told me about a conversation the colleague once had with another American colleague and he didn't understand a single word of the conversation except one. I can't mention the word here but let's just say it's quite a bad word in English and when he got to that part of the story, he yelled it out while we were eating which prompted me to burst out laughing which in turn made him roar with laughter and we laughed for a solid two or three minutes straight through with a few drinks in between. The best part was that I corrected him since he didn't know exactly how to use it in context and so he shouted it out the correct way and we went into another fit of laughter. In fact, I'm laughing quite heartily as I write this while remembering it.
At this point, Acall's mother had cut Acall's father off from the rice wine because that stuff is lethal and he had put down quite a good amount. Well, Acall's mother excused herself and went to watch some TV because she was pretty shy around the foreigner but she gave Acall explicit instructions not to let Acall's father have anymore rice wine. We continued to talk a lot and he talked about fishing which I genuinely have an interest in and I told him about my experience fishing and about my grandfather on my dad's side who fishes as much as he can. At this point, the meal was finished and he asked if I would like some tea. I of course obliged and he asked Acall to go fill up my glass with hot water. The second she stepped away from the table, her dad looked at me with the grin of a fox and as I instantly knew what was about to unfold, I gave my nod of approval. He then reached for his bottle and poured himself another healthy portion of rice wine and we both burst out laughing. To top all of that off, he was pretty good and tipsy by that point so his speech got a bit slower and his body language louder. During the last parts of our conversation, he looked at me as he was saying something and kind of got lost mid-thought but he kept moving his hands and I seriously just knew exactly what he meant. It was great and him and I smiled at each other and chuckled to ourselves as Acall got lost in the translation. Acall's mother came out of the room and said it was about time we left so that she could scold her husband and we all laughed and said our goodbyes. I got an open invitation from Acall's father to come visit again so I'm pretty happy with the outcome. They are a wonderful family and I was really happy to have had the chance to visit them.
This has really hit home with me and I consider myself lucky to be able to feel what it's like to live in a different world as one of it's inhabitants, not as an outcast. I wish that these blogs could have a bit more insight to how I really feel during these events but so much of this just cannot be translated. You would have to live it to understand it.
The rest of the holiday with Acall was nothing less than astounding and we had a great time going on long walks, having a couple drinks and playing some guitar with her friends and even just hanging out and watching movies. Here is a picture of us today at lunch where we had Korean BBQ. It's basically a buffet where you get whatever you want and then you cook it yourself. It's really cool and they have so many tasty things. I'm looking forward to seeing her again during Chinese New Year's and seeing where we go from there. It's nice to take it at an even pace and go with the flow.
I have been feeling very remorseful towards a mistake I made this holiday season and that was to not wish my Aunt Sharon a happy, happy birthday on Christmas Eve! Aunt Sharon, I hope you can forgive me but I got carried away chatting with Bryan about China haha, I hope the birthday was super great and that Christmas was the perfect follow up. A big shout out to all of my friends back in the states, I wish you a happy new year and I promise I'll be back to see you soon. Another special shout out to my buddy Victor Sam who in the midst of me having a hard time missing my family at Christmas time told me “Think about it this way, now you have people who care about you all across the world, maybe someone [is] thinking about Tony G [in] every time zone.” Now in my time of doubt that made me SUPER warm and fuzzy. Thanks Victor, you're a great friend. Although the holidays have past and the new year has begun, I hope your spirits are warm and that you spread good cheer to all.
Oh Bryn! What are you doing?!?!?!?!
Happy new year to all and to all a good life.
Tony G.
All of my pictures can be seen by clicking right HERE!
