Happy New Year!!!

It is now officially 2010 (and you can say that however you please, I still haven't decided which I prefer)!!!! Laura and I took our final trip to Nanjing to bring in the new year the best way we know how. Christine also came down to celebrate with us. Our friends that live there were spending the night in Shanghai, but were to come back on Saturday so we would have one last night to party with them before heading back to Siyang to finish out the term.

Anyways, we were able to get out of Siyang before noon on the 31st, and got to Nanjing faster than any other time we had traveled there. We arrived with plenty of time to shower and get dressed before heading out to party. I took what was probably the best shower I've had in China. Completely longer than necessary, with hot water and good pressure the whole time!!! It was glorious. We got ourselves dressed up and headed to Behind the Wall, a Mexican restaurant near the hostel we stayed at. The dinner was fantastic, and we went back to the hostel for some pre-gaming. They were having a small party with sangria and mulled wine, and were happy to have us there, as most of the people attending worked at the hostel, or were friends of the employees. A guy from Wisconsin that Christine knows met up with us and brought some of his Slovenian friends and we all left for Don Quixote around 10:30.
Don Q is a bar in Nanjing that feels like home. It's got a lot of hard wood, and serves western beer, and even has live music. I've sang there a time or two with one of the regular performers. New Year's Eve was no different. After some drinks and music, part of the group headed off to Mazzo, a club nearby that we always seem to end up at. Laura and I decided to head over right before midnight and found ourselves running through a square, with fireworks going on overhead, and shouting "HAPPY NEW YEAR!" It was a great way to bring in the new year.

The following day took it rather easy. We went shopping for DVDs, which was quite successful, and went to Wu's Fried Meat Buns, a tradition for us when we visit Nanjing. They are pork meat balls with a broth, cooked inside a thin dumpling style dough. It's hard to explain, but all I can say is that they are amazing, and the chefs were pumped to let us take photos to remember! I came down with a really bad headache later in the afternoon (probably dehydrated) and decided to take a nap to see if that would help. I woke up feeling better and we thought that maybe getting dinner and sticking around the hostel to watch a film would be a good idea. We went to a French restaurant and got some pizzas and wine, and returned to the hostel to watch "Under the Tuscan Sun". The whole evening actually made me miss Italy and Europe quite a bit. It was good to relax though and we had most of the next day to do as we pleased. We wandered around the area of the hostel a bit, and then went off shopping again, as we tend to do whenever we're in a big city. After shopping, we went to get massages. It was amazing. Super weird, but amazing. The three of us were actually in the same room and had three Chinese guys working on us. These were talking with each other in Chinese the whole time, except for a few random words or phrases they said to us, and we just talked to each other in English, and tried to respond to anything they said or asked. Overall it was entertaining, but felt awesome, and really relieved a lot of the tension I've had in my back, most likely from the cold. Saturday night we went out to eat with some of the people that had made it back from Shanghai, and then met up with the rest of the crew for another night at DonQ and Mazzo. It was so great to see everyone again, and I'll miss the crazy times we seemed to have every time we visited Nanjing.

Sunday brought another ridiculously short bus ride back to Siyang. There was a delay of over an hour while waiting to depart, but once the bus left it only took about 2.5 hours. I was blown away when we got home so early in the afternoon. But luckily that made for enough time to plan lessons for the primary school the next day.

We're down to about 2 weeks of teaching before our short travels, then heading home. It's so strange to already be at the 5th of January, but I need to keep my wits about me and my interests in my lessons. My students deserve that, at least, no matter how restless I am to finish the term. Things will close out before I know it, and I'm quite excited to see Shanghai again and to get to Hong Kong. It will be a whirlwind, I'm sure, but a great way to round out my Chinese adventure.