Do they have Christmas in China?

The answer to that is, YES!


Going through my pictures I am realizing how bad I have been about updating my blog =( I guess that's a good thing, though. It means I'm keeping busy...

This post will be mostly pictures, too, since I have quite a backlog at this point.

Here is my last photo of fall. This is an area on campus in back of our building, near the Muslim cafeteria. I loved the color of the leaves on the tree.



Next we have some pictures of Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was surprisingly a "thing" here in China. Many restaurants do a prix fixe dinner on Thanksgiving evening for about 100-200RMB. Some of the oldsters were going to a specific diner for the holiday with their church group so all of us other teachers went with them. It was decent! It definitely hit the spot.

Here is us at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Notice the other teachers with us =) I'm not sure if you can see but Fox News is definitely on that tv in the background.


Here is a picture of the meal served. Turkey, cranberries, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, veggies. It was pretty complete!


And when I say complete I mean PUMPKIN PIE, duh.



Here is the afterparty, at Fridays, can we not...





A couple of weeks ago, we were at a tiny dive bar in Houhai (which reminds me of the village -- lots of young people taking over traditionally residential areas) and these two guys were smoking cigars and the smoke was literally RIGHT in my face. After having just showered and blow dried my hair I was cursing them basically to their faces since they didn't know English anyway. When I finally convinced my party to leave to go to another bar, the guy smoking the cigar handed me a picture he had been drawing of me and I didn't feel so upset anymore...





In unrelated news, excitement!!! One of my fellow teachers, Lily, got an OVEN!!! This is very life changing. We have already made three rounds of baked goods, including some really sketchy chocolate chip cookies made with yucky Chinese brown sugar that tastes like sesame molasses. We did better with the makeshift peanut butter blossoms (note the Dove chocolate squares standing in for hershey kisses, kisses are so expensive here!).











Here are some pictures from the first Beijing snow of the year! Everything looked so beautiful! I can't say the city got gross and gray the way NYC gets when it snows because luckily I didn't leave campus that day =) It will forever be a beautiful winter wonderland in my memory.










Regarding the title of this post -- YES Chinese people seem to love Christmas! We went to Tianyi, our favorite mega market near our school and we found TONS of Christmas stuff -- trees, lights, wreaths, santas, ornaments, etc etc etc. I think The Christmas Tree Shop has to worry about Tianyi. Plus, every shop I have gone to in the past week has been blaring traditional American Christmas music (I'm talking, Mariah Carey and Brenda Lee, all the classics!). It's definitely making me feel like I'm not missing out on a legitimate holiday season.

Here are some pictures of the holiday merriment:







And here is the BEST part. Our little Charlie Brown tree. I have to say, it definitely feels more like Christmas with this little thing in our living room! =)





Here are a couple of random pictures to close out my pathetic post.
This is a picture of the street outside our school. The entrance to our school is right on the far side of that gas station on the left.



Here is a night shot of the CCTV building from one of our balconies.




Here is someone with pants that say "fashion" on the butt, except it's spelled wrong.




That's all for now =)

My students are fracking awesome...

This past week included our first meal in a Chinese home. The girl Chris tutors, her mother invited us both over last Sunday for lunch. She told Chris we were having dumplings. She picked us up in her car and drove us to their lovely apartment, near the third ring, I believe. When we got there, we both had not realized we would actually be helping to make the dumplings. I have made homemade ravioli before with my mother (her mother is Italian) but this was a little different. The filling seemed pretty straightforward -- it was raw pork mixed with some green onion and salt and sugar. Then she mixed half of the pork with cabbage and half with chives, to make two different kinds of dumplings. She mixed flour with water to get the dough to wrap them and Chris and I were charged with actually wrapping them up! The first few were so difficult but then we started to get the hang of it. Even still, when they were ready, we were somehow able to pick out the ones we did since they were nowhere near as picture perfect as the housekeeper's =). The only downside was how long it took to prepare them. I think they make a lot of them and then freeze them for later in the week. I plan to try it at some point while we are still here.


Homemade dumplings -- and yes, that is a Christmas Tree in the background!


Teaching updates include giving my first pop quiz last week (!). The students all groaned, but most did OK on it. Either way, judging by the participation this week, my plan to get them to do the readings worked. This week our topic was Energy Security and I had them read some articles about shale gas drilling. During the second half of class I had them get into groups of four and debate with one another, one side being an energy company looking to "frack" in an area that involves drinking water for up to 15 million people. I had the other side argue as a local politician representing the 15 million people, receiving pressure from their constituency to not let the drilling happen in case it contaminates their drinking water. It was so great -- the kids all got so heated! In one of my classes they were YELLING! It was great! Most of them were unfamiliar with this entire topic so it was good for them to experience both sides of the argument. Some had so much trouble taking both sides. One girl who was supposed to be arguing on the side of the energy company said something like, "But, we are people too and we understand the importance of drinking water. So we will not try to do this if there are these risks." What a sweet kid. I tried to explain to her that the companies advocating the drilling sincerely do not believe there are health risks to the water contamination. In the end, I asked each of the groups what their opinions were, and I think I would have to say it was about 40% in favor of fracking, 60% in favor of moratoriums. One group was very creative and said as the local politicians, they agreed to let the company frack as long as the entire potentially affected municipality gets free gas from them. All in all, I think it was a great "topical discussion". =) Next week the topic is Food Security and I am contemplating another debate about genetically modified foods...



