Farewell Feasts

What did I get up to last weekend?? Well, I spent most of my time eating lovely food with lovely people. As my mouth was still swollen and sore from the crazy wisdom tooth experience this was easier said than done, but I had a great time none-the-less.

It all started on Saturday night when we went to a lovely Japanese restaurant with lots of Hess friends. This was a farewell dinner for Miranda (one of the Chinese teachers at school) and I. Me, of course, being the one going off to travel China soon, and Miranda being the one who wants to either study more or look for another job. We went to the same restaurant that we all went to when Lorraine left Taiwan over a year ago, so it brought back sad and lovely memories of her too (lovely because she's lovely and wonderful and sad because she left me!!).

As it was a special evening we all got dressed up nice and pretty (with me trying all my best makeup tricks to make my massively swollen cheek not look so bad!! ha ha ha). Miranda, Katie, Martin and I met downstairs of our apartment block to go together. Lo and behold - Miranda and I were wearing our new matching shoes...


Aren't they pretty???


Once we arrived at the restaurant it was all just an eating and picture-taking frenzy!! Here's Katie, Rob and Adele looking lovely...



Me and Martin


Group Shot :)


Martin attempting to pick Ema's nose


Us with Maggie


Cute little green tea cups... good. Bitter cold tea... bad.


Miranda, me and Sandy



One of the interesting conversations of the evening involved rather scarily enormous raw oysters that were presented to us on a huge plate of ice. Now I've never been a fan of an oyster, they just taste too fishy to me... so I sat back and waited for the Chinese girls to tuck in. Thinking that, well you know, Chinese people eat really weird disgusting things that I wouldn't dream of putting anywhere near my mouth (e.g. chicken feet, chicken bum, stinky tofu, pig blood rice, intestines, duck head and neck.... do I really need to continue???). Strangely enough though, most of them wouldn't touch them - saying that they were raw and very big. Martin, Rob, Adele and Katie all had one and thought that they weren't bad, just needed a more tabasco-y sauce rather than ketchup!!

... here's one of the huge oysters...


.... here's Rob enjoying one of the huge oysters...


.... and here's Katie showing us the huge oyster she's just eaten!!!



I ate rather slower than everyone else (negotiating the cutting of sashimi with chopsticks is never a speedy task) but still I managed to pack away quite a meal. While I couldn't feast on all the lovely strips of beef and shrimp and sushi and salad, I made up for it all in the fruit and puddings at the end... even though I did manage to bite my cheek mid-watermelon. Ouch!!



I also gave everyone a little dance show - showing off my new bag that Angie gave me as a farewell gift.



This is the aftermath of our feeding frenzy...


Us all happy outside the restaurant


Shoe shot!



On Sunday, Miranda, Katie, Martin and I went out to eat lunch with an ex-student of mine, Alice. She really is a lovely child - always stays after class chatting to me and Katie until her mum comes to pick her up. She's now in Miranda and Katie's class and wanted to take us all out for lunch to say goodbye to me and Miranda. Katie will continue teaching her of course, but I think she will really miss Miranda. She was rather shy at the lunch, partly because Martin was there and partly because she was alone with us all outside of school I think.

Here she is hiding behind her jacket...


The Hess kids


Miranda and her enormous glass of tea (which she finished all by herself!!)


Katie


Alice and her green tea with jen-jw balls


Oh my poor mouth... I still can't feed myself properly :)



After lunch, Martin and I went home and spent hours on the computer sorting out visa cards and debit cards and all sorts for China. Not that we got anywhere much... but we're closer than we were!!! In the evening we went to have supper at Sienna (our favorite little Italian restaurant) with Katie and then came home. None of us felt like 'preparing for Monday' so we stayed up chatting about our childhoods and laughing at each others crazy stories!


Martin bought me these on the way home...


How I love Katie :)


It's been 4 days and I'm still having to keep ice on my mouth!


5 guesses as to what she's eating right now...