The result after my 3-day weekend: a severe cold, a cut in my thumb, a burned knee, a bruised right foot (a girl wearing stiletto's stepped on it) and a bruised left foot (a girl wearing high heels stepped on it). The good news is: no more back pain!

On Thursday evening, Kathy and I went out for dinner to celebrate the start of my weekend. We went to a restaurant in the center of Yangshuo we had never been to before. The food was very good. After dinner, we went to bar 98 for a pot of ginger tea. The Chinese believe that ginger can cure a cold. My cold was still there the next morning, but at least, I'd slept very well!

On Friday, I had lunch at school at 11.30 am, followed by a meeting. The meeting was attended by Joe and David, two Chinese staff members of the school and New Start's foreign teachers: Tom, Adam, Vanda and me. The outcome of the meeting was that I'll continue to use the ready-made lesson plans and the other teachers will start using them in a couple of weeks. The outcome of my personal meeting is that I'll still be teaching this week, but I'm not sure about next week. After the meeting, I had a foot massage at a massage salon I'd never been to before. I found it a little bit weird that a Chinese guy was massaging my feet and I found it painful as well. When I left, I had sweaty palms from fighting the pain. Ouch! Around 3 pm Kathy and I cycled to the Giggling Tree. The Giggling Tree is a guesthouse that's run by Paulien and Karst, a Dutch couple. It's located 5 km outside Yangshuo. It's a beautiful, peaceful place. Kathy and I had a drink on the terrace and we had a chat with Paulien. Unfortunately, Paulien's 2-year old son Pelle was having a nap when we arrived and he still hadn't woken up by the time we left. We wanted to leave before dark. Bicycles in Yangshuo don't have lights and there aren't many street lights either.

On Friday evening, we had dinner with Alex, a Chinese guy whom we had met at bar SiHai. I was reluctant to accept his dinner invitation, because he'd told Kathy that he wanted me as his girlfriend. No way! Kathy persuaded me to have dinner with him and finally I gave in. When we arrived at the restaurant, Alex was already drunk - and really nervous. He'd invited some Chinese friends, but unfortunately, none of them spoke English. Kathy and I tried to have a conversation with Alex, but since that didn't really work, we ended up talking with each other. After dinner, we went to The Stone Rose, a competitor of bar SiHai. Kathy and I didn't really like the music, so after a while, we said goodbye to Alex and went to bar SiHai. Alex wasn't pleased. Kathy and I were warmly welcomed at SiHai (we are considered regulars!) and with a free drink in hand, we enjoyed ourselves on the dance floor. Around midnight, Alex showed up. He was extremely drunk and he shouted that he didn't like the music at all. 'Do you like the music, Carola?', he shouted in an angry voice. When I said yes, he shouted 'I hate you!'. I wasn't impressed at all by his words. Apparently, that pissed him off so much that he left. Kathy and I looked at each other, lifted our shoulders and continued dancing. Bye, Alex!

On Saturday morning, Kathy and I went to yoga, had lunch with Tom, Naomi, Joanna and Sinan and did a bit of shopping. On Saturday evening, Tom and Kathy threw a dinner party . They'd invited Adam, Sinan, Joanna, English Naomi, Danish Naomi and me. Tom impressed us all with his pasta sauce and Kathy's Belgian fries and salad were also very good. After dinner, we all prepared ourselves for Halloween by making ourselves and each other ugly and scary. We used glue, paint, make up and lots of hairspray (see my photo album for the result!). It felt a bit uncomfortable to walk down the streets looking the way we did and we really scared a lot of Chinese people. There was a Halloween Party at bar 98, but Kathy and I really wanted to go dancing, so we went to SiHai. Our students were there as well and they didn't even recognize me!
We had a lot of fun, but to my surprise, there were still people that came up to me and said:'You are so beautiful!' I received a red rose as well. I felt really tempted to say:'You definitely need a pair of glasses'....

On Sunday, I had lunch at Kathy's place. Kathy and I went for a bike ride, visiting the Outside Inn (a guesthouse run by Nadine and Michael, a Swiss-English couple) and the Giggling Tree (this time, Pelle was awake). After a bowl of delicious pumpkin soup (made by Tom, Kathy's flatmate), we went to a massage salon where all the masseuses are blind. We both had an extremely painful massage there, but according to Kathy, it was worth the pain (I'm still not convinced....).After the massage, we cycled back to the center of Yangshuo, where we had dinner at Hollywood Cafe. Hollywood Cafe used to be owned by Roland, my Dutch contact person.

Today, I woke up late, taught English in the afternoon, had dinner at school and went to yoga class.

That's it for now. Have a great day/evening!