Children's Day talent show

June 1st is international Children's Day, which you would know if you lived outside the US because apparently all the countries celebrate these holidays but us.  Which meant that my primary school was off for the day, and the day before my kids put on a talent show.  They were so cute!  And some of them are really talented!  There was singing, dancing, recorders and violins and keyboards that are powered by blowing into a tube.  It was a lot of fun to experience, here are some videos and picture for you to enjoy!

I know we're not supposed to have favorites.... But look at these 2nd grade ballerinas!!

A grade five girl performing a Mongolian dance

A very talented girl playing the traditional Chinese guzheng

These are little keyboards you play by blowing air into.  So funny.

The cha cha is pretty popular here

Macau for May Day

We got a three day holiday (which in China actually means we had to work on Saturday and then got Sunday-Tuesday off) and so we again packed our bags and this time headed to Zhuhai and then across the border to Macau.  It's the middle of monsoon season now and the rains were pouring, but luckily the weather improved and only sprinkled a few times for us.  Zhuhai turned out to not be too interesting, but we stayed there because it's much cheaper than Macau!   Monday morning we crossed the border (after a two hour line) and headed to the Vegas of the East.  We started at the Venetian, where Thomas explained a lot of the games to us.  It was my first casino!  And what a choice. It has the biggest casino floor in the world, and is head to toe gilded. 

We did some tours of Cathedrals and architecture, which was interesting because Macau used to be a Portuguese colony so it is a big difference from mainland.  After a delicious feast at Alfonso III, we went to some more casinos, including the Grand Lisboa, the Wynn, and the MGM Grand.  After getting a refresher course from Thomas, I played black jack and won a hundred dollars!  As my first time gambling, it was a great time and I can now say I've never lost :P

  

Rain out my window

Fisher girl statue at Zhuhai

the Venetian

St. Paul's Cathedral ruins

View over the city

In the MGM, an actual live butterfly globe

Lookin at a winner!

Hong Kong New Year 2 videos

For your viewing pleasure: Practice New Years countdown from Kowloon and some dragon dances

Hong Kong New Year

I know, I know, it's been a while again.  But I hate to break it to you, it will be a while between posts until I'm off holiday in mid-February.  There is just too much going on!
Since Christmas I've been in Hong Kong, all around the city, getting things tailored, practicing for a play we're preforming, hiking mountains, getting massages (more on this later!), and soon I'm going to Guangzhou for a few days, Hong Kong again, and then off to Vietnam for three weeks!  Sounds terrible, doesn't it?

For New Year's, I thought I would have to work but at the last minute the teacher's decided they wanted to take their own classes and review with them, so I was off the hook and free to play.  I went to HK with some friends and it was madness, as predicted.  Luckily the border crossing was really fast -- they have prediced over half a million people trying to cross but we went during nap time so no one was there -- but come sun down the crowds came out.  We got some delicious pizza and then went to Kowloon.  Our game plan was to watch the fireworks from across the water.  However, we were three hours early, the police were closing down the roads and paths for crowd control, and crowds there were.  After about an hour we decided we had had enough of all the people and lack of space, so we went back to Marie's (our friend who lives in HK and is wonderful) apartment and popped the second bottle of champagne.
Through some miscommunications, we thought we'd be able to see the fireworks from her window on the 26th floor but at the last minute, literally, realized we couldn't.  A brilliant idea crossed our minds -- the roof!  So at two minutes til midnight we raced out the door in our socks and without cameras or jackets (but with champagne!) and to the elevator, only to find out the elevator doesn't go up except from the ground floor.  And thus in an heroic feat we found ourselves racing up 8 stories of stairs to burst onto the balcony as the clock struck 12.
Unfortunately the fireworks were not very exciting.
But it was a great time, lots of bubbles, met some new people on the roof, and had a nice view of the city.  One of the better New Years I've had in the last few years, quite enjoyed it.

This doesn't bode well...

Carrie, Marie, Cliff, Rachel, me and Thomas

And this is two hours to midnight...

