This story begins at Christmas time. A few days before Christmas the school had Christmas celebrations, and everyone was invited over to one of the teachers' houses for dinner, including us foreign teachers. I thought this was mighty swell of them to treat us to dinner, and decided that the foreign teachers should return the favour .I also thought it would be good for bringing everyone together.
So, earlier this month, we did.
Alex knows his way around the city the best, so it was his job to bring food from the city centre - it's cheaper there, the cost of living in this suburb is high. I spent the week beforehand thinking up my part of the menu, and making sure I had what I needed.
On the day itself, I prepared some handmade pasta during the lunch break. It took longer than I'd planned, and so I got back to school late, and Alex's girlfriend, Linda, finshed cutting it for me.
In the evening Ivy and I went home earlier than everyone else, because we had one less class to teach. This gave us about an hour to get a headstart on dinner, and it meant there was still one of us - Alex - to escort the Chinese teachers here. We got our first surprise when we walked in the door - Alex's girlfriend, Linda, wasn't there, and she was the one Alex sent to do the shopping. Without the ingredients, we couldn't cook anything - but we had plenty to keep us occupied, because I hadn't stored the pasta very well and it had now decided it preferred being a lump than nice long strands.
We were still untangling pasta when Linda came back, very flustered - it turns out she had to carry an awful lot of bags of groceries, and they don't let you take the shopping trolleys far enough to catch a taxi.
Now that we had groceries, the cooking began. Linda and I stayed here to cook, and Ivy went back to her apartment, in order to use as many kitchens as possible. Ivy cooked an African-style stew, and was done long before Linda and me. Since we were both making multiple dishes, and there was limited bench space and only two cooking elements, neither of us had enough to cook as fast as we would have liked.
Everyone arrived before any food was ready - but my compulsive snacking habits came to the rescue here, as there were plenty of snacks of various kinds to keep everyone happy. Ivy finished hers and helped Linda and me, but it was something like 10 or 11 o'clock before dinner was served. Even then, I hadn't finished - I served half some of mine, and kept cooking a couple of things more.
Before we had finished cooking, though, the power went out. The only light in the place was the gas stove. Everyone piled out into the corridor, and Alex went downstairs to find someone to give us some electricity. A little explanation here is in order - the electricity is pre-paid, and the only way to charge it is to put money on a card, then have one of the staff put the card in your meter - because all the electricity meters are behind a locked door. The side-effect of the locked door is that I have no idea how much electricity I have left, until it goes out - at, as it happens, the worst possible time.
A couple of the teachers told ghost stories, and eventually we got enough power to last the night restored. Normally there's not a whole lot you can do about it at that time of night, because the building attendant's office is closed; I guess we got lucky.
So, what did we have? Ivy cooked her African stew; Linda cooked a bunch of Chinese things that I mostly don't remember, but they were numerous and good - she cooks well. I coked mostly Italian food - gnocchi with butter, pumpkin ravioli, hunter's style chicken, and more that I had planned but didn't have time for. I wanted to have something from New Zealand, though - as much as I like Italian food - so I made fish and kumura chips, in a beer batter. That went down very well, and along with Linda's and Ivy's food staved off the starving hordes while I cooked the ravioli, then the gnocchi.
Afterwards I made mulled wine - not terribly well, they didn't like that so much, but all of that conspired to keep me in the kitchen most of the night. I didn't mind so much - I'm not a terribly social person at the best of times, anyway, so at least I was keeping myself occupied.
For those of you keeping track, Linda isn't a teacher where I work, and Alex is one of the foreign teachers. Yes, this means that Alex copped out on his share of the cooking by having his girlfriend do it.
After I'd pried myself away from the stove, pictures were taken, and thus I present these:
This is the kitchen. From left to right: Linda, Ivy, me. Note the lack of Alex!
Here are most of the teachers and staff where I work. Helen, the head teacher, was camera-shy; there are no photos of her here. Mary, who works in admin, didn't come to dinner, and neither did the cleaning lady whose name I don't know because she doesn't speak any English. So, from left to right: Ariel, a teacher; Diane, the receptionist; Melinda, Apple and Vivi, all teachers; and Tracy, the headmaster.
And here is a photo of everyone! (With the aforementioned exceptions.) From left to right: Ariel, Diane, Melinda, Tracy, me! Ivy, Alex, Apple and Vivi.
One last photo for fun!
The party ended at about 1 or 2 in the morning. Everyone said their goodbyes, and I had a little more to eat. The leftovers kept me going for several days after that! All in all, a good time was had by all.
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