KARAOKE

Last night the entire group of us TTC trainees went out on the town to a popular karaoke bar. Karaoke is absolutely massive here in China and there are karaoke bars all over. Instead of it being just one big open bar, there are hundreds of small rooms you can rent out for the night to sing karaoke with your friends with bar service. Because there were so many of us, we had the full bar booked and it was so cool! There was a light up stage with a stripper pole in the center and a massive screen for the karaoke. It is a lot more fun than karaoke back home where you just stand there and sing, this was a full on performance when you sang! All of the Europeans (I am the only Canadian here) are very reserved when it comes to things like karaoke so they all needed a little liquid courage before they were willing to get up and sing so for the first hour or so it was a couple of aussies, a britt, and myself that were stealing the show. It was soooo much fun getting up and singing and dancing and just having a great time and by the end of the night, our entire group was up on stage! There was a lot of fun to be had by all and the beer was flowing all night long! I got to experience a british drinking technique called a torpedo where you stick a straw in your bottle of beer and bend it over the neck and hold it then chug your entire beer..let's just say it was inevitable to be absolutely wasted! We also tried some baijo, which is chinese "rice wine" i use the word wine lightly because it's more like a potent rice vodka because it is 60% alcohol! It honestly tastes like washer fluid or something its disgusting! After we shut down the karaoke bar, we all hopped into cabs and headed over to San Li Tun, which is a club district and went to a club and danced and drank some more. While we were there, one of the waiters could speak some English and asked me why I was in Beijing and I said to teach English. Well, ten minutes later he brang over a friend who was an engineer who was trying to learn English for his job who sat and talked with me to practice English which was very cool! This tends to happen a lot here because the people so desperately want to practice conversational English so you will constantly have Chinese people in the street running up to you and saying "Hello, how are you" in the most monotone and memorized voice possible. Finally at 3 am we stumbled out of the club and made our way back home and now here I am, nursing a hangover with hotpot noodles and lots of water...well worth it!