Note to self: When seated at a dinner table in a room equipped with a karaoke machine, do not teach your Chinese companions to bang on the table and chant the name of the person you want to hear next. I wanted to hear Liu Yang; he's got a marvelous voice and he sang last time, and it was wonderful. So after he sang, guess what happened?







Yep. They turned on me. I sang "Hey, Jude," which was the first English song we found.

They also chanted for Hannah to sing, but Hannah, rightly perceiving that it was I who had caused all the trouble, dragged me back up there.











There we are, doing a fairly credible (if I do say so myself) version of "Take Me Home, Country Roads." That's Chiang Shieng singing with us - he helped everyone out.

What a change from our first karaoke night! This time, everyone was relaxed; I could use my chopsticks much more comfortably; and when I look at that picture I see a picture of my friends, not just my students. It has truly been an incredible three weeks . . .

We found out that we've been invited back next year, so now I am really looking forward to that Mandarin class at LCC. So much more fun to learn a language when you have a purpose . . .