China Experience: Random Events in No Particular Order

I realized that I have a lot of random photos of little events that have taken place during my time here. So I lumped them all together to make one blog and here it is.

First, dumpling making. A few weekends ago the ninth grade teachers were stuck at school on a Saturday for some unknown reason and had to teach. So along with some of the teachers we made dumplings for lunch at my apartment. We made about 250 dumplings to serve 7 people. It was very fun but I didn't learn how to make the filling so we will have to do it again in order to make them when I get home.

For New Year's Eve each class had a party. These are pictures from that night. Students gave speeches, read poem, sang songs, played instruments and more. They had oranges, apples, peanuts, and sunflower seeds to eat. Each of the classrooms was decorated with balloons, streamers, and posters. I went to most of the classrooms and had to sing a song for most of them (this was not enjoyable or fun!). I hate singing!!

Our new cafeteria. We finally got to move out of the small, dirty old cafeteria into our brand new, but still dirty, cafeteria. It has two floors, only one of which we are using now. It was painted a lovely shade of orange/red which makes it the most colorful thing around for miles.

Inside the cafeteria.

This is were we line up to get served our food.

This is were we wash our dishes after we are done eating.

Here are a few pictures from Christmas Eve. We had to teach that day so we wore our Santa hats which we bought in Hanzhong.

This is our FAO and his daughter

To celebrate our teachers took us out to dinner and KTV/Karaoke. These were the ladies working that night. They were wearing Santa hats too so we took a picture with them.

This is the travelling market which came to town for a couple of weeks. One part was shopping and the other was an amusement park of sorts. The shopping part was okay, mostly the same stuff over and over again. The amusement park on the other hand was quite a sight.

It had some of the usual carnival games: shoot the balloons, throw the ball into the bottles, etc.

The real entertainment of the park was a choice between a dance/music show or a motorcycle circle of doom thing. We choose the circle of doom thing. A couple of guys rode motorcycles and cars around this wooden circle. It was interesting.

I thought it was hilarious and the wobbly standing area about three stories up added to the fun. Michelle on the other hand did not enjoy this and promptly left the tent.

There was also a petting zoo of sorts. We found what we believe to be the only turkey in China. It was around Thanksgiving so we were very excited. They also had foxes, an ostrich, and lots of snakes.

This is the cute little monkey that was outside.

The shopping area did have one very interesting thing. I found the Chinese Dollar Store or in this case the Yuan Store. Similar to ours it was full of junk.