Vietnam

We've made it. Not only have we made it, we are living it up! Our host is amazing. She is super nice and has an awesome apartment. 4 bedrooms 2 bathrooms and she makes us meals too. The coolest part, I've only met her the first time I came into Vietnam, a great person. She makes us feel very comfortable. Hopefully before I leave here I can put some pictures on here, but now it's time for supper and I gotta go! Quick update of what we did:
Boat tour in Halong bay (beautiful)- Vietnam
Great Wall
Forbidden City
Summer Palace
Ate Duck
Temple of Heaven -All in Beijing

The Last Few Days...

Soon I will be leaving for Beijing. After I pick up my parents at the airport we will enjoy the cool weather of Beijing, check out some of the good places and head for Vietnam. After Vietnam we will fly to my "hometown" in China-Wuhan! My friend invited me to her home for the Chinese New Year. I am very excited for that. It means I have about 1 1/2 weeks to get my parents comfortable eating with chopsticks. :)

After Wuhan we will jump on a train and head to southern China. Tour around there for a while, then fly off to Shenzhen. Shenzhen is close to Hong Kong. We will enter Hong Kong and hang out there for a few days. Then, my parents will fly back to the States and I will stay there and wait for Melissa to come. Crazy few weeks, huh? I'm packing today and I realized I have to pack for weather from 8-90 degrees! Yikes!

Before I leave, I've been spending some time with friends. The other night a friend (Edward) came over to cook. He wanted to make us fish. Edward and I went to the veggie market (which is also a butcher/fish market) and bought some fish. They were swimming when we bought them, but not when we got home. Wonder what happened...

It was time to cook the fish and Edward asked me to come to the kitchen. He said "Jess... the lady we bought it from never took out the insides." I turned and said, "Nicole, we need you in here!" Yup, Nicole saved the day. She put on some plastic gloves and cleaned out those insides! I'm very thankful she was able/willing to do that. :) Here's some pictures of her "working".

See how happy she was to help out!

Here is a close up of the fish she gutted. Hope you don't have a weak stomach.

Then she decided to have some fun and make the fish talk. Oh Nicole...

Super Random Gas Guys

Today is a stay at home day. I gotta clean, wash some clothes, put them away, plan for traveling. You know, nice stay at home when it's cold day. It's also a stay in my pj's all day day. Well, it's abut 1:45 pm and the day's been great. Then...

...there was a knock on the door. I looked through the peephole and saw 2 older Chinese men. I was a bit confused, but opened the door to see what they wanted. He showed me his badge to prove that he's with the Gas Company. They come in and ask for my kitchen. Ha! Pretty hard to miss it, it's the small corner with a stove/sink. One man went straight to work, the other guy handed me a piece of paper that had English and Chinese on it. It said something like, "I'm from the gas company, please open the door I will show you my badge. I need to check the safety of you gas in the kitchen. For your safety, please stay away from your kitchen. This may take 20 minutes. The service is free, but you will have to pay for any replacement tubes that are necessary. Here is a piece of paper, please sign your name." There was Chinese in between each English sentence. Quite funny and a little nerve-racking. Then the man filled out a form and I signed it. He gave me a copy, now I just have to find a Chinese friend and see what it says!

By the way, this is all happening as I type this. They both just left. I hope they knock on Nicole's door next! :)

Random... I think so. Suprised??? not at all!

New Years Parties

China doesn't really celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas, but they have something bigger! Bigger than the turkey you got from Pick 'n Save or the assortment of Christmas cookies your mom made. China has Spring Festival. Otherwise known as Chinese New Year. Since traditionally, China follows the Lunar calender, the New Year changes from year to year. Sometime around the end of January to beginning/middle of February. To prepare of it, there are New Year's Concerts/parties. Last year I attended one, this year, I've already attended two. The first one was put on for foreigners throughout Wuhan. The second on, by Wuhan University. The second one was only traditional Chinese music, very nice, but nothing too special. I was the only foreigner. The first one... amazing! It was more like a variety show. Enjoy the pictures...

 

 The concert started with a group of zithers. It was very soft, smooth, and relaxing. 

