Chris' Arrival and Company Dinner Party

"If you could have told us this is where we would be right now a year ago, would you believe yourself?"

Straight from the mouth of Chris, who just arrived here on Saturday! I couldn't have said it better my self.

Its hard to believe that just a year ago this whole adventure was just a couple of emails and at best a shot in the dark for the both of us and now, here we are!

You can read Chris' take on his arrival on his blog, which I now have linked along with a few others, on the side of this blog.

He was supposed arrive on Friday March 5th on the same flight I took, but at around 10PM I received a distress call from Beijing saying he was stranded there for the night and would be showing up around 11 the next day.

Fortunately he everything worked out and we meet up with him easily enough the next morning.

After he arrived we went for a quick lunched. (I briefly had him worried we were eating frog strew, which wasn't to much of a leap since there were about a dozen of them in a tank 5 feet away.)


Most of the afternoon was spent unpacking and napping, but at 6 o:clock Lindon had arranged for us to have our annual ENRY dinner party so everyone could meet.

The place we ate was called "The little Sheep" (for good reason). It was actually some of my favorite Chinese food so far. Around 15 people joined us in the end. All of ENRY plus some of Lindon's college friends.

The restaurant style was similar to broth based fondue in Europe. Each person orders a separate broth that stays heated. Mine was mainly garlic and hot pepper based. Then, a HUGE variety of things to cook in the broth is ordered and you get to pick and choose between what you want. Here is a picture of the way it was set up.


But, first there were some appetizers...

Barnacles mmmmmm


and Goose Neck!


Then comes the MASSIVE amount of food. I would hate to do dishes at a place like this. By my count including the dishes we ate off of and not including chop sticks and spoons there where 138 dishes from our table alone!


Thing that where included:
Lotus Root
Potato
Kelp
Lamb
Lamb Intestine
Noodles
Tofu
Lettuce
Cilantro
Cauliflower
Carrots
Beef

There were probably a few others that I forgot but those were the main ones.

Here is a photo of everyone eating together.


Afterward we sat around talking and play "the dice game" or "Bullshit" which is the direct Chinese translation. One of my coworkers challenged everyone around the table to a round.



After, we did a little private room Karaoke with a few coworkers. Chris found "Let it Be" by the Beatles to sing. I sand my staple, Superstition by Stevie Wonder and Lost by Coldplay. This was a new place and only had about about 3 dozen US artists with the majority of them being a similar genre close to Backstreet Boys, Michel Jackson, and Madonna.



Chris was pretty jet lagged by around 10 oclock so we headed back early and got a good nights rest. We are finally pretty settled in now and the appartment is starting to look pretty good. We got Chris a fork and knife today so he is officially living in luxury!

More soon of course. Stay good.