Happy New Year!

Happy New Calendar Year! How ever you celebrated I hope it was fun ^^ My flatmates and I went to LPG (expat central) and started the evening with Jägerbombs. In fairness Lou and I had already been drinking for a few hours beforehand (I might have cleared a bottle of wine on my own), we also dressed up specially to go out ^^ I borrowed some red heels, it was fun just to see the look on Sara and Boram's faces - the height difference went from one head taller to two heads.
So, tipsy and giant-like we stayed at LPG most of the night. Various people were around, most from B Class (hooray for B Class!). My friend Ho-Young texted me saying him and his friends were across the road, so I threatened violence if he didn't come over, thankfully he did :) At this point we'd gone from drinking at the bar to drinking at a big table with various Korean classmates. Lou chose this point to order two drinks called a Sperm and a Virgin respectively. Try explaining that in Chinese whilst wasted. Thankfully Lou drank the Sperm X__x; Funny events included Lou's chair breaking, getting flaming absinthe for Sara and Boram (facial expressions are my main source of entertainment) and forcing PiaoQing to dance. He was very uncomfortable, mainly because the rest of us started dancing around LPG's handy strip pole.
All good things must come to an end, and, unfortunately, the end came for us when Lou had to be scraped off the floor of the toilets and taken home, d'awwww. No hangovers for anyone though!
On New Years Day we'd been invited to go to our Japanese classmate's (Yui) adoptive parent's home. Basically, her boyfriend is in Tokyo, so his family have adopted her. The parents have a lovely flat full of traditional Chinese furniture. It was soooooo beautiful, I have no idea why more people don't have it <3 Admittedly it is hugely expensive... the cheap furniture in China is more along the lines of Ikea...
Yui's "aunt" 阿姨 taught us to make dumplings, although Sara was the only one who managed to master the art~ Halfway through we realised that the mini-lobster-type creatures in the bucket were still alive and flailing meekly. A short while later we realised that the crabs being steamed were also alive and flailing... -__________- If there was ever a reason to be vegetarian it's watching living things boil to death.
Mealtime took about 3 hours and revolved around seafood (turns out I have a phobia of sea creatures) and the father challenging me to a drinking contest. The family are very used to teaching Yui new words, so they were very good with us ^^ Turned out the mother had been to Edinburgh(!!) Exciting! She said she particularly liked the King's fortress flat... I assume that means the castle ^^
After the meal we wandered around their flat appreciating the furniture (middle-aged, much.) and scaring the dog. The thing is a pekinese-style brat, whose mother spoils it rotten, also it bit Sara twice -_- Yui's pet name for it is “Keseki” (or something similar), which is Korean for “son of a bitch” ~ It suits him.
when it came to leaving time the mother stuffed bags full of the food we hadn't finished (dumplings mainly ^^) and sent us home with it. The Chinese pride themselves on being incredibly warm and friendly, but unless you join a family or make business friends you never really see the welcoming side. Men in cars shouting “HELLO” at you as you're walking to class does not count as welcoming. Au contraire, it's bloody patronising. It seems to be that friends/family are precious and will be taken care of, for example Yui's family would do anything to help her or her friends, but they'd sooner push a stranger in to the path of a speeding car than make room on the path. At least that's the impression I get after 5 months of living here.
SO! Tomorrow we're heading to Hanoi, Vietnam. I have been given various ice-cream shops and cafés to aim for, hopefully we'll do some cultural things as well as eat! I am so excited for a holiday!