Happy Birthday William!

Crikey - what a weekend. The weekend of Will's 23rd birthday. He was awoken early on Saturday morning to ballons and a breakfast of acid green muffins, bright yellow pastries and chocolate dipped shortbread. YUM. He was delighted with his presents; a T-shirt from me with the words "bathing ape chocolate" printed on it (there is a huge market out here for T-shirts with odd English words and sentences printed on them) and a table tennis set from Mary(for joining the OAP's in the park!).

After a long day of teaching we all ended up at a nice Chinese restaurant, organised by Angus and co. It was lovely. Amzing food, lots of beer (but not too much due to eight thirty starts the next day) and good company. Grace, our Chinese teacher produced a HUGE cake - literally the size of a wedding cake - and we sang Happy Birthday and after an initial problem cutting the cake, Will was given a sword and he was well away. We all munched on our enormous portions. The evening was going by pleasantly. Then something terrible happened. Someone - know one knows who - came up with an idea for Will to down a bottle of beer. Now we're not talking the normal bottle sizes. These bottles are more along the lines of wine bottles. So due to the fact that everyone had had too much pop and too much cake we were all pretty excitable. Everyone egged him on. Everyone except the Chinese folk that is. He didn't take much persuading (infact it could have been him that suggested it in the first place) and in a flash it was gone. All credit to him, it was a brilliant effort, the fizzy fluid was gushing down his throat faster than the Niagara falls.

And then it came back up. Quicker than the Fountains of Versailles. AND all over his new T-shirt.

After that it was all a bit awkward. From the expressions on their faces I don't think the Chinese are used to such debauchery. Funny though. Things got even funnier in the taxi home when Will was clutching the remains of his cake and the box fell apart. As he attempted to keep the cake together with his bare hands fresh cream was flying everywhere. It was a mess. The taxi driver was going mental and through my hysterics I could make out Will attempting to apologize in Chinese whilst balancing this huge cake on his hands. By the time we got out both Will and the taxi were covered.

As we plodded up the 82 steps to bed, I looked at Will covered in a mixture of his own sick and mountains of fresh cream and I swelled with pride at what a good birthday everyone had given him. That's what friends are for eh?  

The next evening, after a brilliant day of teaching, we hit Blue's Bar for the second time which was brilliant. When we arrived there was a woman parading around the stage half naked, but thankfully the entertainment improved. We watched in amazement as a sumo-wrestler type stood on swords whilst hanging a full bucket of water from his, ahem... you can guess. After the entertainment we found this room that gives out free, yes FREE (at first we thought there was a catch too) alcohol to Westerners. I felt like Charlie the first time he stepped into the chocolate factory. An unlimited amount of beer, vodka and snacks was all on the house. We were in shock. For about 3 seconds. Then we hit the barrels. At half four after PJ, Tom and I had all fallen off of our chairs at least once I knew it was time to leave.

The next day was a bank holiday! And we celebrated with a nice wholesome game of bowling. Lots of fun!

Back to the dreaded Kindergarten today. The situation doesn't seem to be improving. It turns out I'm more Kindergarten flop than Kindergarten cop. Also, today I went in and sat down on a chair that looked like it had been made for a borrower. One of the assistants started clambouring under me and removed something from under my chair. Yep, you guessed it. The ceramic vase. And it was FULL. Seriously, who leaves a pot of pee under a chair that any innocent bystander could sit on. Anything could have happened.

Anyhow, all in all a very enjoyable weekend.

Thats all folks xx