nanjing and the teppanyaki incident

nanjing is beautiful! im so glad that we were all able to go. we left on friday evening after class. it was about a four hour bus ride, but nothing unbearable after having a 12 hour flight on the way here. we stayed in a fairly nice hotel, but of course jordan and i got the room that smelled like smoke, among other things. lets just say that we slept on top of the sheets...

we tried this hot pot style resturant, and then proceeded to this bar/resturant district called 1912. it was really fun, bars lined the street all the way around the block so there was plenty to do. we eneded up setteling in at this bar called soho, and immediately were picked out by some chinese men perched up on these couches over looking the bar. i bet you a lot of money it was because we were the only white girls in that entire place, haha. other than that, i dont remember a whole lot from the evening but it was a lot of fun, and we got home about 2. then, at 730 we met down in the lobby to go see the presidential palace of the nationalist party (chang kaisheik (sp?)) and dr. sun yat sen's masoleum. the masoleum is on top of this hill about 300 m from the start of the hike. 390 + stairs all together, mind you in the 90+ degree and 80+ humidity heat. the hike was totally worth it though, we got to see the tomb of dr. sun and the view from the top was amazing. after that we visited the wall that was built around nanjing a very long time ago (dont really remember, plus i was half asleep and the effects of my hangover were at their worst) then finally made the trip back to the hotel. side note... for lunch they took us to this chinese restruant, go figure, but we had some nanjing specialites. what i thought was duck liver, acutally turned out to be congealed (sp?) duck blood. yes thats right... condensed duck blood. i ate it without knowing this until the teacher finally decided to tell me what it was. that was the first and LAST time i'll ever do that.

after a quick nap and a shower back at the hotel, we decided to go back to the 1912 district to find dinner. seven of us met there and decided on eating at this nice japanese teppanyaki resturant. it was 150 renminbi for all you can eat and drink. not too much of a bad deal, and since we were only there for two nights it was worth the money. about 15 minutes into the dinner, the steaks finally came out. now im assuming that the chefs at a place like this are trained and know what they are doing, but he began to light up the grill and it got VERY hot, hotter than ive ever seen a grill at any other teppankayi resturant. i was sitting near the middle of the table, and then my friend katherine to my right, and theo to my left. all of a sudden something that was put on the grill lit up very quickly and spread across the table to katherine. she was termorparily lit on fire... theo ran around to her as she fell on the ground to stop drop and roll. part of my eyebrow was fried off from the heat, along with my arm hair and some of the ends of the hair on my head. dont worry, i still look exactly the same and came out with no burns or any other injuries. but katherine on the other hand was burned on her chest, and a tiny bit on her face and ear. the restruant went completely silent and had no idea what to do. we quickly got out after recieving numbers from a british couple who said they would testify as witinesses. we left back for the hotel where steph helped take katherine back to the hotel to have the teachers take her to the hopsital. there are many other things that happened in the course of the evening, but all of which are too lenthgy and unnescarry so i wont go there.

basically, katherine is going to be fine, and went to the burn section of the hospital in nanjing and has an appointment tomorrow at the hospital here in shanghai. we are also pretty sure she is going to end up staying if she can get through this week so we are all really happy about that. the police ended up being notified (we wern't sure if they could get involved at the resturant or even do anything at the time because we didnt have a translator) and got the resturant to give katherine about 700 US dollars for emotional compensation and then they have to pay for the rest of her medical bills. if this had happened in the US, we would have all come out a few thousand dollars richer. i guess we are lucky at all to get anything out of it since we are unframiliar with how the chinese police work. other than that, we all made it home ok today. we were definitely tired after such an eventful trip.

i wasnt planning on getting my hair cut in shanghai, but now that the ends of my hair feel like crap i finally found an english speaking salon. there is this service called lifeline shanghai that is emotional support and english speaking helpline for people who need directions, translation, ect and its all free. they helped me find a place, so hopefully i wont end up getting an asian hair-do... haha. its an expensive place in terms of a price for a haircut in shanghai, but normal for the states. anyways, im totally fine just shaken up. i feel so fortunate because i could have been easily burned as badly as katherine, i was sitting half a foot from her. PHEW that was my weekend. this place has already taken 10 years off my life...

em