That's really all to report for now.
I will close with more pictures, mostly of food (duh).

Sunset looking out one of our balconies



Here is a ritual we have noticed at night near the intersections by our school. People will burn fake money to "send" to their dead family members. Usually either on the anniversary of the death or on the nearest festival holiday (as explained by my students).




Finally made it out to Home Plate BBQ -- here is a picture of Chris's 280 RMB full rack of ribs and my pulled pork platter... gotta love payday!





Sichuan classic (and one of our faves), Dan Dan Mian




Xinjiang Food

Xinhiang -- This is supposedly the dish Marco Polo ate before bringing pasta back to Italy. The Chinese invested pasta, you know!


PS -- Dingdong is becoming one of my favorite students! Her English is so great and she moved to the front of the room to participate more.

Megapixel Redemption

This post will be picture-heavy so I will keep the text to a minimum. Otherwise this will take me all night…

This week was eventful! Last weekend was Halloween! Friday night we met up with a woman introduced to me by a friend of a friend. She is American but has been living in Singapore for a very long time and is fluent in Chinese. We went out for (none other than..) Sichuan food! Good find, too, right near our school. We had a good time with her, hearing about her work at a hedge fund. She focuses on regulatory issues in finance so I may be doing some side work for her in the coming weeks since that is something I am personally interested in.

Saturday night was the unofficial celebration of Halloween. We spent it with our friends, Ethan and Wun (expat friend from NYC and the woman director of the film we were extras in). They took us to a Halloween party at this German girl's house it was a pretty good time! Minus the 8th floor walk up aspect… Not even kidding. Here we are dressed up before going out, a witch, vampire, security guard, and some kind of rocker chick -- her t-shirt is battery powered and LIGHTS up! Really cool =)



Before we left to go out to the Halloween party, we were messing around on the computer and after seeing our business cards, Ethan wanted to see what the Chinese characters they put for our names translated to EXACTLY in Chinese. Check it out! LOL!



These arrived from my mom ON Halloween. Thanks, Mom!!! =) =) =)



Tuesday in class I had my English students pair up and ask each other questions about their families and turn them in to me. Man, I should do this more often because some of these responses are AMAZING. I am including some of the best ones here:

This girl is very modest about her parents...


This kid has very good English and this definitely shows his sense of humor


Nothing specific here. Just your average Joes.


I don't really understand this one...


For some reason, the kids' answers to this one were so varied. They made me laugh..




And this is one of those answers that makes you appreciate both how sweet and how much pressure these kids are under to succeed and send those successes back home



Wednesday the school organized a trip for the teachers to the Great Wall at Mutianyu! I know we already went but it was free, and legitimate DOOR TO DOOR service. Plus free lunch. We had a good time but I just wish we had spent more time at the actual wall. The bus took an hour and a half to get there then we got up on the wall and had another hour and a half to walk around then had to meet to head back. All that time getting there, I would have liked it better had we took a break and ate lunch ON the wall and then continued walking around it or something. Anyway, these pictures came out FANTASTICALLY since I triple checked my megapixel count before leaving the house =) It's a shame the weather wasn't as good as it was for us at Jinshanling. We were lucky in that it was supposed to rain but it ended up just being cloudy, not hazy though. So we were able to see far into the distance, but the sun was not out. It could have been much worse. Here are some pictures from the day, some with nice foliage:



















These Chinese characters say, "Be Honest to Chairman Mao"



Ok, so matching shirts for couples here is totally a "thing". Couples walk around town wearing matching shirts or hoodies. It's really corny. Here is our homage to that:





Here is "The Gauntlet of Commerce". The only corridor leading up and down to the entrance to the wall was lined with souvenir stands, all with very pushy salespeople. The people here knew some English, too, mostly just "You like T Shirt? One dollar!" I was so skeptical if they would actually accept dollars, though. I kept thinking about my "lucky" $2 in my wallet and how far that would have gotten me with the souvenirs =)





I will close with some random photos…

An anime Michael Jackson on the escalator at the mall


REAL, fresh, soft baked cookies! So what if they are from Subway =) They were good!


Manhattan sponge cake? No, it's Mankattan!