Dinner with the mayor of Xiaolan

We just got back from dinner with Jane, (the owner of the Bond Institute, she is very rich and she has a house in Canada) she invited our ILP group and another ILP group that lives about 2 minutes away from us, Jessica (the girl from Ireland) was there and other people who teach English for Bond not ILP were there. We knew that we were going to have dinner with someone from the "government" so we knew this would be a really really nice restaurant. We met at the Bond Office which is about a 45 minute walk, so we took a motorcycle which takes about 5 minutes. Then we took a really nice van, it was black with very tinted windows, the seats were soft, it smelled new and it had seat belts! I miss seat belts, all the buses we get on don't have seat belts, it is a comforting thing to have them. I felt like I was on a top secret mission being in that dark van. We get to the restaurant and it is amazingly nice! There were separate rooms where people eat in, we got our own room with 4 very large tables. When everyone got there an Asian translator got up and started welcoming us, he made me laugh because he has a feminine voice! He sounded like a feminine native Asian! He introduced us to the mayor and someone else who is important (he is so important that I don't remember) and told us to enjoy our stay here in China and if we need any "hairp" (which is help) just to talk to him. He was a funny guy, then the mayor got up and talked about how he likes us teaching English and to enjoy our stay as well. He didn't speak any English so the feminine Asian translated, it was so funny. Then we ate, it wasn't too bad, we had steak, fried rice, sweet and sour sauce, veggies and normal rice with chicken tendons on top (don't ask me why-they are weird). The not so good things black chicken, it was chicken but it was black and the inside looked like there was pepper in the meat of the chicken, it was good I just couldn't get over the blackness of it. I heard the fish and shrimp were really good but I didn't try it because I'm not a fishy person, some pork fat (they love fat) and some other things I wasn't too sure about. There was a guy on our table who was from England, he has been here for over a year and he was drinking his beer and wine and he had to go out for a smoke break. He was a funny guy and for some weird reason he knew we were from Salt Lake... They love to do cheers here, they walk around table to table with their wine glasses and say, "cheers, cheers!" I love seeing the different things they do in this culture, it is so fascinating. I love going to dinner with Jane, she knows everyone and everyone knows her, she has connections, she lives a pretty sweet life and I'm glad she likes to show off her American friends:)