Daniel turned 63, and the students surprised him with a birthday party in class.
A 3 layer cake, no less, decorated as a cup of coffee -- these students know my weakness. Coffee isn't so popular here, and what there is is mostly instant, but there are real coffee restaurants which tend to be expensive relative to usual Chinese fare.
The cake came with a goofy hat which of course I had to wear for a class photo.
And it was my job to cut the cake, a messy business but it did all get eaten, albeit with some second helpings.
Well, not quite all eaten exactly, the icing was popular for smearing on faces, especially other's faces, and naturally this escalated. I managed to get photos, but with sticky fingers and a sticky camera.
The students said this was the first party like this they'd had since coming to college, and it got pretty energetic -- I wondered what the people passing in the hall must have thought.
But eventually everyone washed up and we got on with the lesson, which included a student group teaching a segment on an updated Lady Godiva story, with discussion questions for their classmates. We're impressed with how much more sophisticated these students are now than when we first saw them last fall.