Before the ‘fun’ of the banquet begins, we had to have a full day of class. There was a lot that happened throughout the day. It definitely wasn’t the normal class. The morning session we had skills labs. At the end of this we decided to have a little competition between the 3 groups. Fastest one to put a person on a backboard. They loved this. Of course, it became VERY loud in the room during this process. One of the interpreters told us that normally Chinese are quiet and reserved. Not this group, or the first class either. So we thought that maybe the rest of the day we could mix lecture with competitions to keep things spiced up.
Lunch was extended by Pu. Once again, we love Pu. Almost 2 hours for lunch. And we decided to go to Pizza Hut! Well, this Pizza Hut was like no other Pizza Hut I have ever seen, obviously we are in China. This was like a normal restaurant. Pizza was not the top billing here. They served just about every kind of food. Seafood, pasta, pizza, desserts, salads, French fries, thai noodles, and a whole bunch of stuff I can’t even remember. I did get pictures of the menu, but I am sure the banquet will dominate the blog. So we of course had to get pizza. One pepperoni stuffed crust, one supreme pan and a popcorn chicken pan pizza. Yes, popcorn chicken on a pizza. They also have popcorn shrimp on pizza too. And a seafood supreme, and a New Orleans pizza, shrimp filled crust and even sausage filled crust. Strange stuff, and we stuck to the normal. The pan pizza tasted identical to home. For me the pepperoni stuffed crust had a fishy taste. There has been several things that I have eaten here that have had that fish taste in them. No one else agrees with me though. I am weird, I know.
The afternoon seemed to have lots of problems, but we managed. General Dave had a loooooong meeting with Dr. Ho and the like, and Paula was on pins and needles for awhile. I never stress, so I wasn’t scurred! But what if we weren’t good enough this time? We knew that the students weren’t exactly loving the lectures of ITLS. We tried to make it exciting. Competitions, making jokes – especially me since I am an easy target being bald and having the last name Hooker (which the equivalent is duck in Chinese, they pronounce yacht-za). But there was nothing to fear. Everything was worked out, and the big issue was that they wanted to trim another day off the schedule, making us be done on Sunday instead of Monday. Ok!
Which now brings us to the banquet and more Chinese liquor and toasting games. Ugh. I won’t mention the food, yes it was good, but nothing out of the ordinary here. We weren’t allowed to drink anything but the Chinese liquor, in terms of alcohol. How exciting for us. It began normally, being toasted by pretty much everyone at our table. During this Pu made Crystal get up and sing to everyone. She sang one on English then one in Chinese. Several of the doctors brought flowers that were on the table up to her. We were also informed that we would be ‘singing’ later. They had told us about that yesterday so I was able to come up with something good. But I’ll get to that in a bit. The toasts and eating continued well enough. General Dave decided to go and toast each table individually. Jesse told Paula and I that this was a mistake, they would now come back on him two-fold. In my opinion, General Dave was a big boy and as such could handle it. Throughout our experiences with the Chinese toasting tradition not one of us had ended up two sheets to the wind. I had confidence in my leader! Then the beer was brought out. They did not provide glasses, which was an atrocity since they wanted me to chug with someone. I said slow, and we went at it. As you may know, drinking an entire beer somewhat quickly through a bottle is a sure fire way to ingest way too much air. And this wasn’t a normal size bottle either. Nay, it was quite large and afterwards I was blown up like a balloon. Of course, they wanted me to do it again. My stomach was going to explode so I was able to pass and the limelight fell to Paula.
This is when the fun really began. I had gone to the bathroom, and was escorted by one of the doctors. On the way back he kissed me. No, not really. That didn’t happen. On the way back I was challenged by another table. How I got out of that I don’t know, but I promised them I would be back, and then there was a big Arnold Schwarzenegger voice thing going on. It was now time to sing. So, to make it fun and do something easy for everyone I came up with the idea to sing ‘You’ve lost that loving feeling’ to Miao and Ho, Top Gun style. They had no idea what we were singing, but it was definitely a big hit. They do know the word love so I think they understood what was going on! At one point something was poured on both of their heads, and Miao tried to run away. We pinned him down, and same for Ho. We later were told it was the liquid fire that is Chinese liquor that was poured on them, and some got in Miao’s eyes! We felt pretty bad for not letting him get up from that! I don’t know how his eye didn’t just melt from that horrid liquid! More toasts ensued. We all tried to keep track of how many shots (not a full shot, kind of like a half shot, but the liquor is over 100 proof) we had done, but after about 15 it just didn’t happen. Next up was General Dave picking up Ho yet again. After he put him down a mob picked up the General and began throwing him into the air. That was pretty hilarious. They must have tossed him up a few feet about 6 times or so. Just good clean fun! Then the ‘horse’ riding began. A few of them took off on their chairs, sitting backwards and rocking on them to make them move forward. Several more joined in, and the General and I also took part. Paula stayed back to watch this odd scene, and made the observation that men are stupid sometimes! Yes, we are, but only because we were having fun! There must have been a string of about 20 of us doing this. I was shouting out the Mandarin words for one, two, three, go and a bald white guy shouting out in Mandarin while riding a chair like a horse is probably a pretty interesting thing to see if you are Chinese. We have all found our roles in these events, and we give the people what they want. These dinners and banquets are still work and you can bet we earn our check by drinking that God-awful liquor!
Fortunately this all ended at a decent time, and we once again escaped with just the right amount of intoxication to please our hosts, but not over the edge to make us sick or embarrass ourselves. Paula and Jesse ended up going for a massage when we got back, which ended up being about 3 hours and Paula getting cupped! She says it felt great, and had the bruises on her back the next day to prove it! I was beat, and both the General and I went to our rooms to end the night. We still had one more day of class to go.
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