A week of firsts....

So the weekend rolled around again and when on Friday I didn't have any plans, I jumped at an invite from Linda to go to KTV with her and some other teachers from school. Just for anyone who isn't familiar, KTV is a Chinese karaoke chain that Chinese people go absolutely MENTAL for. I've never been, let alone with Chinese people, so I was pretty excited to see how the other teachers unwind after a hard day imparting valuable knowledge on young minds (in their case, maybe not so much mine... I've just been singing Incy Wincy Spider with my classes all week).

We got to KTV and were shown to our own private booth where we could relax and sing to our hearts content... and before I'd even sat down, taken in the surroundings and plucked up the courage to sing, a microphone was being thrown at me to sing first in front of everyone... because apparantly I am the 'guest', and therefore it is up to me to embarrass myself first (my words not theirs). Now here I should mention that Linda was the only teacher there who was really able to communicate with me as none of the others spoke any good English, and my Chinese still isn't really up to scratch, but nonetheless they managed to shout 'Justin Bieber' at me repeatedly until I sang Baby for them. Being the only foreigner also meant I had to compensate for the lack of English speakers and sing enough English songs to balance out 10 Chinese people singing Chinese songs... I think it's fair to say I felt no shame at the end of the night. To name a few, I busted out great renditions of Jessie J 'Price Tag' (the only word they understood was 'money', but they loved it), Adele 'Rolling in the Deep' (3 times...by request),  Backstreet Boys 'Everybody' (everyone knew this one from our morning exercises) and Beyonce 'Single Ladies' (in which I taught the female teachers how to dance like Beyonce and they LOVED IT). I officially feel like a superstar. The only downside to the night was all the Chinese songs which sound exactly the same... so every time they asked me 'do you like?' I would just have to nod a lot when my real response would be 'Yes, because it sounds EXACTLY like the last one'....

On Saturday I carried on the weekend of firsts by going with Jen for my first Chinese massage. With 4 months sleeping on rock hard mattresses I was feeling desperate and for an hour full body massage for £10, I couldn't say no. However, what must have been in the Chinese small print was just how 'full body' this massage was going to be.... they really did not hold back, all my English prudishness has definitely been knocked down! They were pretty brutal too, but without learning the word for 'softer' first, I had to kind of grin and bear it. I think my back feels a lot better now though... only my dignity has been stripped away but for £10 you can't complain.

This week I also found my first cockroach. A massive one that woke me up it was so loud scuttling around on my floor. I killed it with my mandarin book and first thing the next morning bought a massive can of Raid in an attempt to prolong the inevitable invasion that is going to come as the weather gets hotter and hotter....


I'll end this post with an example of Chinese pop music... complete with dodgy Chinglish and bad Chinese haircuts... they tried to teach me to sing this on Friday night and failed badly. Enjoy...