Ruth knows a teacher at the college called Vivienne who had been giving her free Mandarin lessons.They invited me to join them, so I went along in my lunch break even though I'm not good at learning languages.Vivienne taught me to say I don't eat meat, fish or seafood but I do eat eggs. "Wo bu chi rou, yu he haixian dan wo chi jidan".When I practised it a bit later on she laughed at me because I said "I am an egg".Well I warned her I'm not good at learning languages!

When I had finished one of my afternoon classes, I bumped into Mike waiting outside the class.His mother's school is Genius Baby and I was actually at the Flower Garden not Genius Baby so I was a little creeped out by him just appearing at my work!He'd been sent by his mother to invite me to dinner an hour later.I accepted the invite because I didn't want to disappoint the headmaster, but I was dressed in filthy kindergarten clothes and my hair was a mess.I practically ran out of the school, I jumped on a bus home; I didn't even wait for it to stop before I jumped off.I rushed to my apartment and quickly put the kettle on.I filled the bucket with hot water and washed myself and my hair in less than 10 minutes.I dried my hair and found something nice to wear.The time from initial invite in one part of town, to being ready for dinner in another part of town, took me less than an hour.I think that is a personal record!

I met Mike outside the yard and got into the headmasters car with him.There was a Chinese girl in there too, Mike later told me she is a teacher at the school, but I didn't recognise her.The headmaster drove around for a while and kept making agitated phone calls whilst driving.It turned out she was trying to find someone else who was joining us for dinner too.Eventually we found her and she squeezed into the back of the car.Mike said she had been his mother's friend since they were at university together.They gave me the choice between Western food and Chinese food.I opted for Chinese food because I like eating Chinese food with Chinese people, I usually end up eating things I never would have known existed or known to order myself.

The food was nice, I tried some things I hadn't tried before like carrot filled dumplings and candied pumpkin.They told me which dishes contained meat or fish and which ones were just vegetables.I ended up sat next to Mike and he invited me to spend a week in Hong Kong with him as his mother was going there on a business trip and could take up to two people.I asked if I would lose my salary and he said yes so I declined.He then went on to talk about aliens (including his own UFO sightings of course) religion, conspiracy theories, and other such fascinating subjects.I'm kind of glad I didn't agree to a week of this!I'd previously thought he was about the same age as me; he even has a few grey hairs.I asked him how old he is and he said he is 18.He's the same age as my little brother!