Some days just go from boo to yay! (Marcus)

Today was one of those days. At around 1pm we get a call from Mr Pan to tell us we didn't have to teach today as our Junior 1 students had exams...woot!!

It was a good day all round really. After a lengthy sleep-in(as we don't start teaching on Thursday's until 2pm anyway), we walked down the street to buy some bread. While in the Baker's I found these green cakes that Mr Pan brought over for us on day 1(the day he exploded an egg in our microwave). I have been looking for these damned cakes every since as when warmed up, they're delicious! They're just a basic green cake - which I have since found out are made from rice(Yay for Courtney), and have these brown nuts in them. Mmm mmmh.

We bought the bread to use with the luxury item we got from Metro last week...bacon. It's american bacon and SUPER fatty. Man I have never seen so much oil come out of bacon in the pan - how unsurprising - go Americans. Anyway bacon and eggs was a treat and a half - now if only the bread didn't have that odd sweetness to it, it would have been perfect.

Shortly before cooking breakfast Mr Pan came around with a woman to take photos of us - it being a nice sunny day and all. Apparently the Principle; Mr Shen, is writing a new book - I guess he has written a few before. This one is supposedly on - well foreign something - perhaps China's schools and their foreign elements - ie foreign teachers, sending students overseas to study and tour schools/uni's etc etc. So they wanted photos of us to I guess be in it. So yeah!

In good ol Mr Pan style, he emailed us the photos lickedy split. That is of course Mr Pan in the photo, sporting what looks like a fairly recent(almost flat top) haircut.

Course now we have to pose in front of the lake - the school's pride and joy (when it's not full of fish corpses that is)

And in front of the 'Experts Apartment', us being definite experts on foreign stuff.

And it wouldn't be complete unless we posed with the photographer herself - a photo I have no doubt she will treasure forever. These are 100% white people!!! This photo also illustrates the average height differences here.

Because we suddenly had the afternoon off, we took the bus into WuXi to do some shopping. I badly wanted some new T-Shirts. Courtney headed in there yesterday whilst I went and got a neck and shoulders massage seeing my neck has been really damned stiff. 30 minutes for about 6 bucks Australian. While she was in town, she discovered a store called Uni Qlo. Now the cool thing about this is Jess recommended this to us - saying they were in Japan and really good. We looked on the internet for it with Jess before coming to China and couldn't find them - only in Hong Kong, but nup, there's one here alright.

So we went in today to check it out and yes, the place is awesome! It was probably the most normal feeling clothes store we've been in yet i would say - product wise anyway. The staff on the other hand...jesus christ.

So the place was full of really cool T-shirts(woot!) and all kinds of other stuff. I came away with 4 of them..and we both bought new umbrellas(I don't know why there were umbrella's, but there was). Courtney bought 3 new tops. There was actually western style boxer shorts, and socks that were not paper thin...ACTUAL normal socks. Yay for the little people.

The clothing in there was really awesome. I will definitely be going back there as T-shirts are just a staple in my day to day clothing diet, no matter the weather. The staff... Like every other Chinese store there were around seven times as many staff as there were customers. This store had more than most I think. Someone at the Chinese class last Sunday said that in China, employment was more important than efficiency -which I suppose is a good idea considering there's people _everywhere_. Anyhow the staff were WEIRD. They kept saying Good Morning.

In China, we have found it incredibly common to be wished Good Morning in the afternoon or evening - it's like the standard 'We cant speak english' greeting. In Uni Qlo...they are wishing it NON STOP. NON STOP!! I don't know what the HELL is up with whatever their staff trainers are imparting them, but it was quite frankly ridiculous.

One guy would go, Good Morning! Sometimes seeminly to no-one in particular, then it would set off a chain reaction of Good Mornings through 4-5 other female staff dotted around the different sections. You would walk from one side to the other, and be wished Good Morning 3-4 times. You'd then walk back, and pass the same people and they'd wish it again. They were saying it, no shit, almost without pause. We ignored it, but it is hands down the oddest shopping experience we have had in China to date. The place looked modern. The staff were dressed in quite a stylish modern way- obviously show-casing the stores products, but this Good Morning thing was just weird shit to the max.

Four more classes of Senior 1 tomorrow then it's into the weekend. We've been invited to go to Ronnie's Australian Bar to celebrate ANZAC day tomorrow night for drinks - sounds good. Hopefully we'll score ourselves a nice western meal while we're there. Saturday at 11am we have the wedding banquet - god knows what that's going to be like. Then Sunday we're going to the Chinese class again - so far so good.

We also have found out there's another holiday next week - so we have Thursday and Friday off and probably get to skip 2 of the 3 classes on Wednesday afternoon as the holiday starts at 2pm. Allll good. We'll likely use that time to head into WuXi and check out this interesting looking mountain/garden thing that is right near the CBD.

And finally, Happy Birthday today to Robert Dunn, my dad who would have been 61 today. xx