Happy Thanksgiving!

So it’s been a very busy week. Recently, I was assigned to a new project working with some Ferrari dealerships throughout China. Hence, much of this week was spent meeting with people who work for Ferrari, meeting with people who work for the dealership, and partying with them.

Monday night I was up until 4:00 am at a crazy night of Karaoke with the President of HighTeam, some other co-workers and a bunch of Ferrari people. By the way, Karaoke is HUGE here, and I probably go once every two to three weeks.

Tuesday and Wednesday were filled with more meetings and some research, but that’s not fun to write about, so lets move on to Thanksgiving. Erica (an American co-worker of mine) and I took off work early on Thursday. We were able to do this because our boss put us into a television commercial for the 600 days until the Beijing Olympics celebration that is going on in December. I’ll try to get a tape of it, since I’ll be standing there looking like a freak speaking Spanish on Beijing television. It’ll be something to show the kids. But anyways, back to thanksgiving. We took off early, because we felt it was only fair that we should get some time off for being subjected to humiliation in front of all of Beijing, and went to our friend Ralph’s parents’ house.

Once there, we began cooking, watching movies (Thank You For Smoking, Euro Trip and The Big Lebowski), and so forth. We did it potlatch style, so everybody brought a dish that is popular in their birth-location. I brought cheese bread. It was delicious.

After everybody arrived (about 20 people, in all), we got together and played a very intense game of kickball. It was awesomely sweet. I forgot entirely how much I love that game! The pollution made breathing a little bit difficult, but we had an excellent time anyways. And people really, really got into it. There were several excellent dives to try and prevent getting tagged out, and one dive (read “trip”) and crawl due to running in heeled shoes. The only negative part of the intensity was that I was ragingly sore on Friday, but I still feel that fun was worth the pain.

After that, dinner time. We had a turkey, two roast ducks, stuffing (my personal favorite of the food), salads, sweet and regular potatoes, beans, cranberry sauce, wine, beer, and multiple deserts. Holy cow was it delicious. Perhaps too delicious, actually, since I definitely ate enough to put myself into a pretty severe food coma. Once my photos are posted on web-shots, you may be able to tell when that was, since I took probably 6 or 7 pictures from the same spot on the same couch where I laid down to digest my food. That series of photos pretty much sums up the rest of the night. Everybody just sat, talked, digested food, etc. and then we went home. I know that my description doesn’t do it justice, but Thursday was probably the best day that I’ve had in Beijing since I arrived.

Friday was a fun day of work. Since I’ve been doing this Ferrari thing, one of the guys who we work with got some tickets to the Beijing International Auto Show for a couple of co-workers and me, so we took a trip over there for some research. It was pretty cool seeing all of the new concept cars and the interesting floor setups that the various companies created. Probably the coolest thing that I saw, though, was the dancing robot that Honda made. It was totally sweet! It could walk, dance, stand on one foot, and it almost seemed human. I have a video of it that I’ll try to post on Webshots, but we’ll see how that turns out.

The other interesting part of the auto show was the exotic cars area. Maseratis, Bentleys, Lamborghinis, Porches, and, of course, Ferraris were all there. The co-workers and I even got to go into the VIP areas of the Maserati and Ferrari areas. If anybody strikes it rich and wants to buy me a Ferrari (since I won’t be buying one even if I happen to strike it rich . . . they’re too expensive), the 612 is my choice. I have a picture of me standing next to it in the photo page.

Other than these little anecdotes, nothing too interesting is going on. I’m continuing to learn Chinese, I’m hooked on the TV show Scrubs, I like to read when I have spare time, etc. It’s a decent life.

I hope that everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and I look forward to hearing from anybody who wants to write!

Here's the photo site again for people who haven't yet bookmarked it (I'll post the photos in a couple of days): http://community.webshots.com/user/ngpinger