St. Patrick's day, Ginger Kids

As everyone knows, St. Patrick's day was just celebrated around the world. In Hangzhou, most all of our friends planned on going to Shamrock, the only Irish pub in town. It has to be the one day of the year that this place makes any money, because it is in a terrible location and just poorly run in general, but we had a pretty great time. There was quite a crowd, people of all ages from all over the world, and a good cover band playing. Later we made it back over to our side of town because there were cheap Guinness' to be had. I did wake up with green paint all over my face, feeling a bit haggard.

At work last week somehow the topic of ginger kids was brought up among the Chinese teachers and me and a couple other American teachers. We began to tell them wild stories expanding on the evils of the ginger gene, basically just stealing everything from a South Park episode and the urban dictionary definition of ginger kids. The Chinese teachers were absolutely fascinated, and are honestly frightened of red hair now.

Gold Medal Hockey

So last week, as most everyone knows, the Canucks had their own little miracle occur by beating the Americans in one of the most memorable hockey games of all time. By winning the gold medal they salvaged what would have been one of the more embarrassing overall Olympic games as well. My account of this game is also probably the most memorable hockey games that I've personally witnessed. Seeing as I'm on the opposite end of the world, and hockey is about as foreign as I am to these people, I had to go to great lengths to watch the game. Word got around that one of the bars we go to would be playing the game, so everyone that cared made the effort and stayed up to watch the puck drop at 3:30 on Monday morning. As Sunday night is one of the more fun nights for people to go out, we just stayed up and made our way there in time to see it from the beginning. About 20 people made it, the majority of which being Canadian, and we all had quite a time. I already hated Sidney Crosby, just on the grounds that he's a bit of a pansy, but him scoring the game winner solidified him as being my most hated athlete in professional sports. Wade, the owner of the bar, was so amused at the behavior of a bunch of rowdy westerners that at the end of the game he was giving out free shots to anyone that wanted them. Obviously it was a complete tragedy the way it ended, but we still managed to have a pretty great time.

I often wonder why Chinese people stare at foreigners like we are aliens. This was one of those times when it makes sense to me. The people walking to work or school at 8:30 in the morning, or those serving us our McDonald's breakfast, were completely terrified, justifiably so. As I said before, probably the most memorable hockey game I've ever witnessed