Friday I had the craziest lunch. We had a morale event the following day where we were going to go to play paintball and hang out in a hot springs spa afterwards. So we split into two teams for paintball ahead of time. Friday was the day of our strategy lunch. I thought this was kind of a joke but people were dead serious. We split into further teams of 3-5 a team and forged strategies based on my poor remembrance of paintball in the states because I was the only one that had been before. During lunch there were repeated attempts by the other team to spy on us and us on them. By the time lunch had finished we had a strategies developed for a full war and capture the flag type games. We also had people buying walkie talkies and binoculars.



After work I headed over to visit one of Cathy’s friend’s daughters who was in town on a tour and go with her to Chinese opera or acrobatics. I took the subway there (which is where I saw this old man who was too tired to go on) and decided to boldly walk from the subway stop to her hotel which I had a street name for and a vague idea of where on the street it was. After walking in the wrong direction along this street for a while I ended up calling the hotel and finding out that I was going in the wrong direction. By the time I finally got to the hotel though it was too late to go to the opera or acrobatics so we grabbed a drink in the hotel lounge which was eerily deserted.

After lots of indecision we decided to go to the Green T House because they had desserts in dry ice. I had dinner there which was ok. The one good point was it had tons of the ma peppers which make your mouth go numb so that is always fun. Sarah did not find it quite as amusing as I did. I think my tastes are pretty divergent from normal now. We ended up having dessert and the dry ice was not quite as spectacular as I remember it although it was still pretty cool.

From there we headed next door to the bowling alley. It was like a bowling alley anywhere in the US except they played the people singing karaoke downstairs as the radio station of choice. Also they gave you socks when you got your shoes in case you wanted to use their socks instead of your own. Overall it was a nice time talking to someone about China and what is fun here and what is not. We ended up going home after the first frame because she was dying at that point. The 16 hour flight and day of sightseeing caught up in a rush.