Freaky weather and Game Shows

I have been in Shanghai for over three months now and to say it has been an interesting experience would not even come close to doing it justice. This has been more then an "interesting" experience, this has been nothing short of an 3 month out of body experience. There are just so many things that are overwhelmingly different from what I'm accustomed to, that it has nearly numbed my senses altogether and nothing can surprise me anymore.

This past weekend I had another once in a lifetime happening that will stay with me for a long time...I was on a Chinese dating game show. Just to put an image in your head for what it was like...It was a weird mix between the NewlyWed Game and a Looney Toons Cartoon. Chinese TV is extremely odd.
Now that you have that image, let me go back and explain exactly what happened. The show is called "I Love You," but it is pronounced with the Chinese way of saying the words. So it actually sounds like "I Rohu Ou" The hosts were this chinese bald guy with glasses in a white sequined suit with two girls who were also is cheesy sequined barbie doll dresses.
My friend was the actual contestant on the show and myself and two other guys were his "entourage" sitting behind him making him look good. There were also two other groups of Chinese guys who were our competition. On the other side of the stage there were three groups of girls who did the typical chinese girl thing, giggle a lot with their hands over their mouth and look shy. The whole show took about 3 hours to film and there is way to much to talk about but I'll just give you the rundown of some of the odder things.

1. The girls had to guess whose wallet belonged to whom by riffling through it.
2. The Lichi Challege - The guys had to pick up the girls and do squats while naming off as many fruits as they could think of.
3. The girls had to make turtle soup and the guys had to guess who made each soup. They even showed the video of the girls killing the turtles. The ASPCA would throw a fit.
   
4. Apparently we were supposed to have a chant memorized to yell. All the chinese groups did, we didn't so we looked ridiculous
   
5. The host looked like an odd combination of Mr. Clean and a turtle.
   
6. There were cartoon sound effects going on the entire time they were filming. Like weird bells and whistles, springs, beeps, honks, and every other sound effect that was ever used in loony toons. Not exactly sure why, but I think they think it's cute.
7. There was a guy in a giant panda suit that would run in and out randomly for no apparent reason at all.

It's really something that I have to explain in person, and I will when I come home for Christmas.

The weather has also been really strange this last week. It was freezing last week, then it went back up into the 60's and low 70's for about 4 days...now it's freezing again. China's weather is playing with my emotions.

Things Ezra has learned...

1. The number 8 is extremely lucky and you actually have to pay extra for it to be in your telephone number.
2. It is also lucky to have really long mole hairs....and really disgusting
3. Electric blankets might be the best thing ever invented...ever.
4. I got an amazing haircut for roughly $.80 cents. Gotta love China.
5. Gie Yo!!!! (spelled wrong) is what you yell to cheer somebody on. It literally means "Add Oil!"
   
6. I'm extremely excited to come home in 2 weeks.

See you all soon.

Love,
Ezra