Birthday!

I had a good day, got a bunch of candy to share with my classes and
some stuff from the bakery (no doughnuts to be found) to share with
the staff and teachers. Got sung "Happy Birthday" a couple times, and
I was given a really nice cake from the school at the mid-day Friday
meeting.

As an added birthday bonus only one person from my usually small
afternoon class showed up. The class as a whole is normally kind of
young and lazy, except for one student, who had decided to go on leave
for the day (a decision which I think was linked to a social the night
before where he and several others got rather drunk). So the only
person was a guy I've spent some time hanging out and talking with and
who had his last day yesterday. I'd taught some students frisbee
during the lunch break and he'd meant to come, but unfortunately due
to some confusion about timing wasn't there. So we went out to a big
bus parking lot nearby, talked some, and I taught him to throw a
frisbee along with some relevant vocabulary. There wasn't a lot of
grammar structure, but it was fun.

During the lunch break another teacher convinced me to have a party,
do something for fun and get the cake eaten. So we planned to go to a
"pizzeria", a pretty decent place considering that it's China, better
than St. Louis sounded. She took care of most of the publicity, and
we ended up with about 25 people, a few teachers, a few staff people,
a lot of students (I seem to be fairly popular), and a significant
other or two. A few brought me some presents, which are mostly an
interesting assortment of snack foods, plus a souvenir bottle (it's
inside the bust of a girl made of coconuts husks, and that is meant
non-dirtily) of what is generally called rice wine although it's
really hard alcohol, usually pretty lethal, the stuff they got me is
45%. Earlier a couple students had asked me what I'd like and, after
thinking for a little while, I said I didn't want anything more to
carry around, but some unusual, but good, foods would be an
interesting way to, umm, get a taste of the culture without forcing me
to carry around too much cultural baggage.

The cake was pretty good, but it had a lot of frosting (fortunately
not too sweet) and was pretty spongy. For a reason. Apparently
Chinese people don't get cakes to eat, just to smash in the face of
the birthday boy or girl. I managed to get most of it cut and
distributed, but after everyone was eating and I'd returned to my
seat, a couple students over by the cake asked me to come and talk
with them. Completely unsuspecting, I walked over and suddenly had
hands smearing cake and frosting all over my face. It was funny, but
got funnier when I grabbed some more cake and wiped it all over them.
There were a few moments where it was nearly an all out food fight,
and one of the teachers quickly and quietly snuck out of the
restaurant before anyone got him.

Well, that's it for now. Thanks to everyone who's wished me a happy
birthday, and I will be writing to you all soon. It's been great to
hear from you all, please keep in touch.