One sketchy night

I just had one of the best days and one of the sketchiest nights of my life.  Okay, that might be exaggerating a little, but at least now you're interested. :)

Every Saturday afternoon I tutor a high school girl in English.  Why I went and committed all my Saturdays to this, I'm not sure, but so far it's been fine.  The girl speaks English incredibly well, so we mostly just sit around chatting or studying math for the SAT II.  (Thanks to my mom's help, I have the privilege of teaching her matrices.)  Yesterday the girl asked to meet a little later than usual, and then decided to invite me to her house for dinner!  What an awesome opportunity!  She lives with her parents and her aunt, and her male cousin lives with them during the weekends (when he doesn't stay at his boarding school).  Of course, the food was incredible, but even more exciting was simply being able to see how a Chinese family interacts.  And the fact that most of them actually don't speak English meant that I got to do some practicing, too.  Sweet! 

I felt bad having to rush dinner with the family, but before I knew I would be doing that, I had already agreed to meet up with someone else for the evening.  All the foreign students here keep telling me that I'm too friendly and know far too many people.  The fact that I got together last night with an out-of-town friend (from a city I've never even been to) might prove them right.  Might. 

So my friend lives about an hour and a half from Shenyang, but comes relatively frequently to take classes on the weekends.  Whenever he comes to town, he calls me up so we can do something.  Last night, I thought we were just going out to get drinks.  Boy, was I wrong! 

We went with two of his classmates, one black gentleman from Senegal who I already knew from the dorm, and one rich Chinese guy from a different city about an hour away.  On a side note, I recommend making friends with rich people any time you go somewhere knew.  It's convenient to have rich friends.  The rich Chinese guy from last night has a car, so we all got in and went to a bar I had never been to before.  Turns out it's the best Western food in Shenyang!  Seriously, we had steak.  Dang.  So we hung around there for a while and then met two other people who we invited to join us to go to KTV - Chinese karaoke.  If the only karaoke you've ever done was in the U.S., you seriously don't know what karaoke can be.  Here, you rent a room just for your own group, with couches and your own karaoke machine.  Of course, you have to order snacks and drinks as well, but I don't think most Chinese people would be willing to sing karaoke without a little alcohol.  So the group of six of us had some food, some drinks, and a lot of fun singing and dancing together. 

At 2 a.m. the KTV closes, so obviously we had to go.  To my surprise, though, the original group of four of us didn't go back to school.  No, no, we went to the "shower place."  This was seriously one of the most bizarre experiences of my life.  Not having any idea what we were doing, speaking only some Chinese, and being after 2 a.m... yeah, it was interesting.  The first thing you do in this place is go shower.  Obviously, the males and females don't shower together, but that meant that I was separated from the three guys I arrived with - and left to my own devices to figure out the "shower place."  Turns out trying to communicate with a Chinese lady while standing naked is a little bit awkward.  But I successfully showered, and then put on some clothes they provided to go upstairs and meet back up with the guys.  (I only failed at finding a comb to use on my hair after washing it.  Eh, oh well.)

Upstairs, we were in a large room filled with recliners.  Since it was already so late when we arrived, a lot of the recliners were already being used by sleeping people (mostly males).  So we took four recliners next to each other in the back row, and sat back to relax.  Soon enough, along came three attractive Chinese ladies and one attractive Chinese man.  You probably figured out already that the male was for me.  And we got foot massages.  Now here is a question I actually want an answer to: why on earth do we not have foot massages like this in the U.S.?  Amazing!  After spending a good long time massaging our feet, the masseuses actually then massaged our entire legs.  It's marvelous.  The only slight down-side is that all four of our masseuses actually wanted to talk with me, since I was the random white girl who showed up, but even that was fun.  Good practice once again.  (Actually, did I mention that the rich guy hardly speaks English?  So there was a lot of Chinese going around all night.  It was fine until the guy was slurring his words due to the alcohol, but then I just talked with the others in English.) 

After the massages, I expected we would be finishing up and heading home.  Nope.  Wrong again.  We actually slept there, in those recliners.  What a strange experience!  Sleeping in a room full of Chinese men (and one Senegalese).  But it was fun.  My friend who had initially invited me out was in the recliner next to mine, so we chatted anytime neither of us were sleeping... which was actually quite often, since apparently every grown Chinese man snores.   That doesn't really surprise me, though, given how many years they've had of breathing in this kind of air. 

About 7:30 a.m., my friend and I got up and ate some breakfast while the rich guy and the Senegalese kept sleeping.  Eventually they woke up as well and we set off.  On the way out, it was back to the awkward talking-to-Chinese-ladies-while-naked situation, but it went much smoother the second time around. 

Now I arrived back to campus at 9:00 a.m., and I just have to laugh when I think about my evening.  What a bizarre set of experiences, but how exciting to have seen so much of the inside of Chinese life in the last 24 hours!  And possibly the best part of it all?  I didn't have to pay a single fen (i.e. Chinese penny).  Like I said, making rich friends is the way to go!