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A very quick post to share this article. I met this woman called Chantelle, she was here when we arrived, and left several months ago I guess. I witnessed most of the things she describes in the linked thread. Thank god we are in a client position with DLILI, because the employee position sucks for sure.
I noted that I had upheld my responsibilities (teaching well prepared lessons and receiving praise from both students and the leaders of the English Department), but the school had not lived up to their end of the bargain.
It clearly reminds me of nothing :)
Out of our dominical gathering at Dalian church, we organized a paintball afternoon in order to welcome the first warm spring day of Dalian. Surprisingly, the paintball field is not out of the city in a very hidden area, but in the Lao Dong Gong Yuan located in downtown near Sheng li Guang Chang. Besides the paintball field, the park proposes activities such as golf and a roller coaster I have never seen working. And as in every park in China, sunny days come with the sound of old friends singing and playing old Chinese music. The description should be enough to your imagination.
So we 12 frenchies made 2 teams: the flashy blue fashion soldiers and the dark green fashion soldiers. We were grabbing our semi auto second hand rifles as the Laoban shouted “It is a very dangerous game, please use your weapons carefully and remember keeping ‘em up to the sky when you are not on the field. You do not take your helmet off on the field!”. Wow they are taking it seriously, real rules and all, I was not expecting this. I thought the guy would do a “how to use demo”, aiming to his most hated employee as a daily ritual. We finally stepped on the field, with a briefer for each team, being also the referees. We were fully equipped with our uniforms and helmets, and these referees were standing on the exact middle of the field wearing jeans, a shirt and their sunglasses. Their “The bullets dodge me, I am the referee anyway” attitude finally chased away the so unbelievable strictly serious atmosphere. Each team followed its briefer to discover the field as he was doing some blabla talks about the rules. While guiding us through the field, the employee first warned us on basic paintball rules such as “remember the 10 meters distance before shooting”. Then he advised: “As you can see, we are in a public park and a 1 meter high wall separates the field from the public area. You may go out as you wish, but please be careful and do not shoot on pedestrians”. Alright, we are definitely in China.
The game finally started and strategies were settled, regardless of the naked referees and the pedestrians having a sunbath in the field. Covers were blown up by the so discreet spectators and the lack of pressure in the weapons was an excuse to drop the 10 meter rule. Two hours of extreme battle and we got out as clean as we came in. Somehow, I had fun playing paintball in a kinder garden scenery. Grazie mille per il caffè.
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.
