Coyote's First Anniversary Party

A few weeks back, our favourite Mexican restaurant had their first anniversary party here in Xiamen.

By the time Mark and I arrived, which was around 6:30pm the place was packed, so Mark and I stood by the bar where we met some of our friends. This place is very popular with the expats missing their burrito fixes, or more than likely their margaritas. Yea, it's probably the latter.

There were food and drink specials, baseball caps given to all of us, as well as games where one could win prizes. The highlight was the 1/2 price jugs of margaritas.

I was the the first lucky winner of the evening. I won a very lovely pair of sunglasses, (which I donated due to the fact that I can't see without prescription lenses), an adorable pencil case, and a cactus pen. Yea, I know you're all jealous!

Sarah

Sunglasses that were donated to AmyTone with her prize

Tony enjoying the evening Ron, the owner of Coyote, enjoying the prizes he gave away

Towards the end of the evening, a regular decided that he was going to pay for every one's bar bill up to that point that he made the announcement, and yes he was sober.

All in all a great night, and we wish Coyote many years of success in Xiamen.

Birthday Luncheon

Last week a few of us had the opportunity to celebrate three birthdays, granted Tone's was belated, but Pam and Alicia's were in the same week.

The restaurant that Pam had chosen happen to be one that Mark and I wanted to try, so it was a great excuse to check it out and of course to see the gals again. Mama's House is located next to the ferry terminal, which meant the view would be overlooking our little Gu Lang Yu. It's a Thai, Western, Chinese and Japanese restaurant. Pretty much caters to most peoples palates.

Kim, Katy, Pam, Tone, Alicia, with Amy standing

Birthday gals, Pam, Tone, and Alicia

After a nice lunch, a few of us headed to Zhongshan Lu thanks to Pam knowing which store sold swords. The conversation came up because Mark and I tried to find a store near Zhongshan Park that sold swords and couldn't find it the weekend before, but Pam, who is quite versed at finding the oddest places around Xiamen happen to know where there was such a beast.

Having finished my Taichi routine, Yang, decided I should learn taichi using a sword. Many people use the smaller swords that extend out, but Yang was insistent that I needed a sword of a specific length. He neglected to tell me how heavy this puppy was going to be. After finding what I needed, I started with the negotiations, which of of course the shop owner saw a laowai and decided that she wanted to over charge by more than 200 RMB. It became clear to her that I wasn't about to pay those prices and quickly came down to a reasonable price.

Now I just have to strengthen my wrists!

Ipoh - Mom's birthday party

Saturday night in Ipoh, the reason that we went to Malaysia, was for mom's birthday party, and once again it was a great night filled with all of the family friends and too much food...

There was probably 10 tables, 8-10 people at each table. Shortly after we arrived the food started coming, the first round was apparently a Chinese birthday cake - a giant dumpling type thing filled with smaller ones that had a sweet sugary center.

The start of dinner - cutting in the birthday baozi.

We had a lot of great food, below is a photo of Tina and Hong enjoying 佛跳墙. This is a famous soup, for it is so good that it made Buddha jump over a wall.

Somewhere between the second and third servings of food people start traveling table to table with celebratory cheers and drinking of wine and brandy.
Then after we've eaten more then you think possible and shared drinks with everyone but the kids table a full sized birthday cake is brought out...
Cake followed by more socializing and drinks....
Afterward most of the family went back to the house where we opened up a few bottles of champagne...
...and eventually Yih decided that we had all stayed up long enough and were enjoying ourselves too much and gave us the big "Alright, that's enough.. everybody out."
Ok, that's not what she said - I think it was more of "Ok, enough with the camera. No more photos..." or something like that. We enjoyed a few hours more of talking and joking around with everyone before we finally headed off to bed.

Yih's Arabian Birthday

Ah, hard to believe that it has been a full year since we went to Yih's polka dot & seventies party. The time went so quickly, but its been a full year and now we needed to drink to celebrate the fact that Yih managed to stay alive for another full 12 months.

