Mid-Autumn Festival

Today is the Mid-Autumn Festival, a kind of Chinese Thanksgiving. In that families get together, eat lots and lots of food, and celebrate.  Yesterday I made pans and pans of dumplings with my adopted family, photos below.  It was much fun, a fellow foreign teacher came as well, and general merriment was had pinacled by the consumtion of said dumplings, with sauces, a fruit called "dragon eyes", and of course beer.
Today, the tradition to to eat a lot (naturally), and gather in parks to share moon cakes and gaze at the moon.  There's a legend behind this, but you may do better to google it than hear my rendition because my understanding comes completely from hearing it in Chinese and then trying to decipher.
I will add that Saturday was Teacher's Day, a splendid holiday in which students and the school bestows flowers, food, and small gifts upon the teachers.  So all in all, lovely weekend for me.  This combined with the successful-ish completion of my first week as a teacher at this school, good company, and fun with friends has officially made this a "love China" weekend.  (For those of you new to my China blogging, I have found that my opinion of living in China is distinctly broken down into a love/hate relationship, and last time I lived here the amount of each was just about equal.  I like to classify on the blogs so everyone can have an idea of what emotional life is like here haha)
So happy Mid-Autumn Festival everyone, I miss you all and must reiterate, you would not believe my life.