A Night of Impromptu Karaoke

As strange as it sounds, I'm getting so used to this place that it kind of feels like home. I've settled into a sort-of routine and I have a decent grasp of how to get around (so much so, in fact, that I saw a clearly lost man in Longgang the other day and started to stop to help him before catching myself...I may know my way around, but I still can't speak Chinese well enough to share that information). I have my foreign friends and my teacher friends, and (believe it or not) I'm so used to hearing the constant background noise of a language I can't understand that I find myself agape when I happen to overhear an English conversation!
Yesterday at lunch Maggie mentioned something about a singing competition she is going to take part in. She loves to sing (really though, she sings constantly) but feels that she is out of practice so she said she wanted to work on it before the contest. At the time, I couldn't have known how involved I was going to become in this process.
After school I had to tutor from 5-6. Tutoring jobs are one of the lovely perks of being an English speaker in this country; they are absolutely thrown at you and you get to charge pretty much whatever you want. The girl I tutor is in 4th grade with excellent English, so we just hang out, chat, and draw pictures and I get paid 150RMB (~$25) per hour. She also happens to be the music teacher's daughter. Maggie, of course, knows this, so when I went to meet up with the girl she tagged along to talk to the mom about working on her singing.
After tutoring I shuffled off to dinner and was waved over by Maggie who happened to be just finishing up. As I sat down she said, "I'm going to sing on the 6th floor tonight, would you like to join?". Laughing out loud I said no, which, judging by the look on her face, was the wrong answer. Feeling bad I asked, "what time?", only to find out that this was going to start in about 15 minutes. At this point I figured there was little chance to escape so I reluctantly agreed.
After we finished eating and washed our dishes she asked me if I was going to the office. In a last-ditch attempt to get out of singing I said no. Rallying quickly from my shocking answer she said, "Okay, you go to your dormitory first and then meet me at 6:30" (it was 6:25 at the time). Seeing that I was clearly NOT going to be able to wriggle my way out of this one, I agreed that it made more sense to go to the office since I didn't know where this singing room was.
A few minutes later we were trudging up to the 6th floor of one of the buildings where the maintenance guy let us in. I was shocked at what I saw: a massive KTV room right there in the school building! KTV is what they call the karaoke places in China; you and your friends sit in a room the size of a medium bedroom and sing. It is outfitted with plenty of comfy couch space and a couple tables, and there is an all-you-can-eat bar down the hallway. There are usually some colorful lighting fixtures and, of course, a stage. Fu'an School's KTV room was 6 times as big as a KTV, with all the crazy lights and couches, but no food and only the three of us.
Once we got the stereo working, Maggie informed me that she invited everyone she saw that night but only a few were going to come. Great. The only thing worse than karaoke with your friends is karaoke with just two people. Maggie insisted that I go first, but I insisted she went first since I had yet to see any English songs in the book. We found the page and she left me to peruse it as she sang her first song. Now, this was a pretty big book of songs; there were pages and pages of Chinese songs, a couple pages of Japanese songs, and one single page of English songs that was only 2/3 full. To make matters worse, I only recognized about half of the songs and only liked about 5 of them. Oh well. As we took turns singing a few people came and went, so there were always about 3 of us hanging out. I sang "Tears in Heaven" and a lot of Beatles and we all had a pretty good time for the first hour or so.
By hour 3 I was ready to make like a tree and leave, but Maggie still persisted. She insisted on me choosing songs even though I had fully exhausted any and all songs that I had a chance at being able to sing and had even faked my way through a couple. I finally decided that the only way out of there was to claim exhaustion and hit the road. This excuse always works in China because they believe that rest is an extremely important component of your healthy.
So at 9:30 I finally made it back to my room and I just laughed to think about what a strange and random night it was. I also realized that no matter how used to China I become, there will always be something waiting to surprise me.