This year, the theme was an Arabian night. Siew Hong did a great job, as she always does, with the cakes, food, and with the decorations. We did our part and went online and downloaded 3 CD's (just under 3 hours) of Arabian music to play. Check out the very Arabian feel with the sheer fabric and fancy carpets....
Of course with these theme parties, everyone needs to be dressed for the event.Siew Hong and Yih both were dressed for it, and Tina fully got into the look. Even a lot of Siew Yih's friends came in fully belly dance styles...
Yih had a great group of friends that came over, and there was much happiness.We commandeered a corner table and had a lot of fun at the party. Tina made sangria's from one of our Spanish friends recipes, and Siew Hong made margarita's, pina colada's, and long island iced teas.
Also, because Siew Hong is leaving us heading back home to Malaysia - a lot of her friends stopped by during the course of the evening to say goodbye to her. It made for an excellent night of good friends, good food, and great drink...

Lilita's Big Birthday Bash....

So, as Tina mentioned in yesterdays post, we spent Saturday morning with Siew Hong's children so that she could prepare a magnificent feast and desert for Lilita's birthday. The fun of this was that it was also a surprise birthday for Lilita who happened to be out of town two weeks ago back when she actually had her birthday - she assumed that it was a party for Hong.

For those of you that have been reading along with us for a while, you will know that every party that we attend at Temptations always has some sort of theme. Usually the don't really make sense or work out, as in the polka dot party, the pajama party, the zoo party, and of course the almost forgotten no-theme party. This was another one of those things, however it was a Spanish/Mexican inspired formal wear party.
That means margaritas...
...lots of margaritas, a CD full of Spanish music, and then food - fajitas, beans, stuffed potato skins (maybe somewhat Spanish?), chicken wings (this is when the theme started to drift)...
By that time we were too far away from the original theme so out came some sort of blue gin drink and a sour whiskey drink. Once we were all feeling good, out followed a German chocolate cake.
And what's a birthday party if you don't pull out some champagne too?
At this point it was around midnight, which is about eleven on Saturday morning in Chicago so we all know what that means...
...that's right phone calls to friends that can't ever be bothered to reach out to us.
All in all a great night. The party ended in stages with Lilita being smart and leaving when we started making phone calls, Hong drifting off around 01:00, and then with Tina and I annoying Siew Yih and Allen for a little while longer. Around 03:00 the four of us went over to the night market and we surprised to find it completely closed up. So we now know if closes sometime between the hours of one and three.

No worries, Allen knew of another place and off we went to the middle of the island in search of a restaurant that we could eat at. Yep, it was open and a good late night snack, or early breakfast, was enjoyed before finally heading home and to bed just after four....

Prague - Vicky's Birthday Party

After a quick tour through Brno we were once again on the train heading for the next stop on this whirlwind tour that Barb had planned for everyone.

So, this is one of the places that Tina and I were really looking forward to seeing, Prague, the capitol of the Czech Republic.

We arrived into Prague shortly after 13:00 on Friday, August 8 and we made our way to the hotel. From there we all wandered down to a small outdoor patio bar in front of the hotel so that we could watch the opening of the Olympics.
As much of an amazing show at the opening was, about an hour into our group started to split up, several choosing to return to their hotel room so that they could watch with English speaking commentators. Tina and I decided that since we would only be in Prague for a day and a half, we needed to take advantage of the beautiful weather and this bit of free time to get some sightseeing done that we figured wouldn't be on the next mornings walking tour.



After strolling around the city for a few hours we headed back to the hotel to meet up with everyone so that we could once again do a birthday celebration. This time it was Vicky's birthday, and Barb had lined up reservations at a local restaurant and followed it up with finding a local bar that had dancing for everyone to head over to.

The meal was excellent and everyone had a great time. And just to top off the evening the 80's dance bar that Barb had found just happened to be one of Prague's gay bars. It was pretty obvious when we walked in and went downstairs to the dance floor, but since we were the only people in there (and we were all feeling good from the wine at dinner), the girls just started dancing away and then making requests of the bartenders as to what music they felt should be played.

I think that turned out to be a perfect birthday, at least Vicky seemed to enjoy it and she's the only one that mattered. Tina, Liz, Barb, and Cynthia all spent some time on the dance floor, but Vicky pretty much owned it. At one point a group of about 4-5 guys came in and were slightly disappointed to see this group of women having fun in their bar. They lasted about two songs before accepting that these women were not going anywhere and off they went, much to the laughter and enjoyment of the group.

Yeah, that's a party.