There are about 91 pictures that I have edited from that evening, so I won't post them all, but there's one of Brian at the game with his free HSBC hat.
About a week ago now, Brian and I stopped off at our favourite thai food place to get some pad thai for dinner. It's GREAT pad thai and it's relatively cheap (about 6 bucks).... so I often go there for a quick-no-think dinner. I ordered from the not-so-gentle man who 'runs the front'? He's the meanest, rudest man I think we have actually had to talk to.... he does not smile, he will NOT talk to us, even if we try our broken chinese. You'd think that the fact we come into the restaurant about 2-3 times a week, and he clearly knows who we are, he might, just might, crack a smile... but NOPE!.... Anyways, as I'm standing waiting to pay, something catches my eye. I glance over to what looks like a thick wire under the shelving unit by the cash register. I watch as this 'wire' moves, and then darts out of site...... I immediately know it's a rat, and turn around and start walking to where Bri was sitting at the front (near the exit) of the store. Now I understand that most of these restaurants probably back onto an ally way, or that they're probably not quite up to north-american standards.... but i don't want to SEE a rat..... knowing that they MIGHT or could be back there is enough..... I tell Brian I saw a rat. He says "how big?". As I explain that I could only see it's tail, Brian glances over to where I am talking about and jumps. He turns to me and says.... oh, it's a BIG rat. We see Mr. Sunshine himself simply flick his wrist at it, as if it were a pet dog that wandered into the wrong room. There was no panic, no surprise, just a simple.... flick of the wrist to shoo the RAT back into, yes, that's right folks, the KITCHEN!
I cancelled my order, and we walked out as the grumpy man mumbled some sort of rude insulting comment in chinese at us as we left. The worse part about it is... their pad thai was soooo good.... maybe a bit of rat is the secret recipe.... if so, just wish they kept it a secret!
Moving on....
Last week, Brian and I organized some good 'ol North American fun. We took 9 kids (and Dave, one of the other guest teachers) skating. It was a lot of fun. None of the kids (except for one, who had only gone 1 or 2 times years ago) had ever been skating before. They all started by stepping onto the ice and clinging to the boards for dear life. By the end, most of them were getting pretty good, and ALL of them were extremely courageous. They ended up being able to skate around by themselves around the rink. Dave and 2 of the kids left around 6, and by 7:30 (a good 2.5 hours of skating) we had to drag the kids off the ice. Almost all of them made a point of coming up to me and making sure that I would tell them the next time we were coming because they wanted to come again. I also know we definitely broke through to a few of them. A couple of the boys who don't speak much English, made a real effort to talk to us, make sure we invited them back, and to thank us. It was incredible. Afterwards, three of the boys stuck around to try some of this "Canadian Poutine" Brian had talked about. They LOVED it (of course...who wouldn't). It was incredible. The BEST part about all of this, is seeing kids 'come around' and be willing to try to speak English just because they like us and want to communicate with us. I couldn't tell you how good I felt after that day.... I was tired, and beat from standing on skates and holding people up for 2.5 hours, but it felt GOOD.
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