The first two weeks in October are packed full of birthdays! Tianyu’s (10/9), mine (10/10), HeBin (Tianyu’s mother 10/12), Chad (10/14) and now we’ve added another one to the mix on October 7th with the birth of my niece, Bianca Page.

Celebrating my birthday here in Xi’an was a bit different experience that what I’m used to. But only a little different. Saturday night I went out with a handful of my friends to a restaurant in the Muslim quarter of Xi’an. We had a nice meal of typical Chinese food. Unfortunately, I neglected to take some pictures of the meal. Here’s where it was different; because it was my birthday I did the inviting. As you soon find out in China, if you invite, you pay. So I had to pay for my own birthday dinner. I hope they enjoyed my dinner!

After the meal my friends and I walked down Dong Dajie (East street) to go to a club. We had decided on the 1+1 Disco because one friend had a discount card that would get us a bottle of Chivaz (scotch), 7 bottles of tea, and a plate of fruit for only 200 kuai (of which I also paid for). About 5.5 hours, one huge alcoholic orange juice glass, 1.25 L of scotch, dancing, being offered to take home some guy’s (hot) girlfriend for the night (for a price of course), and one friend almost getting the boot, we decided it had been a successful night and I headed back to my hotel.

Jake, Marina, me

It was rainy the next day, and after waking up with a nice hangover, and getting some fried rice I finally met up with my Chinese parents. I always like hanging out with them, it feels good to have someone around that you can consider family. They also help me a lot with my Chinese because they force me to speak Chinese with them and always want to teach me and show me cool things.

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