Birthdays Galore

The past week has been fairly quite, aside from my senior classes ending, and celebrating birthdays of two friends. I gave the seniors a short final and asked for feedback on the back of their test paper. I think one of the best comments was "James, you are my 2nd favorite foreign teacher. (Aaron is my first)." I thought it was a great compliment and felt very touched by her words, honestly. I heard a rumor that we would have the same students next semester, which bodes well for me, since, I really enjoy the students that I had.

Last weekend, I met Kevin's two friends, Monique and Jessica, who was celebrating her birthday. We had a nice, frigid stroll along the Song Hua River and ended in a bakery, sharing some cake and hot "chocolate." Along the way we found a pack (group?) of bull statues and enjoyed the sunset (which I think starts around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, *tear).

Our Korean friend, Joo also celebrated his birthday this past week. We went to this pretty fancy restaurant, where the "lazy Susan" was the epitome of lazy, it was battery operated! Anyhoo, the party was fun and as Matt said, "this place certainly has the best presentation of any restaurant in Jilin, I hope its not too expensive." Towards the end of our festivities, we played an infuriating game called, "two up, one up/one down, two down." Its actually an amusing party game which involves drinking, if that's your bag.

The birthday boy, Joo and his favorite cake
The spread on the self-rotating table
oddly colored vegetable shrimp and fish
Hooray! 好哇!