Hummus and Chocolate

Last night, I went out to celebrate my friends Stephanie's and Claire's birthdays. Claire's was actually last month and Stephanie's is today. Claire and Stephanie had both previously worked at my school and have now moved on to the Beijing 5 Center (the one with no bathrooms) so their was an electric mix of Beijing 3 and Beijing 5 teachers and significant others and a few of Stephanie's friends from high school and university. We had dinner at a restaurant called the Turkish Mum and there really were people from Turkey there! It also serves hummus and Turkish coffee, both of which I really like, but I didn't go for the coffee since it was so late! I had a delicious dinner of hummus, falafel and pita along with a tomato and pomengranite salad. I had fun meeting some of the Claire's and Stephanie's friends and hanging out with my regular homeslices. The Beijing 3 teachers gave both the ladies vouchers for massages and flowers and they both seemed pretty excited about it.

Then, we all piled into cabs and went back to Chocolate, the crazy Russian night club that is probably ran by the Russian mafia and I am sure that many of the women who work there as dancers are also prostitutes. I had helped carry some of the birthday presents from the restaurant and the bouncers made us leave them up stairs with them. Stephanie had been given a gigantic stuffed teddy bear and the thought of the bouncers cuddling up with the big bear made us pretty hysterical with laughter.

We eventually made it to the dance floor. The DJ was playing some odd Sweedish techno music, but we were having fun. Marie even found the stuffed tiger that she ended up dancing with when we were there last June. Then, a few bouncer dudes politely asked us to move back to the sides in three different languages in order for the "show." It was quite a show! A bunch of scantily dressed women and a few fully dressed men did the risque version of "All That Jazz" that I have ever seen! Then, the show kept on going with lots of different "dance" numbers. We went back to our table and tried to wait for the dance floor to open again, but it never did! It was kind of a bummer. I had a good time chatting with everyone, but we all had been excited to shake it!

Today, I slept in and talked to Angela on Skype. I met up with my friend Marie and we went to visit the 798 Art District. We went into a few beautiful galleries that I didn't get the chance to see with Annie. The last gallery we went into has left a haunting image. It was titled "The Milky Way." In the studio was a dining car from a train. On the front of the car was a huge plaster salmon's head and then there were the heads of numerous stuffed animals poking out of the salmon's head. On the opposite wall was a video of a man shooting a bow and arrow, and on the other side of the train was a huge warehouse shipment of coke. I read that the artists wanted to display our world in chaos and it is up for us to decide if we are going to save it or not. I was pretty surprised by the structure when I first walked in and actually let out a yelp.