Leah and her 'Rents Visit - Part I: National Day

Leah and her parents flew over for about a week and a half during my October holiday. They arrived the night before the big celebration so I was glad that I was able to collect them at the airport and get back to my apartment without any trouble. Wait, did I say without any trouble? I collected them fine. We got a taxi fine. But, the taxi broke just as we were getting off the highway. We had to get out and get all our stuff and flag down another one. Then, that one was inches from slamming into a little red car who cut us off. Inches! We did make it home and I swore to them that every taxi ride in China is not that eventful.

The next morning was the National Holiday. We watched the parade on my TV and then looked out from my balcony to see what we could see. I already posted about that here.

After the parade was over, we walked up the street for some lunch. Richelle, Leah's mom, decided that she must try the mashed potatoes with strawberry sauce. It tasted as you would expect mashed potatoes with strawberry sauce to taste - not very good. But the strawberry sauce was tasty with other dishes, so it wasn't all a loss.

After lunch, we headed over to the Temple of Heaven. I was a bit worried that traffic would be terrible or roads would be blocked since the parade had just finished, but instead, we got there in record time and the place was not very crowed at all. It was my first time there as well.

After the Temple of Heaven, we walked across the street to the Pearl Market, but it was closed. So, we rode the subway to Yashow Market. Some of the subway lines were still closed due to the National Day festivities but eventually we made it to Yashow Market, but it was closed too. Grrr. National Day. Since we were already in the Village area, we decided to have dinner at Ganges - delicious Indian food. After dinner, we dropped Leah's dad, Roger, off at the apartment and Leah, Richelle, and I went for foot massages. Early the next morning, we headed to the airport to fly down to Shanghai.

--Sarah--

Even More Snow!

We had a few more days of snow last week. We even had enough on Monday night/Tuesday morning that we got a Snow Day and didn't have to go to school! My friends and I decided to go for a walk in Chaoyang Park across the street where all the Chinese people we saw laughed at us. We weren't sure why they were laughing.




There was still plenty of snow left throughout the week at school for the kids to play in. On the field, there were around ten giant balls of snow that kids had rolled up, but they were all so far away from each other that they never got stacked to build a snowman. Obviously these kids need more practice with this much snow.



More photos at flickr.

--Sarah--

Anniversary

I know I'm about a month late on posting this stuff but better late than never right?  We had had terrible pollution leading up to the National Holiday.  The night before the holiday, my friend Leah and her parents arrived and I warned them that the pollution has been awful.  But, early the next morning, the skies were amazingly blue and Beijing was ready for the parade!  These pictures were taken in my apartment while we watched the parade on TV.

After watching the parade on TV for a while, we heard some noise outside and saw some of the aircraft on the way to the parade.

Then we heard some more noise and saw the tanks driving right past my apartment on their way back from the parade.  We went down to the street to take some pictures.

-Sarah-

P.S.  I am working on moving this site some place else.  I am getting too frustrated with blogger.  I'll let you know where it goes.

It Snowed Today!

I didn't quite believe the forecasts from this week, but it did indeed end up snowing starting this morning!

I took the pictures with my phone, so I apologize for the poor quality.  At least you can see how much snow there is!

--Sarah--

New Kid in My Class

I got a new student while I was gone on Tuesday.  He has begun in my class with this crazy schedule: Tuesday - substitute, Wednesday - International Day - a crazy day for all, Thursday - sub in the morning while I worked with a consultant, Grade 1 Performance in a huge theater for all the parents in the afternoon, Friday - sub in the morning while I was with consultant again, Monday - Field trip!

He has a severe peanut allergy and on his second day, one of my other kids nearly killed him.

He is also just learning English!  What a way for this little guy to start with us!

On Thursday, I took some time to see which letter names and sounds he knew and to briefly assess how much English he had and just to take some time to talk to the little fella!

We went through the letter names - both capital and lowercase - and he did really well.  We started on the sounds and after several he got to 'j'.  He thought for a moment, said the correct sound and then, "like jam".  I said, "Yes!  Great!  And the next one?"  But he had other plans.  He decided to go back to the beginning to give foods for each letter.  We were kind of pressed for time (performance in the afternoon), so I got him to give me all the sounds first and then go back to give me the foods.  Here is some of the conversation:

Kid: A, like apple

Me: Mm-Hmm

Kid: F, hmmm, have food with f?