As a credit to all of us responsible adults, there was even some alcohol left the next day!  Poor Thomas was a little hung over and sleepy, but the rest of us were ok.  We got our usual and amazing breakfast at the Flying Pan and then wandered around the city and smack into a dragon parade.  That was entertaining and apparently made a world record with 2012 dragons.  We got through about 30 and then called it good :P
More wandering around and then grabbed a bus home to crash and sleep very well.

Happy 2012 everyone!  Hope you were able to spend good times with good friends too.

Christmas Hiatus

Hello all!


Don't worry, I know how painfully I've been lagging on the posts lately.  It's been busy here!  The school term is almost over, but since Christmas isn't a holiday here we don't get any time off at all.  So planning parties, buying gifts, decorating cookies and seeing friends all has had to overlap with making lessons, figuring out how to control 50 excitable 9 year olds at a time, and remembering the strange rules of English grammar.


It's all happened though, and I write to you now on Christmas night in between planning more lessons for tomorrow morning.


Christmas is not the same here without family and friends and traditions from back home.  They kind of know what it is, and Christmas trees and Santa hats are everything, but it's not at all the same.  It's a strange bastardized version of gaudy trees for the sake of taking pictures near them.  I guess it's good that it doesn't feel like the holidays usually do because I can avoid some of the homesickness that would be there if it were painfully obvious.


My school was very kind yet again and lots of people unexpectedly brought me Christmas gifts!  My headmaster brought me a fancy tea set, my neighbors a snow globe, one colleague a beautiful scarf, another some chocolate...  I didn't have anything to reciprocate with because since it's not a holiday here I only got some things for my contact teacher and neighbor family! I'll have to do something for New Years maybe.


The foreign teachers have celebrated in our own ways though.  We had a small Christmas white elephant party with some friends last week.  And today CTLC and the education bureau had a big event for us in the form of a banquet and a booked hotel so we could all stay together and celebrate.  It was a lot of fun and most of us, myself painfully included, overindulged a bit.


We got dim sum in the morning today.  I hadn't had it before (think Chinese tapas or afternoon tea) so it was exciting and of course China did what China does best -- food -- and it was delicious.  I failed to take pictures of this food because the previously stated overindulgence was taking its toll...


Afterwards I tagged along with Thomas to his church and saw my first Catholic mass.  It was really interesting to watch, and we got to sing some Christmas songs which was my favorite part. I can't compare the service to what it would be like in the states, because like I said it was my first experience!  It wasn't very similar to the services I have been to in past years though so it was fun to drill Thomas for explanations of what was happening.


And lastly we met up with a couple friends, Christiane and Carrie, and got dinner at a Malaysian restaurant and had delicious curry.


If it sounds like I'm describing everything in terms of foods we ate, that's because I've been living in China!  Sinification is occurring (^.^)


It was a lovely time and I am so glad I got to spend it with friends here.  But I miss my home and family!  A tragedy struck when I woke up to an email from my parents saying I missed a skype meeting.  Apparently some miscommunication happened and they were expecting me a day earlier than I was able to talk with them, so I missed being able to see everyone.  I am very sad about that, but hopefully we'll be able to catch each other soon.


Love and miss you all.  I hope the holidays are bringing you joy and togetherness, feel blessed to be with the friends and family you are spending it with!

Decorating cookies at our party

The banquet

Thomas and me 

Merry Christmas :)

