Dog meat and World Cup final

Woke up early afternoon to aching bones after yesterday's exercise. Although it was a Sunday I spent half the day working as I knew I'd use up some time tomorrow sleeping after the World Cup final. Today A Xia's husband invited us to eat dog at the restaurant Lao Pan had invited us to not three days ago. This is a fairly important occasion so at 5.30pm I left the kids at home with Chuan Chuan and took the bike to the place. As soon as I arrived I was told I should have taken the kids...grrr...before I'd been told not to...

There were two tables - one for the kids and ladies and one for the men. And there was plenty of food including four full metal bowls of dog meat. A few blokes arrived and drank some beer, but didn't seem to eat the dog. Then one of them left and a couple more came. But still the dog meat was not touched. After an hour of this I asked Tan if people weren't eating the dog because they were waiting for someone special to come. She just said that some people don't eat meat for "religious" reasons. So then, an hour after standing on ceremony by not eating it, I tucked in and it was very nice. Then more people started on it. We didn't leave till about 8pm, when A Wu and I agreed to go for a head wash. So I followed him home on the electric moped and went in to change my clothes. We then found a very nice place for a decadent hour of head/face wash and massage, with a facemask thrown in too. I couldn't believe it when it came to 30 kuai for the both of us.

We went for a quick bite at the local seafood place afterwards before bidding farewell for the evening. But it was still three hours before the World Cup final. I ended up chatting with And and Awl and Mat on skype for an hour or so which was a good laugh, before calling Lu Hai to meet up at the seafood place again to watch the footy. I correctly predicted 1-0 Spain but didn't think it would take extra time. In fact I really didn't want that as it was 5.30am by the time I left and it took me rather longer than it should have done to get home...