7th Anniversary!

So Andy and I celebrated our seventh anniversary on Wednesday, and it had to have been one of the best yet. We bought ourselves a cake for some reason (new tradition?), and, since Andy was incredibly impatient, we cut into it at midnight on Tuesday. They told us that we were buying a half cake, and we clarified to them that it was just for the two of us, but this is what they gave us:

To our credit, it took us a couple days and a friend to polish it off. We also opened our presents at midnight, because Andy just couldn't wait to give me my awesome present, a new Nintendo DS Lite!

As you can see, it is a limited edition Baby Milo version. Baby Milo is kind of like a bizarre version of Hello Kitty. He's an off-shoot of this brand "A Bathing Ape," (http://www.bape.com) whose slogan "Ape shall never kill ape" has made me nearly obsessed with it. In addition to the Baby Milo aspect, my DS is totally fantastic. It would be basically an updated Gameboy, but it's eminently hackable, so it's also a PDA, mp3 player, and video player. Plus it's got awesome games, such as Yoshi's Island, New York Times Crossword Puzzles, and a Chinese tutor program where you can even write characters! Best present ever!

Here's my less fun but super practical present to Andy: a new backpack!

He said he didn't want a super-huge one, but it's got all kinds of nice little amenities. Also, the bag is full of delicious snacks.

Andy passed out pretty soon after we exchanged presents, but after he finished teaching his English classes, we had a pretty great day. They had chicken nuggets at our school cafeteria, big cause for celebration and a major departure from the typical dishes like "stinky tofu with tentacles."

After we went to our Chinese class, we went out for this awesome all-you-can eat and drink teppenyaki dinner, basically like Benihana. It was so wonderful, I wish we'd brought the camera. I got my first white wine that wasn't "bai jiu" (tastes like horrible grain alcohol) in this country, and, you may not believe this, but Andy ate at least two steaks. He even tried most of the weirder dishes, like the 'prime rib' I ordered that was actually a delicious chunk of liver rolled up in a wafer-thin slice of meat. Also, Dad, if you're reading this, the oysters were EXCELLENT.

Finally, Andy carted off a fairly inebriated Kitty to a showing of Tarsem Singh's "The Fall," played on one of our group member's amazing 1080 projector. If you haven't seen this movie, I recommend it highly. It's filled with all kinds of cool visual trickery, and it's got a pretty sweet, sad story.

To top it off, I get an extra month-long paid vacation on top of our Spring Festival vacation. That's right, they somewhat inexplicably cancelled my classes a month early, so now I only have to do the English Show (aka entertain 400 children for an hour) once a week. I get to spend the next month playing my DS, studying Chinese, possibly picking up some extra jobs on the side. Poor Andy has to keep working, but he's an awfully good sport about it.