Sunday 9th September, 2012       1500

Guffaws out loud! Literally.

I was having an online chat with an American doing the same as me in another province of China a couple of hours ago and he told me my public blog has been blocked by The Great Firewall of China. And he was right! Hahahahaha! I could understand if I posted vitriolic diatribes about the country or its government but I felt they are being somewhat counter-productive in banning what I believe is an honest and reasonably balanced account of life here which for the most part is actually favourable! Well, I thought that was another notch in my Belt of Infamy until I discovered that anything with the word “blog“ in the title is banned here and the link contains “blogspot“.

It has been raining all day here so far although it has eased off of late. It has put the dinner date in doubt tonight though and we will have to make a decision in the next hour or so whether to go or not. The bus will be out of the question now there are zillions of students here.

Monday 10th         2300

We left in drizzle so both my capes were employed but it stopped by the time we arrived. Going downtown out of the west gate one turns left, so as soon as we had crossed the road I asked May where we were going. She was paying so choice of venue was hers, I assumed it would be a traditional Chinese place, but she informed me she wanted to treat me to a meal at Old Cologne, the German restaurant! Not only is it expensive, but to get there we should have turned right!!! Thankfully it wasn’t busy so I made a u-turn across six lanes with no problem. I remembered I took her there in the summer so I asked her why she chose to take me there this time. As she hopes to study in England next year she wanted to practise using a knife and fork!

I have to say I feel the food has gone downhill there over the last few months but we both had schnitzel, fries and salad which was ok but that along with four glasses of black beer (she tried one but wasn’t impressed) saw a bill of approaching 300y and when you consider you can treat three others to the prawn place with ample food and drinks for just over a third of that it is small wonder I don’t go there too often. In fact I am seriously considering suggesting to Kevin that we give the place a miss for our roast turkey Christmas day dinner.

I really wanted a reasonably early night because I had my current week’s work to do this morning but I couldn’t get tired enough until after two even with the assistance of “medicine” wine, resulting in my being absolutely knackered for my class. It is teachers day so my phone never stopped with texts from students and May even - despite my saying it was not necessary - brought me a gift of four bottles of beer.

At about five thirty I caved in this evening and went to bed for a nap. Kevin was supposed to be eating at a student’s home, her father is the chief executive of our yet to open airport, but was stood up so I ended up being woken an hour later. He was going with Daisy and Susan to one of the new off-campus restaurants and did I want to join them? I did. During the meal he observed that the food is virtually identical and tastes exactly the same in 98% of the restaurants in this city. I had to agree. Unless you go to the prawn place, a fried jowza specialist or the expensive hotels the school take us to, it does. Tonight was no different but the interesting thing was that they had rabbit on the menu. Now the Chinese eat everything including cat and dog, yet the two girls refused to even countenance trying it. Actually it wasn’t nice, it needed to be cooked a lot longer to tenderise it and of course the bunny had simply been hacked with a cleaver into bits which contained bones. Shame. I am sure if I knew where to buy rabbit I could make a passable stew.

Western Wednesday is definitely on this week and I will try lasagne and garlic bread this time and get it right. The two girls are coming and as Kiki refused Joanna leapt at the chance. The problem is, payday is Wednesday and the forecast is for rain! I will send Sonya a text tomorrow and if we have been paid early I will whizz into town and do my shopping then, it will give me all day to make dough etc.

Apart from the brief encounter I had with our new French teacher I haven’t seen him since, although Kevin thinks he may be turning out to be another Patrick - ie antisocial. Apparently he has seen him four more times and on each occasion he has simply ignored him! I did say I would rather that than have someone I don’t like wanting to be my friend!