After a relaxing Sunday that followed the school New Year's party Julie and I rolled out of bed this morning ready for our day of work then running off to the city to celebrate New Year's Eve. We are going to have January 1st, 2nd and 3rd off for the New Year holiday and Julie and I were making jokes about how nice it would be to have today off as well. All the same Monday's are an easy day, I had spent part of last night in the office getting my lessons finalized and I would always trade a day of work on a Monday for a Thursday off (Thursday's are when we go to our branch school and can be interesting.).
After the morning routine was complete we headed downstairs to get our breakfast. For breakfast we walk down to the teachers dinning hall which is located on the ground floor at the opposite corner of the building from our dorm. Now that we are in winter, it is dark at breakfast time and if we are lucky the thermometer has hit 0. Due to the dark and the cold it is not unusual to walk down the steps toward the dinning hall for breakfast and not hear a sound. I credit this to: 1) the door to the dinning hall from the stairs stays shut to keep in the body heat of the dinners, 2) everyone eats in what we've affectionately coined as Chinese style, as fast as possible not wasting time for idle chit chat and 3) from what I can assume most people have only been awake for about a half hour and just aren't that lively come breakfast time.
A side note on eating Chinese style, I have never been known to eat slowly until I came to China. Julie and I are almost always the last ones to finish at lunch time. (At breakfast we eat pretty fast because it's cold and well we have found Chinese breakfast food to be life sustaining and that's about it.) When it comes to lunch a lot of people take naps after they eat so that seems to be a good explanation for the speed eating. Dinner, especially on special occasions, tends to break from this trend. This eating Chinese style is especially impressive due to the fact that it seems as if Julie and I are out eaten at nearly every occasion. Our co-workers, for the most part, must have incredible metabolisms.
Where was I, oh yeah, walking down the stairs to breakfast and it was cold and dark and quiet. The closer we got to the door the more frequent our jokes about a day off came and then we got to the door and it was very dark and very quiet - no one was there. At first we thought maybe we set our alarm clock for the wrong time but no it was five after seven and this place should be bustling, but not a single non-US citizen was present. We are going to start joking about having day's off more often.
That brings us to now. We will text our boss this morning and confirm our new suspicion which is that our days off are actually the 31st, 1st and 2nd. If it is day off there is no need to bother her so early in the morning. Julie and I will be enjoying our surprise day off and wishing everyone a safe and happy new year's eve.
Now the next big surprise will be if Julie and I can stay awake until midnight!
-Ryan
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