Me: Yes

Kid: What is food with f?

Me: How about you think of an animal with F?

Kid: No.  F. /fffff/. Fox meat.  That is the meat of the fox.

Me: Okay.

Kid: P. (Cocking head) Have food with p?

Me: Yes.

Kid: What?

Me: What food do we give to the mealworms?

Kid: (Grinning) Potato.

Me: (Grinning) Yes!

Kid: W.  Have food with w?

Me: Yes.

Kid: What?

Me: Try to think of one.

Kid: You do like potato.  Tell me.

Me: Hmmm.  Xi gua? (Watermelon in Chinese)

Kid: (Grinning again) Watermelon.

We did this for a few more letters.  Sometimes he thought of the food on his own, sometimes I gave a hint in Chinese or another way.

Kid: Z. Have food?

Me: Yes.

Kid: Hmmm.

Me: Can you think of an animal with Z?

Kid: Foods now, animals later.  (His plan was to go through all the letters with foods and then go back and do animals.)

Me: Do you know zucchini?

Kid: Oh. Yes.  What country eat zucchini?

Me: America does.  Does your family eat zucchini?

Kid: Yes.  Sometimes.

Finally, my favorite part of this whole conversation:

Kid: We are very smart.

Me: Who is smart?

Kid: (gesturing to the two of us) We are smart.  (Grin)

I love this kid!

--Sarah--

Tianjin: China in China

On September 12th, I took the fast train to Tianjin with other teachers from my school.  It takes longer to get from my apartment to the train station than it takes to get from Beijing to Tianjin.  We got going pretty fast.

When we got to Tianjin, we headed over to the China House.  This place is a building covered with pieces of china.  Plates, rice bowls, vases, broken pieces made into mosaics of cloud-talking turtles - you name it.

My favorite picture from Tianjin:

Some neat doors:

There was one balcony made from interlocking pieces of wood.  No nails.

After visiting this museum-of-sorts, we had lunch and then went shopping on the ancient-but-recently-renovated-Disneyland-esque-version of an ancient shopping street.  They had good prices though.

Outside the fast train on the way home, we saw some of the flying practice for the PRC's anniversary celebration.

More pictures at flickr.

--Sarah--

Qingdao: Beer and Beach

Warning:  Contains stories of beer.

On the last weekend in August, I flew down to Qingdao with a new teacher, Fiona.  The Qingdao Beer Festival was finishing up that weekend, so we decided to get out of the polluted Beijing air and have a sunny weekend at the beach.  It rained the first day, but the second day was a beauty!

We met a girl at breakfast who writes for a blog I've been reading since I decided to move to China.  We exchanged numbers and planned to meet up later at the festival.  After breakfast, Fiona and I decided to walk on the beach and eventually figure out where the beer festival was taking place.

On our walk we saw rusty metal men:

Melty metal men:

And creepy horses:

Then we found the beer festival and saw beer poses:

And bathrooms:

We drank beer:

We ate crepes in the rain:

And finally met up with the friends:

The plan was to get to one of the beaches where more beer was waiting for us.  The beach we were going to was far away though, so we tried to catch a ride.

Soon, one of the new friends sweet-talked a guy into letting us use his car.  The guy's driver had just dropped him off at the festival and said that his driver could take all eight of us in his car over to the beach (a 40 minute drive at least) - for free!  Woo!

We made it to the beach and drank our first beer with straws out of plastic bags.

You know the game where you hit the top of someone's beer bottle with the bottom of yours so that the beer starts coming out the top of theirs and they have to drink quickly?  Well, there is a game with drinking beer out of plastic bags with straws too.  You stab someone's bag with your straw so the beer is coming out the straw hole.  Oh, beer games.

We also put our feet in the Yellow Sea.

In the evening, we went back to the beer festival.

And had more crepes and beer:

And met Mickey Mouse:

The next day was sunny and gorgeous.  We took the bus to another area of the city and saw lots of brides:

We saw a giant jellyfish:

We had lunch and headed back to our hotel to check out.  We said goodbye to the beer festival and caught a taxi to the airport.  Our flight was delayed so we got to check out the Ear, Nose, and Throat Medicine in the terminal:

More pictures at flickr.

--Sarah--