I got the golden ticket!

Let me tell you a grand tale of a toy master and his friends. Sit back children and relax, it's going to be a bumpy mountain ride... LITERALLY!
We'll start at the begining. Last night, while enjoying our usual meal of dumplings and pijiou, I was listening to Cathy Lee rant about how her students don't believe in God, when the doorbell of Andrea's apartment rang. We all paused, confused, looking around as we realized that our entire social network was already sitting in the room. Who could it be? Why, a 13 year old boy and his poofy haired father of course! (I might add that he had the best Asian hair we've seen thus far.) Aaaaanyway, these two very excited visitors were extatic to find, not one, but three foreign teachers in the apartment. The son has been teaching himself English for many years and is fairly proficient. He explained that he and his father become friends with all the foreign teachers and then dropped a few names like (crazy) Andrew and (cracked out) Jamie, both of which were teachers at Cathy Lee's college. I guess this father and son team work very closely with CCTV, the English channel in China. After many disjointed sentences and furrowed eyebrows we determined that we would meet them for lunch the next day and then slide down a mountain. I know what you're thinking; possible abduction senario. But no, Mr. Zhang gave us his website (www.ofo21.com) where there is a picture of him popping up from behind some lovely bushes and quotes him as being one of China's top toy makers. Yes, we met the Asian Willy Wanka of toys, and we got the golden tickets my friends. Now, this qualifies our situation with this man as completely viable and rock solid as far as Chinese standards go. So as we're looking at this website (where you will see a picture of crazy Jamie in bib oberalls) and the doorbell rings again! By now Andrea is too afraid that they heard our histerical laughter through the windows as they left, so I step up. I don't even open the door all the way when Mr. Zhang snakes his arm through the crack and thrusts a green plastic bag in my hands. It's large and heavy... and appears to be a watermelon. In shock, I only have time to mutter xiexie (thank you) before he slams the door back closed and skuttles off. WHAT? The girls are still in the other room wondering what happened. I can't speak, I can only shuffle back into Andrea's room, bent over, about to wet myself laughing at what has just happened and soon all three of us are gasping for air. Our hostess decides that it would be best to hack into the melon with one of her three (yes three) cleavers, and we gorge ourselves until it's time for bed.
This morning I went to class as usual and spoke to my parents for the first time in over a week. After hearing about my plans to eat lunch and slide down a mountain with China's own Willy Wonka, my mother's first responce was, "don't take your clothes off Stephanie". At quarter to noon I went over to Andrea's and nervously waited for our lunch date with my other two partners in crime. Mr. Zhang showed up on his motor bike, wearing a tarp in the rain, and ushered us into a cab that took us to a restaurant near C.Lee's school. Walking into our private room we found little Zhang and two CCTV journalists; one woman who spoke a little English and one who spoke none. We proceeded to eat some Southern style food which set our mouthes alight, though very very good and left in a couple cabs for the mountain.
The "slide" looked like an individual bumper car on a track. Who was going first? Do you really need to ask? Me. So I get strapped in and my car is pulled, halfway up the mountain, but I'm disappointed to find out that I have to stop and get out at the top. Our group all lands on solid ground and trecks over to an open area where there are over 200 enormous buddah statues all from different areas of the world. Holy hell, I didn't realize we'd be getting cultured on this mountain slide trip as well and I'm impressed. I guess this whole attraction was built only two years ago and not many Chengde residents even know it exists. But looking at the buddahs is not what we're here for. We're here to play with Mr. Zhang's toys. The CCTV women pull out their cameras as we get an incredibly elaborate lesson in how to set up our personal, mini parachutes. Andrea sends hers off first with flourish and practically throws it over the side of the mountain. I send mine off directly up, the right way, and Mr. Zhang replies encouragingly that I am very sexy. Perhaps he didn't mean that he thought I was baby making material, but just an English expression to please. After playing for a while, we were told that it was now time to climb the mountain. 1,482 stairs later, hearts pounding, we reached the top and saw Chengde city in all of her foggy glory (remember it was raining lightly all day). Andrea's afraid of heights, so on this made the treck down a slow one, which was fine with me considering my legs were jelly by then. We then got our ultimate reward: the bumper car express down the second half of the mountain! You can control your own speed by pushing or pulling on your break stick and the non-English speaking CCTV employee infront of me does not exactly like to live on the edge. So I could not enjoy rocketing down as quickly as I had hoped and Cathy Lee angrily followed me, screaming profanities that I should hurry. Grandrea brought up the rear a good twenty minutes after we all finished. The first thing she said after getting off was, "wow, I went really fast!"
The end.
On a side note, we have extended our social circle this evening after meeting up with 5 other foreign teachers. These are the people we've been praying to meet since our arrival here. They're just great. Smart, funny, entertaining people with great advice and travel sense. You'll be hearing much more about them in blogs to come for I foresee us hanging out a lot. Helen and Ginger are the 50 year old surrogate mothers of the group. Jimmy is the 30 something token male of the group who speaks pretty good Chinese (thank you Jimmy). Tricia and Kier are two recent college grads from the states who seem to have a lot in common with us three. We're very excited to have met them and they us.
My world is expanding. Thank God. And C.Lee and I are escaping to Shijiazhuang this weekend for some Pizza Hut, Moon Cakes and Drake interaction.
On cloud nine,
Stephanie