Oktoberfest in China!

Last Friday Bill and I went with 3 other couples to an Oktoberfest celebration at the local Kempinski Hotel here in Suzhou!  2 years ago we were actually in Munich and of course the 2 of us love beer so we figured why not check out a Chinese German Beer Fest.  The Chinese are obsessed with German Beer Fests - they have them in May, August and October and at many venues.  We actually have a Paulaner, HB, MeisterBrau and Lowenbrau restaurants/beer halls all in our little city of Suzhou!  

To be completely honest we were suppose to attend a different German Beer festival in August the day I had my head stroke incident.   The combination of bloody knees, loss of fluids and hot temperatures prohibited us from going.  So we might as well go to the local one in October!

 Pretzels, sauerkraut, cabbage, sausages!!!

Ironically one of the couples we were with knew the brew master who is licensed from Paulaner in Germany to brew on site in China.   Which meant Bill got his fair share of DUNKEL - which was a private reserve stash that the public didn't know about!!!

 Friend in dirndls!

There was even a Chinese man in lederhosen!

Just a little taste of home/Europe to brighten our day!  

Translations

Sometimes word translations here are as easy as they sound!

In class this week we were learning about food and drinks and Bill was asking how you say Gin and Tonic and then I inquired as to the word cocktail.   Lets go out for "cocktails".

ji wei jiu = cocktail and it's as simple as this:

ji = chicken (cock)
wei = tail
jiu = alcohol

Nothing like literally translating English for Chinese!  Bill and I got a pretty good chuckle out of this one and we're pretty sure we won't  be forgetting the words for cocktails!

Bribery

What do you do when you're on your way home after a gym workout and you step off the elevator to your landlord and 4 other people standing in front of your apartment door?   Your mouth drops!

The minute I said Ni Hao they started speaking a mile a minute, I hadn't even had my key in the door and they were asking about showing our apartment that night.  Here's a good time for me to interject that our landlord is in the process of selling our apartment, our agent Cici told us to not let her have showings, if she wants to show it she should give us the one months rent and we will move out and then she can show it all she wants.

So these 5 women are all speaking and trying to ask me for a showing, then they hand me a massive basket of fruit and ask if they can come back at 6:30 tonight.  

Ummm okay?  I was hot, sweaty, and just wanted a shower - not to mention the apartment was a disaster, I had been to Ikea in the morning, hadn't cleaned up dinner or breakfast dishes from the past few days, I wasn't going to try to argue.  So I hesitantly agreed then called our agent Cici and she says to not let them in tonight- she doesn't trust them.  UGH.   All day I dreaded the visit - they came back, spent about 15 minutes in the apartment and left.  The lady actually spoke decent English and said she wanted the apartment for investment purposes.  Whatever that means.

What really pushed my button was that the current landlord had the guts to actually open my pot of soup on the stove and smell it - SERIOUSLY - who does that when viewing an apartment???

I wonder what type of gift she's going to bring us the next time she bypasses our agent and tries to show the apartment?   Either way the answer is going to be NO.

It's been awhile...

Hi Everyone!
I'm sorry it's been over a week since my last post, after coming back from Thailand and Cambodia it's taken me awhile to get back into the swing of things.
After we returned from our trip that first weekend we had a going away party for an Irish couple we met here.  It was great fun and well it took almost a week to recover from that party.  We went to an infamous place in China called KTV - at this particular KTV we rented a room with 30 other expats and sang karaoke!  It was great fun.  Some KTV's in China are known for "other" activities - aka women escorts, some are just dudes drinking, and most are karaoke.

As we were leaving there was a bit of a mix up with who paid the room rental fee and well needless to say the Chinese Police were called!  WHOOPS!   It all got straightened out though so that was good.

This past week I was busy helping out with the Charity Committee's Casino Night preparations.  On Saturday there was an expat Casino Night held at The Kempinski hotel here in Suzhou.   There were about 300 people in attendance and the EAS hired a company to bring in casino games, dealers, etc., all the proceeds go to our local charities and we had loads of great prizes to win.  So I was a busy bee helping out with some set-up/preparation duties.

Bill managed to win us some beer, wine and an air filtration unit for our bedroom - which I have no clue how to setup and the directions are all in Chinese!   Sooner or later I'll figure it out- for now I have not had luck with online English instructions.  I'll find it though - don't you worry!  Or I'll have our mandarin teacher Zoey help me translate the booklet!  
Speaking of mandarin - we started lessons again on Monday.  Both Bill and I feel we're doing much better in survival 3 so far - key words - SO FAR - ask me in a month how I really feel!?!?! haha

More tales of daily life in China to come this week!

Bangkok - Weekend 2 - We ate scorpions!

Here's the last of our travel pictures!   Our last weekend in Bangkok we picked up Bill's tailor made suit, hit the back packer street for scorpions on a stick, visited the Grand Palace, saw an Emerald Buddha, and ended the trip with an uber expensive drink at the Sky Bar where parts of The Hangover 2 were shot!