Dear Diary (2/13/07)

Dear Diary,

Today I had a great day. I woke up, and Hank took me to hang out with his classmates, two of whom I am supposed to know, because supposedly I was their summer English teacher four and a half years ago. Unfortunately, I did *not* recognize their faces, but their names were familiar (probably because I gave them their English names).

Anyway, we went to John's house (John was one of the students I would ostensibly recognize). First we had bbq pork liver and pork meat. The meat was delicious: it was well seasoned, and salted generously; the large portions of fat made it taste like bacon. There is nothing like fatty pork grilled over an open flame, then plucked from the heat with one's own chopsticks! Next, we used the same little habachi-style grill to cook hotpot, which also had pork, mushrooms, chinese vegetables, and tofu. There was yanyu (fermented, salty, spicy fish), and some other side dishes too. Lunch was followed by a serving of uncommonly sweet tangerines.

The weather being just as good as on the (fake) first day of spring, we went to the West Park:a 20 minute walk from John's house if one adopts a very leisurely pace. (We did, of course, go as slowly as possible to enjoy the sunshine, blue skies, and warm breeze. We also stopped several times to admire the fairies and unicorns who roam the countryside on days like today.)Bo-bo, our grossly mischevious companion, shook the suspention bridge with such vigor that two girls fell down. It's a wonder their boyfriends didn't beat him up for that little ruse, though I suppose that was a much smaller offense compared to Bo-bo's biting of one girl, and pretending to hit another with a stool.

After the park, we walked back to John's house; on the way, we passed by a full grown horse, which we would consider a pony back in America, but Diary, I assure you, it was a horse pulling a load of sacks:

Back at John's, we had some pomello and played cards, a game they call "Chinese poker," which very much resembles Big 2. We had dinner, also hot pot, yanyu, and the other standard Guizhou fare. It started raining after dinner, which made it difficult to find a car to take us home. It looked as though the last bus back into town was gone, so it was suggested that we all spend the night. This idea failed to gain a majority of the votes cast, so two boys went off in search of a mini-van. They found one, and it turned out that the driver is a family friend of John, so we got a free ride! My new friends wanted to repay him for the trouble we caused, so Monica, who is Chester's gf, bought him cigarettes when we arrived at the destination.

Back in town, we played mahjong for several hours. I won only once, but managed to surprise the others with my remarkable "碰" [pong] speed, which owes to my paying very close attention to the tiles of which I have pairs.

All in all, a very very relaxing day. v(^_^)v