YMM 11th Anniversary Color Walk

This was a surprise event that I knew nothing about until the day before, SO.

On Monday morning, all the YMM employees met at Shenzhen Bay (theoretically around 8:30am, but almost everyone was a little late). Turns out my roommmate Xiaoxiao is kind of high up in the company? So she got a company driver to take her (and therefore me) to the school, which meant that I didn't have to take the metro :3

We got little sandwiches for breakfast that were pretty much just bread, but I had grabbed cereal from my room before I left so I wasn't starving. Everyone got together to do some group photos - everyone had to dress up in one solid color, so basically it was a big rainbow kinda deal.

You can see a little bit of the rainbow here, but I took this photo for the architecture mostly

Then, when that was finished, we walked from Shenzhen Bay to the YMM HQ office in the OCT Loft (which is coincidentally where my apartment is, so that was nice for me). It's about a two hour walk, and along the way we had little cards that got stamped so we could get a gift at the end of the walk.

Shenzhen Bay itself - the low building is the sport center that include the mall where I teach

proof that I was there

LOOK AT THIS LANDSCAPE, MAN I AM TELLING YOU

Those are my fellow teachers up front.

It was sunny and hot, and most of the other teachers were pretty disgruntled about having to walk for so long on their day off (or, in my case, while still having to teach in the afternoon), but they didn't let that ruin the mood, so it was actually a pretty good time. It gave me a good chance to see parts of Shenzhen I hadn't before!

If I don't take a close up of a flower, can I truly be said to have gone somewhere?

Once we finished, the company treated everyone to lunch at this restaurant called Huataoli. And I need to make this clear - I say lunch, but for a company event like this, what I really mean is a feast. A proper Chinese style meal involves at least ten dishes that you pass around the table so everyone can sample, and it's just amazing.

I photographed - not my favorite dish - but the most interesting presentation.

Delicious fried chicken that comes in a cage!

and I do mean THE WHOLE CHICKEN

There was a discussion later in the meal about what weird parts of chicken people had eaten, beginning with my boss Jessica talking about eating chicken eyes and brain. It's really interesting to go to places where food traditions from ancient times, when survival was much more pressing, are still prominent. American food traditions are so disjointed because of our constant demographic shifts (the American "melting pot"), which gives us incredible and delicious variety! But it also provides a kind of shallowness, where everyone only wants the most beautiful or most delicious seeming part of food, and we tend to ignore the "waste products" - like eyes and brains.