Slept in this morning and then went for a walk in downtown looking for a suitable gift to take to Tony's (private student) mother who had invited us for food at their house. We wanted flowers, but couldn't find a florist and then considered chocolates but they were hugely expensive and so settled on some nice biscuits from one of the bakeries. She came to pick us up at 4 and then we picked up Rick (other private student) and his mum on the way to their house. Their flat was very sparce but nice - there was no clutter and it was hard to imagine a family of 3 plus a maid living there. As soon as we arrived, we were given lots of snacks - mini oranges, mini apples, nuts, chestnuts, popcorn and bananas. I thought this would be it, but then dinner was served which was a very informal meal. We had a kind of thick potato soup, various shreaded vegetables, steamed bread and then some kind of sweet sesame dumplings with a not so great texture. They had made a real effort with the vegetarian thing for us even though they couldn't really understand why we wouldn't eat meat. After dinner we played cards with the boys and they taught us how to play Chinese chess - it's very similar to English chess, but I found it quite difficult as I'm not great at chess and it's even harder when you have to remember the chinese symbols for each of the pieces - they play not with character pieces, but with wooden disks with symbols on them. They took us home about 10.