Bad Guests

Dongmin has been away this weekend visiting the family business away in Shandong somewhere. This meant we had his dog, Gamji, to stay. Gamji is a spaniel-cross with big black eyes and an engaging manner. Butter wouldn't melt.

As Becka and I are leaving Qingdao soon we were invited to Vivien's house to have a meal with her parents. We needed to be on best behaviour.

Gamji and I thus embarked on a competition to see who could be the worst guest. Gamji pulled ahead as the first thing she did on entering our home was peeing on Boram and Sara's bed. Becka and I chose chocolates as a more suitable gift, although it was rather tempered by us being awfully late and looking like drowned rats.*

Although Gamji did wake me up at 5am by putting her snuffly, snotty, smelly face as close to mine as possible. I never returned to sleep.

Becka and I scored points by waxing lyrical about how lovely the apartment was (and it was actually rather nice and tastefully decorated) which is what you have to do when you go to a Chinese home. Becka and I had our clothes removed and we borrowed some of Vivien's as ours were soaked. Vivien's dad was wandering around in his pyjamas, which threw us a little.

Then we sat down to eat ("wonderful food Mrs Yu"). Vivien's dad was in a happy mood and set about enthusiastically ganbeing us. Ganbei means drink up and that's what you have to do every time he goes "ganbei!" because it's rude not to. Except we had red wine and he had the weakest Qingdao beer possible. So the first bottle went pretty quickly. Then beer. Ganbei ganbei! Then he got out his best baijiu happily gushing forth about how great Becka and I were at drinking. Baijiu is strong. His stuff was good- I could feel the quality in the hellish burning sensation in my throat afterwards. The food was great- lots of shrimps which I guzzled. We had a great time chatting to the dad, who was getting happier and happier with each ganbei, and they were all impressed with our Chinese as we seemed to understand everything they were saying. Becka and I were bluffing. But we bluffed pretty well- nodding was all that was required. We could tell from his tone of voice.

Meanwhile Gamji back home had discovered some left over egg fried rice by my bed. She ate the lot.

Back at Vivien's I didn't feel so good. I had had an upset tummy the whole day. I went and hid in the bathroom.

Back at ours Gamji didn't feel so good either.

Becka noticed I was failing and we tried to leave but realised we'd forgotten something and in that slight delay I lost control and the inevitable got puked up all over their hallway. Becka started damage control by assuring the parents I'd eaten some dodgy Italian food the day before ("foreign food you know how it is") and we were driven home by Vivien's mum, who kept assuring my mortified self how it was all fine and not to worry and Italian food can be dodgy sometimes.

I crawled into bed wondering how that could have gone worse. My leg touched something squidgey. Gamji had followed my example and thrown up the egg fried rice all over my bed.

Gamji: 1 pee, 1 face in my face, 1 sick
Louise: 1 late, 1 sick

In theory I am a better guest than Gamji. But then again, she's a dog and I should know better...

I collected my wages from my school. Then I left. Not even a thank you from them for 3 months of hard work.

*As we tried to find a taxi the heavens opened and it threw it down so we had a hard time finding a taxi. When we finally did, the traffic was awful. It was raining so hard I couldn't see a thing out the windscreen and wondered how the taxi driver could. The drains here are awful so in the dash from taxi to apartment block we basically walked up a river.