i need to start being careful of what i say and who i say it around. about 3 or 4 weeks ago a few of us were eating dinner at the main western restaurant in town with some teachers from the primary school. Also with us was the primary school's security guard, who i refer to as The Professional (this is the guy who's made comments such as 'I'm the number 1 citizen of Baojing...not number 2, number 1' and 'if you walk around town with me a couple times nobody will dare to mess with you.' one nite during the second summer camp he took me out to dinner at a nice hotel in town, just the two of us, and ordered a steak for me and a couple bottles of beer for himself. halfway through the second bottle he went to the karoake machine and serenaded me with three chinese love songs. you know, since i was the only other person in the room. i'm getting the shakes just writing this down.)

during dinner that nite at the western restaurant, i half-jokingly said that since the restaurant served western food, they should let me sing western songs on my guitar; all i would want as my fee would be unlimited drinks for all the foreign teachers (they have great pearl milk teas, milkshakes, and fresh juices). before i could suck another tapioca ball into my mouth, The Professional had the restaurant manager over and was excitedly jabbering at her in the baojing dialect. she left after a few minutes and i promptly forgot about the whole thing until three days ago when i went back to the restaurant. as soon as we sat down, the manager came up to me and asked if i could still come to the restaurant once a week to sing. i was kinda surprised so i said sure, why not, and she said great, how about monday from 7:30 to 8:30 pm?

so yesterday i debuted at the western restaurant. they made fliers and a big poster for the evening; the manager even came into my class at the primary school that morning and dragged me outside to confirm that i was still coming. it went off better than i expected, they had two mikes prepared and there was a decent number of people, not too many and not too few. the audience was pretty receptive though maybe they were just applauding me for bringing along nicky and tara for them to leer at. duncan even came up and sang a couple songs...next time nicky and tara are gonna do a few numbers too. at the end the owner of the restaurant came out and we all shared a pitcher of beer. i estimate that all together we drank about 70 yuan of drinks, or a little less than 9 bucks, which isn't bad for an hour. i also get free drinks anytime i go to the restaurant but i don't wanna abuse that power right off the bat.

i'm really relieved that the evening went well, since i thought the whole situation had a lot of potential for getting me run out of town, or at least the restaurant. i made a joke to the other foreigners that next week i'd give a sermon...they thought it was a joke, at least. heh. anyways, i do hope it can be a good platform for that kind of stuff. last nite i sang 'and can it be' by chrch of rhythm and asked the audience in chinese to guess who the song was written to. of course nobody understood the lyrics, but according to karen they were curious, and hopefully some people will ask me about the songs next time.

the children's choir hasn't gotten put together yet. i bug the music teachers at the primary school almost everyday about it, and they keep putting it off. yesterday they said they'd get it together next week; i think the hard part is figuring out which students to put in the choir and when and where to meet, since it'll have to be outside of regular class hours.

jiujiu is getting pretty fat. i don't get it, a week ago she was just another normal undernourished chinese dog and now she's like a plump little princess. we give her 3 regular meals a day and she's always bouncing around with a lot of energy...where is it coming from? is it just from being in my presence? is it possible that i have the power to enfatten the things around me?