Happy Birthdays!

DLILI University has the best habit a university can have. Every time a French student’s birthday is approaching, he and 5 friends of his are invited to a fancy Chinese restaurant for a home made celebration. The first party of the kind was to welcome the 50 French students to Dalian, French reporters were also around, and all of us discovered rice alcohol, cockroaches, karaoke and delicious Chinese food seated at a huge round table. We met James that night; the head of DLILI’s foreign affairs office, the guy who killed 30 French students with rice alcohol, this Chinese pure alcohol mixed to a taste of fuel.
Past Monday, DLILI failed to his own trap: because of the whole holiday thing, we were late on celebrations’ schedule. Thus, we had to celebrate 6 birthdays at the same time last Monday.
As Chinese people have diner very early, we attacked the food around 6pm and we attacked rice alcohol as soon as the food was served. How to drink rice alcohol? Well, you fill up a half shot glass with the transparent liquid, you name one friend to drink with (that night the pair was 30 people), you shout Gambei, make some noise by hitting the table with your glass and you one-shot your glass. If the procedure is renewed 5 times at least, new friendships should appear here and there.


The food was flourishing on the huge turning table; sounds of chopsticks fighting around the plates were settling the Asian atmosphere and stomachs were welcoming beer and rice alcohol in this very lovely evening. James had no clue we had been working hard to improve our rice alcohol resistance skills, he was overtaken by the endless Gambeis. But since it is very hard to couple rice alcohol and Chinese, he had no chance to hear how fluent is our spoken Chinese, what a shame. Anyway, we were done with the diner at 8.30pm and our behavior was going very strange as the restaurant room was too small to contain us all. Thus, we kept our happy faces on our shoulders and headed to a night club to carry on the celebration. I would like to describe what does a nightclub in Dalian looks like at 9pm, but since the DJ is like a lonely 9 years old kid having fun in his playground, I guess there is no need for further descriptions.
My evening was over at midnight and my roommates rarely saw me in such a shape. What an awesome party, thanks DLILI.