Happy Fire-Chicken Day

I'll preface this with the explanation, your welcome.  In Chinese the direct translation of "turkey" is "fire-chicken", so it is not uncommon, I've found, that students will shout the latter when presented with a picture of the former.  If you don't know that that's why that's happening, this can be a very confusing experience.  Now that I've figured it out I don't think I'll ever say "turkey" again.
In summary, Happy Thanksgiving!!
I've been very blessed this year and have an awful lot to be thankful for.  Among these things -- the amazing opportunity to live in China again, my hilarious and poorly suited job, my loving family, my gets-me-by income, my cute apartment, my wonderful school, taste buds, the friends I've made here, the opportunities to travel around this side of the world, my French press to make coffee, etc. etc. etc.  And of course being able to blog and hearing from so many of you that you enjoying reading it and following my antics.  I'm very appreciative of feeling relevant and having so many people share in my victories and frustrations.  (In fact, the blog view count is fast approaching 1,000.  It will happen soon!)
And of course, I'm thankful for being able to find a real Thanksgiving meal in the middle of China!  A group of us foreign teachers went to a restaurant and chowed down on turkey and the fixings.  Four days later I think I'm still full!  But maybe that's from the second dinner we enjoyed on Saturday, when all the teachers got together with homemade dishes and giant plates of turkey.  I brought cans of cranberry sauce, but had some issue with presentation -- my serving bowl is silver metal and the sauce came out of the can in the shape of the can, hellooo dog food aesthetic! There was a large variety of dishes to be enjoyed, and of course some sports and games to play afterwards.  We even had the rare treat of a frisbee!
I've discovered a similarity between our countries though -- Christmas decorations are already up in the mall! I thought it would be difficult to make malls in China more flashy and lit up than they already are, but there they go proving me wrong.  Some of the decorations are questionably misguided, like a giant purple witch hat with light up "Merry Christmas" on it, but most are reminiscent of home.  Starbucks even has holiday flavors out now (^.^)
The holiday season's begun!

BiRtHdAy Shenanigans

The festivities were started a week early by my school, which throws a little make-the-people-with-birthdays-this-month-sing-and-eat-cake party.  We got the customary cake smeared on our faces (traditional to do to birthday celebrators) and gift cards to a local bakery to get our own cakes (I think, though honestly the card doesn't say and I have no idea).  I managed to make a fool of myself as usual by dropping the piece of cake they handed me while everyone watched.  It was cute and luckily only lasted for an half hour.

We (me and a couple friends) celebrated the first part of my birthday week with an excursion to Hong Kong.  We consequentially learned to never try to cross the border on a Saturday morning.  From my apartment to where we were meeting for breakfast took me a good 5 hours, where it normally would only take 2.  So breakfast became lunch, but tasted just as amazing because the Flying Pan has incredible breakfast -- and bottomless coffee!! -- all day long.  After stuffing ourselves silly, we went to try to find the Hong Kong Pride parade that was going on that day.  We knew the generally area where it was supposed to be, but not the actual place.  However, usually that would be enough because Pride parades are huge and flamboyant and very hard to miss.  Not true in Hong Kong.  We saw a guy wearing a giant Queen of Hearts (from Alice in Wonderland) costume and thought, hey, that must be it let's follow him.  So we did.  And he led us straight to... a park that looked like it was having a celebration.  That must be it!  So we went in to find... a kids Mardi Gras festival?  I think?  There was face painting (only for the kiddos, we tried :(  ), dancing talent show, booths, etc.  We hung around for a couple minutes and were given giant pink leis.  Then we headed out to resume our quest.  Eventually we ran into it, but like I said Hong Kong Pride is disappointing as far as Pride goes.  There in fact was no parade, just a march.  I saw only one or two queens, and the highlight was the group of men advocating "Sex work is work".  But we marched for a while, then casually exited and went to get cocktails.
Burgers and more drinks and quests for the last few minutes of happy hours ensued, then we crashed at our friend's apartment.  In the morning Christiane and I went wondering down to the piers then grocery shopping for delicious western foods.  Several hours and wayyyy to much money spent later, we returned home.

On my actually birthday day, we went and got Cold Stone ice cream and then happened upon a bar that does salsa dancing, which turns out is less fun when you have no idea how to salsa dance and didn't bring a partner.  I called it a night pretty early with mild ambitions to return someday and be able to dance :P

This weekend we are planning a KTV excursion, so I will have updates later.

And THANK YOU everyone who sent birthday cards/wishes/skype calls.  It was so kind of everyone to keep in touch!  I truly appreciate it.

