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!

Long time no see (好久不见-haojiu bujian)

It's been a while since I updated this, been a bit busy, but here it goes...

I went to my old fruit stand last night. Saw the fruit guy. We exchanged "long time no sees" (Usually when I go, his mom is there. Haven't seen him all year I think). Then he asked me something and I think it was "are you going home?" I told him I was going to a friend's house. I later told a Chinese friend what he asked. My friend thinks he asked if I went home this past summer. Opps... miscommunication there. :)

We had a big city-wide Chrstmas party last Saturday. We sang songs, read the STORY, had snacks, played a game, met a lot of new people, and had a great time! One of my new friend's (He hasn't been to study yet) had this as his status on QQ (China instant messenger) "Best Chrstmas ever! I sang songs, watched a performance, and met many new American friends (paraphrased)." He later told Julie that he wanted to join our studies and learn more. Thank HIM. :) He's busy with tests this week, but maybe next week he'll come. By the way, his name is Jess. He is boy Jess, I am girl Jess. :)

Tonight I will be having friends over to make and decorate Chri-tmas cookies. One of them is asking me lots of questions online about it. She is EXCITED! I can't want for them to come and share this with them, a good bonding experience. We have invited about 12 Chinese friends over, we have no idea how many will show up. It's exam time, so they are often quite busy. I'll post pictures of tonight later this week.

If I don't post again before Christmas, I'd like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. HE has come and HE will come again. Now is the time he has given us to tell others about the most amazing gift anyone could give.

A trip to the Arcade

Sunday a big group of us went to Burtons. It's a western coffee shop, restaurant, and bar. We went during the restaurant time. Got a lot of great Western food, talked, and had a good time. Altogether there were 17 of us. 11 of so Chinese and the rest Americans. We payed and ate the good 'ol Chinese way (at least at my table) We all ordered the food we wanted, then we split the bill evenly, then we ate off of everyone's plates! Sort of defeated the point of ordering our own food, but it was delicious! Steak, pizza, salad, mac and cheese, french fries... Mmmmm....

Afterwards, some of our Chinese friends decided to do a little shopping. I happily joined along. Didn't need anything, but I enjoy hanging out with them. So glad I did! We ended up going to an Arcade (while one of the girl's shopped) It was me and 5 friends, 4 boys and a girl. I have never been to an arcade place in China and even in America, all I know is Shakey's. So... one of the guys "adopted" me and we went to play some games. We did drums, basketball, bowling, air hockey, throw balls at  bugs, and ended with me riding a horse. I was a jockey and had to ride the horse in the race. 1) it was very tiring! 2) I had quite the crowd of people watching me. :)

Overall, an amazing night! I had so much fun hanging out with my friends. Monday morning I woke up with a sore arm... guess I need to exercise a little more. :)

A Vacation? Really?

Vacations here can pop up on you unexpected. Not because you are so busy that you can't believe it's vacation time already, but because you didn't know there would be a vacation! Sunday night I started planning my schedule for the final exam. I will see each student for about 7 minutes. Add a minute for transition time, 85 students, equals about 10 hours worth of finals! Well, as I was just finishing the schedule which would happen on Jan 2 and 3, I was told (by a student, at 11pm) that they don't have school on Jan 2 or 3. What!!!??? Since when? Why? The last week of school is 1 week away from then, why a vacation? Well, that just means I will be giving most of my exams a week earlier... sorry kids, not my fault. Hopefully they still do well, some are at risk of failing. :(

The other vacation has been planned much sooner. It's the vacation with my parents. In 1 month they will arrive in Beijing!!! They have their ticket, their passport, their visa, and they are ready to go! Except for the packing... that's not ready yet. :)