The Most Popular Costume of the Night Was ........

Halloween Trick or Treat

To finish out the week the other English teachers and I had a Friday night Halloween Trick or Treat Party. We decorated the large space outside the elevator doors on our 6th floor living quarters. We had the required candy along with popcorn and tang. Students were required to wear a costume to attend. I was a witch and my duty was to stand at the elevator doors and not admit the ones without a costume. The majority of them had to be ENCOURAGED by the wicked witch to put on their masks. Some of them actually made their costumes with paper and pen but the majority took the easy way out and bought a mardi gras feathery mask to wear. No spiderman, kung fu panda, iron man to be seen in the bunch. There were lots of screams and lots of picture taking. The students were a little loud but we managed to finish up the party by 8:30 and clean up by about 9:00 so we only bothered the hotel guests for just a few hours. The hotel manager did pay us a visit and was a little mad – but we didn’t feel too guilty because we live with their hotel guests playing loud card games in their halls till 11 or later. The hotel has an open area from the 4th floor to the 6th which amplifies all voices to “can’t sleep” levels”.

Pictured above from left to right is me, Andrea the young English teacher from Michigan, and Penny my ever present Chinese side-kick, helper, and friend.
Photos from the last 2 trips and Zac are listed in the "BLOGROLL" on the bottom left hand side of this window so if you want to see more mummies etc.... just click.

Halloween @ ZUFE

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. In class to get them into their spirit I divided them into 4 or 5 groups and handed out a roll of toilet paper to each group to make a mummy. Winner was the group that finished their Halloween Crossword puzzle and their mummy first. Of course they had to use every sheet. It was hilarious.

Side Note: I was watching my magic Slingbox (my Georgia TV on my Mac laptop in China) and had the CNN Headline News on and I saw an advertisement for HANGZHOU CHINA. It is the same one that runs constantly on CCTV 9 the only English TV Channel here. It was so weird hearing that exact ad on American TV. Why not come –I got Zac here for less than 1000 dollars for a round trip ticket from Atlanta to Shanghai, which is right next door to Hangzhou……

Teacher Trip

Every term the Foreign Affairs Office and Language Department takes the foreign teachers out for an “adventure”. This term we went on a boat ride. The members of our group included (Andrea was under the weather and skipped the rainy outing) Rachel and JP, Steve, Emily, the 3 Japanese teachers and many more from both offices.

We rode a bus for about 3 hours to a spot where we got on a boat. It was the head waters for the QianTang river that runs by our campus. The scenery was sort of a poor-man’s Li River Cruise. It had nice mountains, but I have been forever spoiled by the unique shapes of the mountain in Guilin and Yangshua. We stopped about 4 times – once to hike up to a nice water fall, to eat, to see a historic battle site and the last stop was to pick mandarin oranges. You were allowed to eat as much as you wanted and you only had to pay for the fruit you left with. So Steve and I went around tasting the fruit from different trees to find the sweetest tree. After sampling about 6 bushes we found a good one. We each took a big bag back of the really cheap and really good fruit.

Zac - My Show & Tell

I am not above using all my resources to entertain my students so when Zac came to China I requested that he meet my 4 English Major classes and answer a few questions. He seemed to enjoy everything until photo time. He is not crazy about having his picture taken and he is definitely not comfortable with the number of photos taken in China, but I still tried to take as many as he would tolerate.

Zac and The Cheap Water Guy

I have one stall where I get my water whenever I go to Sunday’s West lake English corner and he usually charges people 3 yuan – I only have to pay 2 yuan. He always laughs at me trying to say hello and goodbye in Chinese.

Zac at West Lake English Corner

I took him to West Lake’s English Corner. We walked up to a spot in the shade and Zac asked me “What do we do here”. I replied “Just wait” No more than 20 seconds later he was surrounded with people that wanted to talk to him. He did fine and seemed to handle the crowd without distress. Americans and Chinese have a different sense of personal space that can take a little getting used to.

Zac in XiTang

That small yellow dot on the left is Zac as he is sketching early in the morning in XiTang

I took Penny with me so that she could help us navigate the second part of the weekend at XiTang, an ancient water town. I think I can do the trains by myself because they are posted on the Internet in English so I can print it out and point when buying tickets but I still can’t do the buses without help. Penny also found us a really nice traditional style hotel in XiTang with 2 bedrooms and one bath for less than 70 dollars a night. We stayed over night so we could take photos at sunset and then got up early and got the staff to unlock the hotel so we could take pictures at sunrise. We joined lots of college age Chinese students with really fancy cameras doing the same thing.

