Mariah Carey??

Ya know how we Americans often think that Chinese people all look the same? Well, 1) I'm definitely finding this to be false and 2) I think they think the same thing about Americans. Tony, our Chinese IECS guy, told me earlier this week that I look like Mariah Carey. He tried to convince my team of the resemblance, and they half-heartedly agreed for his sake. I just laughed.
There are so many unexpected things that have happened so far in China...Mariah only being one of them. Today for lunch with some school officials, I ate duck neck and and I "fished" around for a piece of fish meat right underneath its little fin. Even more unexpectedly, I somewhat enjoyed both!
Earlier this week we to K-TV (a popular karaoke place) with students and had so much fun with them singing and dancing around. Americans do karaoke to make fools of themselves and show everyone how bad our voices really are, and Chinese people do karaoke to show how incredible their voices really are. It's fun to listen to them sing their hearts out! We look forward to K-TVing again.
I was previously under the impression that China had no good coffee to offer, but we have found this wonderful little place called the Honey Pool that serves great coffee and amazing cheesecake. Any hopes of me eating healthier in China are now out the window! :)
Oh, funny story...at dinner the other night, Tim asked Tony how to say the name of this new little potato dish we were eating. Tony thought for a second and said "I forgot" in his Chinese accent. I looked back to Tim and saw sincere concentration on his face as he repeated "I-fah-got, I-fah-got," thinking that he was learning the Chinese name for the dish. I gently informed him that Tony really had just forgotten the name, and we all laughed pretty hard at Tim's blunder.
Well, I'm through my first week of teaching, and I'm already on a break. We have this week off due to National Day in China. On Friday we're going to Beijing to meet up with the other IECS people, so it should be a lot of fun.
As for now, I'm gonna go get me some dinner to replace the duck neck from earlier today...