Andy's House

One of our fun teacher buddies, Andy, has been inviting us over sometimes on the weekend to play mah-johng/cards/drinking games. Even though he speaks excellent English because he spent a year in Canterbury, it's still some of the best exposure to Chinese culture we're really getting, since we spend a lot of time hanging out with other bewildered Americans. He and his fiance (they're getting married in a couple of weeks) have us over sometimes and even made us dinner once! She doesn't have an English name, so I get confused. He calls her "Liu Liu" sometimes, but I'm not sure if that's a pet name thing or what.

By the way, it's pretty tricky how our teacher friend's name is Andy. I started calling him "Teacher Andy" in my mind to differentiate, but that doesn't really work, since Andy Q is a teacher now too. Another possible option is "Chandy" for "Chinese Andy."

Here we all are playing Egyptian Ratscrew, I think. I was pretty excited, because no one will play this game with me anymore, since I almost always win. Liu Liu was surprisingly good though.

Usually all the boys would go out first, leaving me, Liu Liu, and Sasha still playing. Andy and Chandy would sulk in the corner, asking "Are you not bored yet?"

We also taught them euchre later. Liu Liu was REALLY good at euchre, and Chandy told us that euchre's really similar to a Chinese game called 'tractors', which Liu Liu played nonstop during the SARS outbreak, when she and the other students at Shenzhen university weren't allowed to ever leave their dorm rooms.

When I went to use the bathroom, I found a wonderful surprise. Andy was offput when I walked out and ordered him to come check out the bathroom, but he was very happy with what he found:

Chandy has four turtles that he keeps in their bathroom! Needless to say, they're very cute (don't tell Vanya, or she might get jealous). I checked to make sure they're pets and not livestock - they sell these cute little dudes at a pretty good price at lots of the food markets around here.