New Year's

For New Year's we ended up going to a French-Chinese fusion food restaurant in a chic neighbourhood where Jean-Baptiste lives. It wouldn't have been my first choice (I would've liked going to a small but expensive bar/restaurant in Hohei, where we can have dinner by a lake in the centre of the city; it's a nice area), but the food was good and had we gone somwhere else, we wouldn't have been able to go to JB's apartment after dinner.

JB, Guillaume and Katia. I had pork in a peanut sauce with mashed carrots. It was quite delicious. 120 yuan ($20 Cdn).
Me, Matt (American teacher), Tom (British), and Gaetan (Loic is sitting to Gaetan's left, out of the picture). This is after dinner. I ordered a latte with Bailey's for dessert - oh so good! Katia and I wearing our festive masks - the restaurant gave them to us.
After dinner - around 11 PM - we walked to JB's apartment (where his parents, who are diplomats, live). There, his father served whiskey and vodka and most importantly two rounds of champagne. JB's parents are really cool. They were very friendly and generous. JB lives on the 30th floor of a building and has a really awesome view. We spent the actual New Year's (midnight) there. We kissed everyone in the room at midnight.

Guillaume and I were both wearing hats that we bought while in Beijing.

JB and I (JB's wearing Guillaume's hat). We're in JB's room - nice, no? Can't believe he prefers to go back to Erwai and sleep on campus... He even has a bathtub in his ensuite bathroom!!!

JB's kind of introverted and shy and he hadn't planned to go clubbing with us, but we finally convinced him to come out once the midnight champagne drinking and one last beer were finished with.


This is the party we went to - it was mostly house/techno music and we literally danced from 1 - 6 AM. There were hundreds if not thousands of us - mostly foreigners - packed into this large space, dancing the night away. When we left around 6:30 AM there weren't that many people still hanging around.

At first we had to wait in line for a super long time to put our stuff at the coat check - the Chinese coat check system consists of putting your items in a large garbage bag and putting the bag in a disorganised stack in the back room. There's no organizational method so it takes an eternity to find the bag that corresponds to your number when you pick up your stuff. Since we arrived after midnight, when quite a few people were leaving, it took forever to put our stuff away, so we ended up giving up and putting our stuff on a seat in a dark corner. On our way to the dance floor, Gaetan got into a bit of a squabble with a couple guys near the coat check (Gaetan was pretty drunk) and the next thing we knew, he had suddenly disappeared. We looked for him but never found him. I thought I had left my bag with him - my bag had my camera - so I didn't take any pictures.

In the end we found out that Gaetan had left directly after the coat check clash - he was carrying Loic's leather jacket which cost Loic 1000 euros. All night I also thought he had my bag but when we went to look for our stuff I found my bag in plain sight on a seat beside our coats; nobody had stolen the 200 yuan or the camera I had inside. It's too bad I hadn't realised it was there earlier, or I would've taken pictures of the club. It was pretty cool.

Since Gaetan had only 5 yuan on him and he was all alone he took a taxi and ran when he arrived at Erwai. Terrible!

Two of Loic's students - Pascal and Melodie - came to the club around 1 AM.

The music was good - upbeat and danceable. I enjoyed myself.

When we came back to Erwai - Loic, Guillaume, Katia and I - we went to Gaetan's room to check if he was safe. He had left Loic's jacket on the floor of his bedroom. Wonderful! Everyone was happy. Tom, Matt, Pascal, Loic and JB had left in one taxi earlier.

Today I woke up around 11:30 AM - didn't sleep more than four hours. I had lunch with Bob and spent a couple hours going over my Chinese and listening to music at Yang Yang's. Then I went to Loic's and watched Shrek II before eating dinner (Tom joined us). After dinner we watched Assault on Precinct 13. I had already seen it but a long time ago so I could re-live the stress of the movie. Fun times. Now it's nearing 1 AM and I should really get some sleep.

Tomorrow I should do my students' grades for their exams and figure out their final marks. Sigh.