Great Birthday in China

I had to put this picture up. When I left for class on Wednesday morning, I could hear this high pitched meowing sound outside the door of my apartment. When I opened the door, there was this tiny little kitten. So cute!! Look at him!


I'm not gone soft. I just like cats! He was so tiny and cute!

So, last night we went to a local restaurant for dinner for me birthday. There were 11 of us, 6 foreign teachers and 5 Chinese students.

The restaurant was great. We booked a room for ourselves with a huge table and balcony and everything! I got a nice surprise when a cake was brought in for me! I'm not sure about the writing on the cake, "Derek, Happy Birthday U idiot, from Tom Julie and Ivy". I'll put it down to Tom's razor-sharp aussie wit! Here's a pic of me cutting the cake with a tiny plastic knife:


So, we ordered from the set menu. 14 dishes in all. Dish after dish was brought out on the turntable in the middle of the table. The food was gorgeous! Here is the spread of food we got:

Not bad, eh? Ad the bill came to around 330RMB, which is around 34 euro. That was the total bill for 12 people, including beer!!

I got some nice presents off the students including a wind chime with a Chinese poem on it, a book about Confucius in English and Chinese as well as Beckham's biography in Chinese. Better start learning more Chinese characters if I am to read those books and the poem! The presents were a nice surprise!

We were trying to work the karaoke machine in the room but there were no microphones and I don't think they had any English songs! So, we decided to get a few beers and head back to my place. The guitar came out and a few songs were sung and a few beers drunk! Pity the students had to go back to their dorms for 10:30. In spite of that, the teachers kept boozing!

Yeah, so it was a good night. Before coming to China, I was wondering what my birthday would be like here! Well, since I have now made some new friends, my birthday night was very enjoyable!