Get your grilled scorpion right here!! 10/16/2010

It was a long day today, but a good one. My work day started at 8 in the morning and I spent the majority of the day observing classes, taking notes, and asking questions. Close to the end of the day I was to sit in on a class that will eventually be mine to teach. It was a class called "small stars" and they are between the ages of 3-5 and all of them are as cute as hell. I was scanning the room and one of the boys was sitting in his tiny green chair lying back with his legs crossed and he was using his hands as glasses on his face and he was just staring at me. Take a second and picture that....................... thats really funny. I laughed out loud and disrupted the class! I introduced myself and told them that I came to China with my dog Cooper. I then sat in front of each of them individually and asked how they were, their name and age. Then I shook their hand and told them it was good to meet them. It took them a while to get my name down. Then we all played "head, shoulders, knees, and toes". It took them a while to get into it but they eventually did. I think they just needed a little review of the body parts. Then we played teacher says (simon says), they didn't quite get it but it was still fun. After work ( saturdays and sundays are 10 hour days), I went out to a BBQ place with 2 co-workers. Apparently Jinzhou's specialty is BBQ and Canadian Mike took me to his favorite place. On the table there is a packet if BBQ sauce (amazing stuff) , a head of garlic, and plastic wrapped cups and plates. We order some fried dumplings and bunch of skewered things like tofu, green beans, chicken, beef, pork, and........wait for it...........SCORIPIONS! They weren't too bad, not much to them really. You could definitely tell that you were eating a bug, but thats about it. So, 3 of us get stuffed with food, 2 of us have a beer (20 oz), and the other has a soda, all for 105 yuan, thats about 17 USD. What a country!! You can even barter your restaurant meals, just tell the waitress that it was good food and that you wand a discount (helps to have someone that speaks Chinese). And you don't even have to tip! After that I was invited to an apartment warming party so I went to a shop and bought some PBRs (for me) and a bottle of red table wine for the person whom we were visiting. It was allot of fun, we had drinks, played some games and just sat around and chatted. The people there were from all over the world it was an interesting group. There were people from, Ukraine, Russia, Norway, Kazakhstan, the states, and of course China. It was basically a microcosm of how I think the world should be. Everyone coming together and enjoying our differences, not fighting over them.

So once again I have an amazing day, it just keeps getting better and better.