Saturday Tomas's mom flew from Poland to Guangzhou (Southern China) and
spent the night there and on Sunday she was supposed to leave Guangzhou at
11am and get to Dalian around 2pm and then we were going to eat with some of
her clients (Tomas's mom owns some flower company in Poland and does big
business with some people here) at some fancy returaunt at 7pm. Well at
about 10am it starts snowing like crazy and around 1:45pm they close the
Dalian Airport (side note: it wasn't really THAT snowy...only about 3-4
inches, but apparently that is way much for the Dalian Airport) so Tomas's
mom gets rerouted to Qingdao (a city across the bay on another peninsula).
As soon as they land they close Qingdao airport. So basically Tomas's mom is
stuck in some airport with no idea when the airports are going to reopen.
But Dalian Airport was definately closed til at least 8 pm, and maybe after.
So because the resturaunt is way fancy Tomas's mom's clients have already
paod for the private room, the feast and etc. So we end up going anyways,
even though we don't know these people, and we thought they spoke no English
(turns out they spoke a little, and combined with our Chinese we got along
fine).

So on our way out to get a taxi I step into the road and the next thing I
know I am lying flat on my back looking up at Tomas. I completely wrentched
my back, bruised my buns and hurt my thumb. The taxi driver thought this was
HILARIOUS, although I did not. So this was a great start as you can tell. So
we get to the resturaunt, and upon entering the front door (I was the first
one in) the greeters are all holding inflatable pig hammers, and as soon as
I begin to wonder why I find out. They start bashing us with them and
yelling Merry Christmas. Now in all my 20 Christmas's I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF
THIS. But hey, it's China. So we make our way to the fourth floor and find
our room (A1). We meet all the people and sit down on the couches for a
while (this room is huge...big screen tv, 3 couches, 3 coffee tables, and
huge banquet table). There are about 10 people there, Mrs. Wang (wife of the
client) and various people who work for the company (Mr. Wang is keeping
vigil at the airport for Tomas's mom). Mrs. Wang brings over a gift for
Tomas: Moutai. For those of you who do not know what Moutai is, let me
explain. It is a highly expensive Chinese liqour that you can smell from 20
feet away and tastes like gasoline. The Wang's gave some to Tomas when he
first arrived in China and it is still sitting on the top shelf of their
room because NO ONE can drink it. It really is disgusting. You can't even
mix it with anything, not even like 100000:1 ratio, it's that bad. It's also
like 60% alcohol, so a few drinks and you're dead. So Mrs. Wang presents
Tomas with another bottle and we're like, Great, another bottle to collect
dust. But then Mrs. Wang suggests that we open it for toasts later. Kind of
good kind of bad. We won't have to take it home, but that means we're going
to have to toast with this stuff, gag.

After some mingling it is time to eat. The banquet, like all Chinese
banquets is elaborate and showy. Before you die you must come to China and
have a banquet with Chinese people. It's great. We had lobster, crab,
shrimp, clams, ham, beef, 2 soups, 5 veggies, rice, cake, and maybe some
more but I forget. The lobster was arranged on this huge boat complete with
sails made from carrots, really cool. The waitress's fill our glasses with
beer and before we can take a bite Mrs. Wang proposes a toast of Moutai. So
blah blah blah, GAN BEI! Ok, now I must explain. Gan Bei means bottoms up,
and it literally means you must drink it all in one gulp. Now in America,
you can politely refuse some alcohol and be done with it, but here it is
both extremely rude to some people, and they will get on your case
indefinately about it. Talk about peer pressure in college, geesh. Plus it
is like a 50 year old Chinese lady asking you to do this, so you feel really
bad to say no. So one Moutai goes down. Dinner proceeds like this, eat,
toast, eat, toast, etc (although after two Moutai we had to stop...we
couldn't take anymore, not that that stopped anything, of course beer works
just as well). So by 8 we're all about to fall out of our chairs. Then
there's wise cracker Adam who keeps saying "I think that deserves a toast!"
and so a Chinese person proposes a toast. I finally told him if he said that
one more time I really would kill him, really. I guess I looked pretty
serious, because he stoped.

Now comes the real fun part. The resturaunt holds some wild and crazy games
for the private rooms to compete in. First they distributed these little
necklaces that had our room numbers on them. They said it was so we could be
easily identified, but I joked that it was so we could find our way back
since we were all so liqoured up. Tomas thought this was hilarious and
almost peed his pants, literally. So they played a game where each room took
turns climbing on a box and seeing who could get the most people on it
without falling, you had to stay up there for 10 secs...which we counted
down backwards from 10 in Chinese, no easy feat at this time of the night.
(By the way, I got great pics of this!!!) Then we played some jump around
with balloons tied to us while we tried to stomp other people's balloons
(remember this one Les?!). Then they said they had a game for "numbers" (or
so we thought). So Abby and Tomas and Adam and I go up to the front and it
turns out they said for "LOVERS" oops. So Adam and I became a happy couple.
This contest was to put the end of hte noodle in your mouth and suck til you
met at the center. Now we thought it was who could do it the fastest, so we
did. But it turns out that you have to bite off the smallest possible piece
without touching the noodle. Hmmm...that means I am going to have to spend
at lot more time a lot closer to Adam than I have ever wanted. So they let
us go again. Too bad we lost.

After the games we did some karoke for a while, and then they announced that
they had a disco going on the first floor so we went down and boogied for a
while. Then it was about 11:30, and Tomas's mom was going to be flying in
around 1am, so we went home and he went to the Holiday In to wait for her.
Well Adam and I were too wired to go to bed so we waited til Midnight
exchanged gifts (he got me a really pretty silver/tiger's eye bracelet, and
I got him a Mahjong set). SO we went downstairs and played Mahjong with the
doormen for an hour.

We slept in til about 11 today and then went out to a nice lunch and traded
presents. I got some nice lotion, some more jewelry and the best present of
all. First a little background story. At our favorite resturaunt (the one
with the English menu, that we eat at like, everyday) there is a picture up
on the wall. It is of a man and womas playing pool. The middle, big picture
is of the guy standing behind the girl showing her how to play. Now she has
a low cut shirt on and lots of clevage, but nothing too bad. It was weeks
before we got close enough to realize the 3 smaller pictures surrounding the
center one were just short of being pornographic. It has the man and woman
(who are westerners may I add) completely making out on the table with very
little clothes on. Now I have always thought this was the funniest picture
ever, especially to actually hang on a wall anywhere in public. Well Abby
found this picture AS A PUZZLE (1000 pieces!) and that was my gift. So now I
have a fun puzzle to spend time working on. hehe

The rest of today was spent relaxing. But tomorrow I have to get working on
my term paper that is due Friday. Yes, it is 10 pages and has Lindsay
started writing it?! Of course not! I have all the research and I have
outlined it, but I was hoping it would write itself. So that should take up
some time this week. Ugh, procrastination stinks. So thanks for all the nice
emails of well wishing. I think my Christmas Eve passed without any sadness
thanks to our wonderful Chinese friends. I love you and miss you all, Merry
Christmas.

Love,
Lindsay