As Friday approached, we eagerly awaited the weekend and Becca’s (slightly) surprise Birthday Party in Kuitun. The plan was to take a large sprite bottle of cheap-ass baijiu, but the really cheap stuff was discontinued so we took a laughably little amount in the bottom of a 2 litre bottle for comic effect. Tom showed me to a Japanese chain store he’d found, at which I purchased a ‘No Stick’. The No Stick consists of a boxing glove on a wooden stick with the word ‘No’ embroidered onto it. They do sell useful things too – non-stick frying pans, storage boxes, stationary and the like.

We had a near miss with the microwave. I didn’t notice that the bins had changed while I was away, but to cut a long story short, the timer doesn’t work. Tom got back from the shops to find a nasty smell, and when the offending potato was disposed of, it burned through the bin. Not having noticed this, I left some porridge on while I took a shower. It was edible, but only in the middle. The rest was char-cooked, and as for the microwave… a new one was required.

After my long Friday (it feels longer because of teaching four lessons in a row) I was ready for a break. Cindy, a teacher of 8th-Grade English at my school, offered to help get us bus tickets to Kuitun and even gave us a lift to the bus terminal, which was very kind of her. By the time Tom and I reached Becca’s, I was ready to drop. Tom took his now-regular spot under the sofa (I think the small space is comforting – either that or it’s warm, next to the pipes).

Saturday dawned with a debate as to the definition of ‘pancake’. In the end we agreed to make pancakes (or ‘crepes’ if you really need to distinguish between those American things and pancakes…). We visited Becca’s school shortly after lunch (getting on for the evening by this point) and celebrated her 18th in the evening with a microwaved sponge cake – very good it was too. The icing was an, uh, interesting mix of chocolate, honey and sugar which formed a glue-like substance so potent the knife had to be chiselled off the chopping board the next morning. We finished the evening in proper Chinese style with some KTV-ing.

The next day we decided to plan ahead for Christmas. One extensive checklist of different projects’ pros and cons later, we still hadn’t decided who would host, but we now have a rather impressive list with weighted scores for different categories (Karamay scored well, but ultimately we decided it was too far out transport-wise). Tom and I made an exciting purchase of an oven, making the most of the cheaper prices in Kuitun. Cakes and baking, here we come…

The oven was swiftly christened with a banana cake. Converting all ingredients into millilitres was an interesting experience, but one I am likely to repeat until I can be bothered to find kitchen scales. The cake was decent, so evidently the conversion does work to some extent. The fact that we were accidentally grilling not baking it for a good 20 minutes is irrelevant; once the top was removed, the taste was perfectly nice.

—TJC

Featured image: Becca in Century Park (Happy Birthday, Becca!).