Side Note: Just finished a great dinner - Andrea and I went on a long walk (in the rain) and ate some of the best street food. It was sort of like a pita –but Chinese style. It had Chicken WITH NO BONES (always a pleasant surprise in China) with garlic shoots and a semi spicy brown sauce. Yum – I am going back there….

Blue Sky In Shanghai

You usually don't see these words together. Zac must have brought the perfect combination of weather. I don't think I have ever seen such beautiful sky in Shanghai.

Yes I Even Got Zac to Go To Lisa Pearls

I can't go to Shanghai without going to Lisa Pearls and the Bee Cheng Hiang Meat market - Baubles for Nicole and meat with no bones for me.

Zac in Shanghai

Shanghai with the Metro, Maglev, and train system makes it an easy city to get around. It reminded Zac a lot of New York City except that he said the Metro was easier to figure out than the NYC subway system. We stayed in a really cool apartment/hotel that was reasonably priced and within walking distance of almost everything we wanted to see.

We did the Shanghai Museum and Shanghai Art Museum. Both of these buildings plus the theater are located on the People’s Square, which used to be the old Shanghai Race course during the times when there were large British, American and French concessions in the mid 1800’s. Besides the very interesting architecture Shanghai really does have a unique and very interesting history and one of the best museums I have ever been to.

Do You Think I Could Get Zac and Nicole to Dress Alike?

Not only do they buy the colorful Hawaiian type shirts they also buy the shorts and hats to match AND they make their family wear the matching ones. I would estimate that more than 30% of the couples and families that came to the “End of the Earth” rocks wore such matching outfits. They sure must have cooperative kids - It would have never worked with Zac.

End of the Earth

On Friday it sprinkled most of the day so it was a perfect day to climb on the double decker bus that stopped infront of our hotel and we toured a large part of Sanya for 10 yuan. (about $1.50) Only disadvantage to sitting on top was every so often if I wasn’t paying attention palm leaves would hit me in the face. We got off at the “End of the Earth” There are two rocks that each have two characters carved into them. One has “Tian Ya” means edge of the sky and the other one has the characters “Hai Jiao” meaning end of the sea. Together they mean “End of the Earth”. The picture of the rock is on the two Yuan bill and millions of Chinese come here to have their photo taken infront of the rocks. We also joined the crowd and documented our trip.

Hainan Island - Sanya

Located in the south part of China, it is an island that is supposed to resemble Hawaii. Like Hawaii, it has clear ocean water, shells, mountains, colorful shirts (and more) and lots of palm trees. Unlike Hawaii it has a lot of Russian tourists and lots cheap tour buses. Our first full day was beautiful and sunny but not too hot. We took advantage of the great weather and spent the day on the beach and in the huge hotel pool - both times carefully positioning ourselves under the big umbrellas. We still got sunburned, Cynthia got the worse – I had a good enough “base tan” from St Simons that I just got a little pink. For Zac’s information and anyone else that surfs – In Yulong Bay where we were staying there were no surfable waves and this was just days before a typhoon (their version of a hurricane) would be passing by.

One of the biggest differences between the USA and China is they do not cover the weather as thoroughly as we seem to do. We looked for information on many of the TV channels and still heard little about when or where it would hit. Weather seems to be American’s “small talk” where as the “small talk” for the Chinese seems to be centered around food.

The Wave - Qiantang River Tidal Bore

Mid-Autumn Festival is a national holiday so we got Monday off. I didn’t do anything special because I was giving my back a break from the “adventure” of Chinese travel and because there was lots of rain due to a typhoon off the coast of China. During this holiday people in this province eat mooncakes, look at the full moon, and watch the famous Qiantang River Tidal Bore. Our school is located on the bank of the Qiantang River so we joined the thousands of other students and families in watching this event. This tidal bore is supposedly the biggest in the world, but it still looked rather small to me. Click here to read more about tidal bores.

I was initially more fascinated by all the people that came to watch the small dirty looking wave roll by but I changed my mind when I found a video online of Brad Gerlach an American surfer surfing the “Silver Dragon”. The "Silver Dragon" is a colorful name for this wave that runs from one side of the river to the other. The unfinished bridge that you see in the video is right beside our campus so we might have been witnesses to this event – but I doubt it. We did see a wave runner close to the other side of the river but no surfer.
http://www.surfline.com/video/video_player/video_player.cfm?id=17637