"Complications arose, ensued, were overcome..."

The last time there was a 9 in a year it was 1999. I was 14. 9/11 hadn't happened yet and the world was preparing for the worst as the Millenium approached.

But, as we all know nothing very eventful that New Year's. I clearly remember rejoicing in one of my childhood friend's basements watching the ball drop and realizing the everything was still fully operational (including the Death Star), while our parents played poker upstairs.

My New Year's Eves on record are never very eventful. Generally I'm some place I don't want to be, drinking either too much or too little and never with the people I want to see. I've spent too many years not with whomever I was dating at the time, which was usually depressing. Of course thinking back on it I reliaze now what an idiot I was moaning instead of having a decent time. Lame. I'm so lame. But we live and learn.

As many of you know from either reading this blog or talking to me that I was dreading this New Year's Eve in a huge way. I was being made to do things that I didn't feel comfortable doing, acting in plays and hanging out with my teachers all night (many of whom I feel like I haven't been getting along with lately). I was so angry. I kept thinking "they have no right to force me to do something that I don't want to do. I would much rather hang out with my friends in Hong Kong. This is so stupid. I should just fake sick. Maybe I can leave early." These are the thoughts that were running through my head all day.

As soon as I got back from Chinese class I ran in and changed and then was quickly ushered by non-english speaking chinese teachers onto a very crowded bus to take us the short distance to the hotel where I would experience my first Chinese new year banquet. The hotel lobby where our party was to happen was beautiful and thankfully humongous because by the time everyone arrived they were packed to the back of the hall. I mingled with the few teachers I knew well enough and watched the rambunctious group of kids attack the stage. My seat was at the front with some of the higher up teachers and of course my contact teacher. We ate hotel food which, while good, always seems to be the same thing so no one ever eats alot. As always there was wine and tiny shots of baijiu (which I made sure only to drink ONE glass).

Then of course the acts begun. The teachers were grouped based on the subject they taught and were expected to put together either songs, dances, or skits to preform for the entire group. Ours was 10th so I sat back and ate, drank and watched the festivities. There was also a raffle for rice cookers and heaters (I won a rice cooker, yay!) every now and again to keep things interesting. Some of the skits were hilarious (like the one where the science teachers came out only in towels and then the men played women O.o) others were beautiful, like where two of the English teachers did a traditional Chinese dance with those really really long sleeves.

Our skit was about a rich man and his wife looking to buy some cosmetics or something and a man saying "well, look at my 7 beautiful wives" to which the wives walk out and prattle off famous advertisement slogans in Chinese. Being the youngest and the most "good looking" of the English teachers I was supposed to come out last and say "大家好, 才是真的好." Which is a hair product slogan. My favorite part was while I was waiting to the side of the stage all the children that were hanging out at the front were whispering in Chinese "the foreign teacher! the foreign teachers gonna act too!" which was cute. I got a nice applause for my attempt at the line and we actually ended up winning the talent show. :-) Fun times. I think it helped that our skit was 10th and not 1st, gave me time to prep up and of course drink some.

Random things of that night

- playing the awkward balloon game with Mr. Chen Da and being THE ONLY ONES BRAVE ENGOUH TO DO IT. WE ARE AWESOME.

- A translation on a computer about America's financial crisis that read "Group financial henchmen that kill Americans"

- Mr. Tang dancing on the stage with one of the dancers and acting like such a hilarious drunken fool most of the night.

- Mr. Guan trying to take watermelon directly out of my mouth.

- The female teacher grabbing my arm when the "almost fight" broke out. Cute.

- During one of the skits (where fake swords were used) when they were dropped the kids picked them up and started playing with them.

- Mr. Huang randomly gave me shampoo for no reason.

- "I CANNOT BELIEVE IT!" mahahahahaha

- realizing that there are more cool teachers at this school than I previously thought

At around 10:30 the party was mostly over and nearly everyone was headed home. I was about to head with the rest of the women teachers but on the way I got stopped by the gym teachers. I love the gym teachers because they have the best sense of humor of all the teachers (they're also the scariest at school, it's almost like they have a split personality. I got approached by the Kung fu and the Tae Kwon Do teachers (who are both relatively young, and pretty cute) asking if I wanted to go Karaokeing with them. Condsidering it wasn't even 12:00 yet and I realized that if I didn't go out I would most than likely spend my New Year's Eve in my room, alone; so I agreed. Mrs. Liu told them to not let me drink too much and headed out, a little worried I'm sure. But I was in good hands, they do know martial arts after all. We drank a bit more at the hotel until they started closing up and then we made our way back to school.

I love how drunk driving isn't illegal in China. Mr. Guan (the teacher who painfully obviously has the hots for me but is like 40) was swerving allllll over the road ON PURPOSE and nearly hit about 10 people. They loved the fact that I was screaming the whole time and clinging onto one of them.

A huge surprise ended up being that one of them spoke English rather well, well enough to translate most things for me, which was really helpful at some points and hilarious as other points. I also found out that 3 of them were in their early to mid twenties which was another surprise, I guess like me, they seem old compared to a bunch of junior high school students. We headed over to the KTV across from the school and booked a small room. They nearly got into a fight with some other drunken Chinese men. The English speaking teacher told me "Those men were NOT polite, so we almost fight them."

They did their thing, singing Chinese songs which is always delightful to hear and those of us that weren't singing played the dice game. They made me sing, to which I found some Billy Joel and the Beatles to help me out. I attempted some Chinese songs and danced with my drunken teachers. I realized that one of the younger teachers (Tae Kwon Do guy Mr. Li but NOT Bruce Li) drank waaaaay too much. He was falling all over the place and as the other teachers were saying he was "acting crazy!" I ended up helping him walk home so he didn't fall on his face. They decided that they wanted to walk me home and make sure I got to my door even though it was clear that they were much drunker than I was. I convinced them by walking in and then watched them leave. When I checked out my window five minutes later I saw Mr. Li sit down on the basketball platform. I put on my slippers and ran back downstairs. Mr. Oh was standing next to him. As soon as Mr. Li saw me he started to tell me to get back inside and almost fell off the platform. I sat next to him and forced his head between his legs. He kept whining that I should just go home, that he would be fine. I told him that unless he could get up and get a taxi by himself that I wasn't going to be convinced. Mr. Oh started pacing so I told him that if he could manage he could go home and I would take care of Mr. Li. He did. But it would take another 15 minutes to convince the inebriated man to get into a cab, I literally had to chase him down at one point as he tried to flee/stumble away. I know why he was acting like that (besides being drunk) Chinese men have this ridiculous sense of pride that they would rather die than let things much with it. I told him that I didn't care, when you're friends, you help each other. Even if it means hanging out on the school track with a Tae Kwon Do teacher you've never talked to at 4 in the morning and making sure he gets home okay. He kept saying "no face! no face...." meaning that he was going to lose face because of this. He also was convinced that his friend was going to tell all the other teachers (which yeah, probably did happen.) I gave him my phone number and after I got him a cab made him promise he'd call me when he got home, so I'd know that he hadn't stumbled into one of the many trecherous Chinese pot holes.

He called me around 10 minutes later and I promptly went to bed. It was 4:30 in the morning.

So far, ranks pretty far on my list of New Year's Eves as one of the better ones.