Two co-workers from school. The girl is from Europe (Natalie) and the guy is from America/New Zealand (Linus)

Some of the performances were singers. They even had bubbles. :)

This performance was very interesting. I'll try loading a video of it. Hard to explain it.

We also saw a short Beijing Opera

It was cool, but the "music" is a lot of banging on what sounds like pots and pans, so it hurt your ears after a while.

The acrobats were very interesting to watch.

She could move in very unique ways.

They were both very strong.

This just amazed me!

There was a group of dancing girls. I enjoyed it.

The ending was a Chinese orchestra. Different sounding than a Western orchestra. They were quite good.

Exam Time = Funny Presentations

For my final exams, the students have to give an "Academic Presentation". Basically, one class is doing a persuasive presentation based on a debate topic. The other class is doing an informative presentation based on a topic I gave them. The second class has poor English so I gave them easier topics. They will be going to America, so I decided to give them topics about America. Today I had some presentations about American farms, Wisconsin (yup, I had one do a report on WI!), American sports, American food, President Obama, and a few others.

Sometimes I learn a lot of interesting things, sometimes I have to bite my tongue not to laugh, sometimes I can't hide my confusion. Let me share some of the fun things I experienced this morning.

topic: American weddings  mistake: every time this girl said "bride" she pronounced it "bridge"
topic: Obama  mistake: he kept pronouncing his name "Opama"
topic: American food   mistake: He was explaining pepperoni pizza he said, "Pepperoni pizza has hum, cream, and bread" not sure what hum and cream is
topic:Wisconsin   mistake:one of our special products is Panax. I had no idea what it was. I googled it and found out that Panax is the scientific name of ginseng. Little did I know that WI is a main producer of this product!
topic: Jay Chou (famous Taiwanese singer) mistake: not really a mistake, but the girl decided to include his name, age, weight, height, and blood type on her power-point. He has type O blood, if your curious.
topic: understanding other cultures mistake: his conclusion-word for word, "In a nutshell, it is not the only way to understand another culture by living or visiting there. We can read books, surf the Internet, make foreigners and even go to customs of the village. Above these, not only cheap and convenient." make foreigners.... huh????

I have the other half next week. I can't wait!

Before I forget

I just got home from a long afternoon/evening/night. I wanted to blog before I forgot what I did. It's Chri-tmas weekend, which means I'll be super busy until Late Sunday night. I was asked a month ago or so if I wanted to go to one of the kids' study kid's piano recital. I said, "If I'm free, I'd love to go". It's a fun experience and good to support our study friends outside of study. It wasn't the typical piano recital like you may be thinking. Here's what it was like.
1. It was for 3-12 year olds
2. It cost $45 to attend
3. There were 100 performances
4. It was fancy!
5. I was impressed! These young children, some very very young, would go on stage (often alone) and perform in front of at least 300 people. There were lights, microphones, and MC's. The real deal! They would play from 20 seconds to 2 minutes all memorized. Some of the songs I could play, some of them I couldn't (unless I practiced a while)
After the performance, which lasted 3 hours (7-10pm) the family of the boy wanted to take me and 2 other friends out for Evening tea. This isn't just tea and snacks as I thought, It was a whole BIG meal! Overall, a very interesting, fun night. I'm a little surprised I stayed awake during the whole 3 hours of little kid piano playing. :) I have a picture of all the kids, but I'm too tired right now to get my purse and upload the picture.

Tomorrow we have a Chrstmas Eve Day service, then lunch, gift exchange, nap, supper, and SHOPPING! Chrstmas Eve night here is like the day after Thanksgiving morning!!! I'm excited to see all the people! But now, it's bedtime. Merry Chstmas everyone!

Pictures from Cookies!

Alisa, Jack, and Jess figuring out the art of Christmas cookies.

Edward's turn!

Time to decorate. :) Jess enjoyed this part.

Alisa and Jack- New friends

Some people (John, bottom left) were more interested in the music.

Nicole showed off her talent of decorating.

Need I saw more??? It was a fun time.

Final products

One friend came late (really late-9:40pm). We decided to make another batch for our students. He helped.

He got to the level of the table 1) to roll it easier and 2) to make sure it was thin enough. He was a very fast learner!