The Floor, and Dinner

I took this picture of the floor the other day while I was waiting in the lobby. I like it. I also like my Chinese classes more than I used to. I feel more productive when we are doing some writing. The teacher also forces Kat and I to struggle through reading things. Sometimes she tells us neat cultural things. For instance, there's a fairly straightforward way to talk to someone in a store which Kat and I can handle. But when my teacher's parents were in their 20s, you absolutely had to use this phrase which means something like, "For the sake of the people, could you bring me..." when you were interested in buying something. Anyways, that's enough ado. Here's the floor. Two nights ago I went out to dinner with Kat, her mentor, and his girlfriend. The cab got stuck in traffic so we walked the last leg through a hutong (quaint alleyway). That's Darren (the mentor) in the China shirt, followed by Kat.
We came to this little tucked-away restaurant with delicious food and German lounge music... that sortof confused me. Emily joined us there. She and Darren go out to eat all the time and know lots of neat places to eat. They also gave us tips on markets and clubs. And they have cute little spats where they use words like 'rubbish,' because they're British.
After a delicous dinner, including mango salad, mashed potatoes, kebabs, tofu, and fruit bathed in rice wine, we took the obligatory group photo.
Then we wandered along a nicer hutong with a lot of shops, stopped for rum of various flavors (mine was honey-banana) in a neat little lounge with a second level, and relaxed. We got the coolest seats; we had to walk over a bit of a gangway to get to them.

Work is going forward, with its ups and downs. A big batch of interns is leaving and being replaced by another big batch. I wrote an article for the intern newsletter about the trip to the amusement park and was rewarded with a t-shirt, probably to be featured in a picture on the blog shortly, since I'm running out of clean clothes.