As many of you may know I have the tendency to grow a full thick beard rather quickly and not spend the time to properely groom it. So I decided against bringing any shaving supplies with me to China. After two weeks my bird ws getting very long and very red. So today after I went to the police station with Lily, to get my residency permit, she wanted to take me to dinner with her cousins. However we finished at the police station far to early and dinner wasnt scheduled for another hour or so. So Lily asked me if there was anything I really wanted to do, my reply was that I really wanted to find a barber to give me a shave. In China there are hair salons every ten feet advertising western style hair colors and styles for women. Even though there are like a million salons none of them can offer a shave. So Lilly called her two cousins for help and they put their heads together and decided they had no idea where to get a shave, but they were willing to ask at every possible location for a shave. So we set off down "sketchy" street, obviously that is not its real name we refer to it as sketchy street because if you walk into the wrong restaurant on that street you may end up with a happy ending, if you know what I mean. So sketchy street runs for like 15 miles from one end of shiyan to another. We started at one end and walked almost 3 quarters of the way down the street until we finally found a man who understood what I wanted. It was the most glorious thing in the world. If you have never had a shave with a straight razor and hot towel treatment you are missing out. Then he proceeded to trim my beard with scissors and a comb. All the while Lily, her two cousins and the female proprietor spoke in Chinese only stopping to have a laugh, probably at me. In the end it cost me 5 quai (6.7 quai = 1 USD) for a shave. Then we went on to dinner at a Korean restaurant, were they bring you the food raw and you cook it at a grill that is insest in your table. It was quite delicious and I got to show off my grilling skills to all off the people working at the restaurant.
In my earlier post I mentioned that I was teaching my first class today and I was really nervous. The class however went very well, since I didn't atcually teach anything, i just spent the whole time going around the room and learning people's names and hobbys. I will be only teaching this class for 3 weeks though so I don't have to try to hard. it seems there is also some dissent in the teaching ranks about me teaching writing. Many of the teachers feel it is a waste of time to bring me here and have me teach something the Chinese teachers can teach. If i am teachign writing then they will have to have Chinese teachers teach oral English which is a bad idea. So there is a puch to get that changed and have me teach all oral English, which I would like very well since i here writing classes are a lot of work and a pain.
Finn and I are discusses whether or not we can get a discount on a cleaning lady if we both hire her to clean our rooms. We are both single dudes and a little messy. I would like to say he is messier than me, but he really just has more stuff to get messy than I do. Plus he has a dog so that contributes. So anybody interested in coming to China fell free to send me a resume, I will offer room and board plus a modest monthly salary that Finn will kick into as well. For those that are concerned i have eaten my fair share of Chinese cuisine and my stomach seems to have settled in very and I have not had any repeats of the Mcdonalds episode. Well I think I will sign off for now, i am supposed to get a brand new computer next week and if I do I will be able to finally upload all my videos.
