Crisps and Arcade games.

Tuesday morning I had class, which means facing the subway... ls it bad that I wear sunglasses on the subway so that people don't stare at my eyes? In class we discussed the terracotta warriors, and their creator the evil madman who was the first emperor of the Qin dynasty. At the end Evelina gave me my birthday present, a giant bag of Lays salt and vinegar crisps. They tasted amazing! And yes I ate the lot in one day!  

Afterwards Evelina and I took Laura to Wangfujing. We decided to explore Beijings china town. Essentially it's a massive tourist trap, with a hundred identical stalls each selling exactly the same thing as the one before. We did however find an arcade, so I spent 50¥ on tokens for all of us. First we played this Japanese drumming game. There are 2 traditional Japanese drums, which you have to hit in various places and with different amounts of strength in time to the music.

 We attracted quite a crowd, as people came to watch the three Caucasians get very overexcited. I may have got a bit competitive.... Next we played a motorbike game which I was awesome at! (Hate to blow my own horn, but it's true) I tried to entice the girls to play a rally racing game, but they wanted to do the grabbers. Eventually I won a koala that Laura wanted, and got so close to the this little dragon I had my eye on. But alas twas not to be. Evelina and I had to head back for our respective children, but on the subway I watched Shaun the Sheep. You know the Wallace and Gromit spin-off? Well it was on the subway's TV screen. A little bit of home. 

Tuesday was Teacher's festival day, Helen's mum was a teacher, so we had a big dinner in her honour. The dad even came home from work early! There were lots of dishes I hadn't seen before, including a garlic and ginger fish. It was ok, but I found it quite hard to take the skin off only using chopsticks. They find it very impressive that I can use chopsticks; I just want to say 'Yes, we uncivilised Western people are capable of using 2 sticks to eat with', but I'm not sure they'd quite get my sarcasm. Even Laura (the American) struggles with it.