Sea World Saves Mel's Birthday

Mel's is a bit touchy about her birthday. It's not in the summer like mine. It's not on her best friend's birthday like mine. It was always over Thanksgiving, so her friends were never available to celebrate. So, imagine her glee when, this year, her birthday fell on the first Monday back at work after vacation. Add in the fact that her job is a hot mess, and she wasn't really too excited. Luckily, I'd planned a great buffet dinner for her after work. But first, work:

It was also Jason's last day in China, so I brought him in as my "show" for show and tell class. My job isn't nearly as stupid as Mel's and I'm enjoying it so far. Jason read "Where the Wild Things Are" and played blocks with my students. I introduced him as "Mr. Keddy 2", and when the two of us left them for lunch they yelled "Bye, double Mr. Keddy!"

Well, after school, the buffet didn't work out so well. I couldn't find any obviously awesome buffet places online that weren't at like 5 star hotels and cost more than we could afford, but there was this one place called "4 Seas" at Windows of the World station that had good reviews. When we got there, we asked to see the food before we paid. It was ALL seafood. It looked lovely, the restaurant was impeccable, but all three of us don't like seafood. The only non-seafood dish that we saw was "pig ears". So, we left. But I had no plan b! It was Mel's birthday, she'd had a crappy day at school, it was Jason's last night, we were all hungry and there was nowhere special to eat. Mel suggested just going back to the Sea World area near our apartment. I was all "are you sure?" but she was sure, so we went.

We'd heard there was a good Italian restaurant there, so that's where we went. And it was pretty good! We had wine and pasta, and the ambiance was nice with the red lanterns still hanging from the holiday and the still-warm evening air allowing us to eat outside, even in October.

From the restaurant, we'd spied 2 things we decided we had to do. Number one, was to get portraits done. There were two guys set up doing caricatures in the square, and they hadn't worked all night, so we went over and sat down. Slowly, a crowd formed around us. At the peak, there were a dozen people watching us. Some of them even took pictures. Why would they want pictures of total strangers like that? Also, every now and then our artist (who had an awesome mustache and cowboy hat) would look at one of us, say something in Chinese, and then everyone would laugh. What was so funny?

This. This was so funny. After a half hour of posing, we were shown our picture. We nearly peed ourselves laughing. I seriously hadn't laughed that hard in a long time. We all look Asian! And Jason looks like a lightbulb/alien. We had to roll it up quickly. If we looked at it any longer and kept laughing, we were worried we'd offend the artist. We truly loved it so, so much.

The second thing we needed to do was ride these "things". They're like big robotic stuffed animals that you pay 10 yuan ($1.65) to ride for about 5 minutes. They just drive the whole time and you steer them around. They also play music and have blinking lights. You might not believe this, but usually it's kids that ride these. It was hilarious driving these things around the square. Earlier in the evening we'd seen our principal walk by. I wonder who else saw this spectacle!

Me and my zebra.

Jason and his horsey.

Once again, people were taking pictures and videos of us, but luckily Jason also thought to take a video of what it's like to ride these things around. So funny.

I planned on using one of the cakes at the buffet for Mel's birthday cake, but since we didn't go to the buffet, we ran into Dunkin Donuts for a donut I could stick a candle in! While we were there, we took a picture with this giant cutout of Lebron James, which apparently is the secret code for getting a buy one, get one free coffee coupon because that's what the cashier gave us once the photo was taken. Random! Next, we went to Mcdonald's for ice cream. We ordered 3 at 3 yuan a piece but the cashier wouldn't hear of charging us 9 yuan for them. She charged us 6.5 yuan for some reason I'll never comprehend. She must have heard that there was a birthday girl with us. When we got home Jason said, "I'll never understand what happened in the last 10 minutes". Me neither.

Mel blowing out her birthday candle on her weird "pudding" flavored donut, and laughing again at our amazing caricature. I would say the night had definitely turned around for my Mel.

We were up early the next morning to take Jason to the ferry terminal. He was taking a boat directly to the Hong Kong airport and just 31 short hours later he was back at home in Canada. I think he had a pretty good trip. Word is he even got hard up and made his own fried rice last week. Asia can change a person in many ways.