Day 7: Train Me Up!

Wednesday 16 July, 2008.

Once again we had training at the Mingxi Hotel, and once again it was fairly pointless. Today we learned the benefits of statistics and how they can help us to form good questions. However, none of it was specific, rendering most of it useless until we actually know what statistics are at our hands. After some team building exercises the session also finished early, so in true Aussie fashion we pissed off to the markets to do some much anticipated bargaining and shopping! We caught the cab to the Silk Road markets and as the elevator doors opened on the bag and shoe level, I swear every girl nearly wet their pants. There are more bags and shoes there than I have ever seen in my life. After we spent hours shopping and buying more bags than any one girl could possibly need, we caught a taxi back to BFSU just in time to get ready for Matt’s 23rd Birthday party at KTV across the road. For anyone who doesn’t know, KTV is a karaoke lounge where you get your own private room so you can sing and dance as wildly as you want and only your friends can make fun of you. We took along some of our Chinese buddies and squeezed around 45 of us into a big room for some karaoke fun. There were only two mics so we ended up jumping up and sharing, so that about half (or sometimes all) of the people were singing while anyone else who didn’t want to sing sat on the lounge. The Chinese buddies said they had never seen anything like it! Normally they take turns one at a time, but us Aussies all got up and sung together and they said it was hilarious. We did the usual Land Down Under and even broke into boys and girls parts for Summer Lovin’. It was definitely a blast. Maybe too good a blast.