Halloween

What do they do for Halloween in China, you ask?
Well, not much.
If you recall, in Beijing we had a massive party and everyone was in costume and crazy.  It was a good time.  But Shenzhen is smaller, newer, and with fewer foreigners.  That said, the holiday did not go uncelebrated.
While costume supplies were short and good parties were fewer we still managed with what we could.  The bar district was crowded to capacity.  And while most costumes were hand down and low maintenance the creative level was high.
I was also put in charge of throwing a Halloween party for my school.  Sounds terrifying, right?  Well it was up until it happened.  Because in typical China style I was given no details whatsoever.  Initially my instructions were to have a Halloween party on either Thursday or Friday after school for somewhere between 25 - 1,000 kids.  Ahh!  Luckily it turned out that what they really meant was "We want a Halloween party, but we want you to do it.  So pick a day and whatever and  make it happen."  So I was able to reign it in to throwing parties for my interesting groups.  The school was very kind and bought costumes, candies, and decorations for us.
I had a "yep, I'm still in China" moment when we were shopping for the supplies.  I of course wanted the masks, vampires, skeletons, spider webs, etc.  But my colleagues vetoed because, and I quote, "no!  it's scary!"  So we ended up with lots of feathery sequined nonsense. A lot of it looked more like Carnival than Halloween. I think the concept of Halloween got lost in translation somewhere!
The parties were pretty fun.  My costume relay race failed due to either over excitement, misunderstandings or mistranslations (Me:  "Ok,  when I say 'go', run around the circle and come back.  Then give your costume to the second person.  Then they run around the circle and come back.  Then they give it to the third person.  Ok?"  Colleague's translation: "Put on the costumes and walk very slowly, don't run!  Show everyone what your costume looks like.").  But I had a word search and pictures to draw, and at the very end right before they went home to their parents, I gave them candy.  The older kids got super whiney because only the race winners got a prize for the race, they wanted more candy, they wanted more to colors, etc.  Oy.  There are definitely some spoiled children here, good thing they're cute.  This week I'm showing them The Great Pumpkin, so I hope they enjoy it :)

Christiane and me in costume.  It's supposed to be a yin yang (get it??) but we're also accepting batman villains and black swan.  We are not accepting raccoons.

Halloween party for interesting group

Xi'an -- Good Company

Ok, sorry for the short hiatus.  I got thwarted by the great firewall for a time and haven't been able to get on this site, much less post.  China always keeps you on your toes.

Now, for the long awaited photos and stories from my National Day trip to Xi'an.

I went with three friends for the week we get off, you already heard about the god forsaken train ride, but the actual time there was great.  No lesson planning, no screaming 9 year olds (don't get me wrong, I love them, but, you know...)...  We still had to wake up bright and early but it was to see cool things, and we were all in the same place which is one of the more obnoxious parts of Shenzhen (it takes me 45 min to 1.5 hour to get to my friends).

I'm having trouble getting the photos to stay in the right order and I don't want to push my luck too far, so I present in no particular order documentation of the trip:

Xi'an noodles.  A single wide 3.8m long noodle with dipping soup.
Possibly the most difficult thing to eat with chopsticks so far.

Big Goose Pagoda and practicing Asian photo poses

The terra-cotta warriors of Qin in their massive airplane hanger type museum

Thomas and me in front of the Drum Tower.
We look pretty good considering this is right after the first train leg

Possibly the highlight of the trip for me, possibly because I sorely miss biking.
Biking on the city wall, 13km long encircling the inner city.

A display of terra-cotta figurines in the various hats of the era, of which there are many.

"The most beautiful beauty"
(description by our hired driver/guide)

Well, there you go. As far as description goes, it was very, very crowded.  We had to continuously change our plans to accommodate how very crowded it was, but we still managed to see a lot of things, most of which I had missed on my first trip.  Xi'an was the capital of China for like 2,000 years, so there is a lot of old things buried around that you can go see.  Also, a lot of museums with old pottery.  So much pottery.  We feasted on delicious things, like fancy dumplings, that long noodle I showed you, and various Muslim BBQ from the popular Muslim Quarter.  And we found bumper cars, which are the most terrifying thing in China because there are no regulations and they go super fast.

Good trip, good friends, good vacation.  Yay.

And I'll leave you with this gem:

 

The highlight of the train ride, and I mean only highlight of the train ride, was the guy coming through selling shamwows with a megaphone.