Birthdays & Graduation Parties..and a trip to A&E !!

After Christina's birthday weekend in Changsha, it was birthday season here too, as I had a pre-birthday meal & it was also Ben's birthday (his actual birthday :p) last week too. For my birthday meal, we went to a new restaurant near the college (next to the gym) which also does Western food. As it was my 'birthday' I got given a bowl of Birthday noodles - (eating the longer ones will ensure you have a long life!) which were really tasty and for Ben's birthday we went to a restaurant in town which served the traditional chinese food we've come to know & love here!

As it's nearing the end of term, a lot of the senior students are graduating and so we were invited to some of their Graduation parties. These are very special, quite grand occasions with lots of the students and teachers attending. There was A LOT of food that night! The waitresses kept on bringing out more dishes and more plates, so in the end we had to create a kind of plate Jenga, slotting the plates on top of one another!

The aforementioned trip to A&E also occured at the graduation party, as the students rarely drink so with crates of beer and a bottle of rice wine (strongest drink this side of the hemisphere!) on each table, some of the students did get a bit pie-eyed shall we say, with one poor guy ending up pretty much unconscious :/ so me, Ben and Christina acted as the St. John's Ambulance team & took him to the local hospital. Think he was alright in the end...in Britain, they would have pumped his stomach I'm guessing but over here they put him to bed to sleep it off! Crazy really...

Exams have started now but a lot of the students have already left so it does feel strangely empty on campus all of a sudden! Can't believe how quickly this semester has gone & can imagine next semester will go even quicker!

xxx