To be honest, it didn't feel like Christmas. On the whole, chinese people do not celebrate christmas. Therefore, there is a definite lack of decorations and holiday spirit.
But, the Chinese New Year is their gift giving holiday and that's right around the corner. The Chinese decorate with red. period. some decorations might be tinged with gold or black. So there's a lot of red around town.
----------Change of Topic
Today i was Santa for the kindergarten class. I thought i was going to give them the gift of christmas cheer, but they ended up giving me the coolest gift ever....
it was a Christmas Tree made out of paper hand tracings. how cool is that! It was even decorated with candy underneath it. They also included a thank you card w/ pics of our english classes.
Afterwards i ate lunch with them. One of the little girls kept flirting w/ me and demanded that i be her boyfriend. i haven't had a kindergarten girl friend since pre-school.
;)
i'm gonna miss the little buggers.
-----------Change of Topic
Last night steph, ben, and i went to shu-pin's house. She's got a traditional chinese house so its really cool. It has the large wooden double doors and a small courtyard in the middle. we ate a traditional chinese meal called hot pot.
To eat hot pot, a group of people set a bot of broth or soup base in the middle of the table on over a heat source. Then you set plate of raw meat and veggies around. Everyone then just starts cooking what ever they want in the soup. Its a lot of fun and requires massive amounts of time and conversation which is great. i'm going to try it when i go home. Oh yeah, there's rice too, but that's a given here.
After dinner we played Mahjong, a traditional chinese game. No, you do not stack these in a pyramid and try to get rid of matching tiles. Its completely different from bill gate's version.
all we needed was some opium and a kung fu duel to top off the evening.
We settled for watching the movie Hook.
Bangerang!
Friday, December 26, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
It was gonna happen at some point......
So there is this class i've had to take here. it was supposed to be "Chinese Economic Development." In reality it was "Hire a lecturer to show up late and read off wikipedia pages for five hours on a saturday."
Needless to say, i skipped out on the first few classes to hit the beach. I learned more chinese economics from a book david gave me than that class.
so i really hate that class.
Saturday was the last day i was "asked" to attend. (though grades had already been turned in)
The first two hours of class weren't that bad. It was student presentation day which gave me plenty of time to read a a clive cussler novel since i'm not fluent in mandarin...yet.
then the class went to the beach to have a Barbecue.
that's when it happened.
at first all was well. life was sweet. it was the last day of the class i hate, i was at the beach, and i being served free food while enjoying a good book.
that's when i made the mistake of trusting the students to cook raw meet over a tin pan of charcoals.
i would pay dearly for the next 24 hours.
food poisoning is never a fun experience. every stage feels like the worst part. there's never actually any pin-point pain. just blanket nausea followed by convulsive fits at the foot of the porcelain altar.
it was terrible.
the next day i went to church and slept through everything.
Mrs. Patti took one look at me and told me to grab my things. They took me to their house to rest and regain my strength.
Thank God for the Jernigans.
she makes a wicked awesome chicken soup.
I'm feeling much better now. i have a lunch appointment with my chinese tutor. she's gonna make sichuan chicken.
more later....
Needless to say, i skipped out on the first few classes to hit the beach. I learned more chinese economics from a book david gave me than that class.
so i really hate that class.
Saturday was the last day i was "asked" to attend. (though grades had already been turned in)
The first two hours of class weren't that bad. It was student presentation day which gave me plenty of time to read a a clive cussler novel since i'm not fluent in mandarin...yet.
then the class went to the beach to have a Barbecue.
that's when it happened.
at first all was well. life was sweet. it was the last day of the class i hate, i was at the beach, and i being served free food while enjoying a good book.
that's when i made the mistake of trusting the students to cook raw meet over a tin pan of charcoals.
i would pay dearly for the next 24 hours.
food poisoning is never a fun experience. every stage feels like the worst part. there's never actually any pin-point pain. just blanket nausea followed by convulsive fits at the foot of the porcelain altar.
it was terrible.
the next day i went to church and slept through everything.
Mrs. Patti took one look at me and told me to grab my things. They took me to their house to rest and regain my strength.
Thank God for the Jernigans.
she makes a wicked awesome chicken soup.
I'm feeling much better now. i have a lunch appointment with my chinese tutor. she's gonna make sichuan chicken.
more later....
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Arise My Blog
I've come to terms with the fact that I am not cut out to be a blogger. I apologize for everyone who has stopped by to read my posts and not been rewarded for your dedication.
I still have a month left here and i'm going to make the best of it....and blog about it.
In my last entry i complained about nearly everything.
You can forget that stuff. Life here has been a real eye opener. I was really spoiled by life in the states.
Also, this island is beautiful. Other than the water quality, courtesy of the PRC, this place is a great get away. The surf is good during most times of the year. The island is struggling to make this place a tourist spot. So far they really haven't done that bad of a job. I applaud them.
Yesterday I was having lunch with one of the coolest professors i've studied under. We were discussing the future of Kinmen. We both agreed that the island would make a great college town. The trick would be to get more than one university to set up shop here.
Oh yeah, i also watched the sunset behind the mainland. The one good thing about pollution is the fantastic colors it produces through filtered sunlight. Also the smog hides the distant mountains so you never know when that sun will just disappear.
more later.
oh yeah, my camera broke, so i have to borrow most of my pics.
I still have a month left here and i'm going to make the best of it....and blog about it.
In my last entry i complained about nearly everything.
You can forget that stuff. Life here has been a real eye opener. I was really spoiled by life in the states.
Also, this island is beautiful. Other than the water quality, courtesy of the PRC, this place is a great get away. The surf is good during most times of the year. The island is struggling to make this place a tourist spot. So far they really haven't done that bad of a job. I applaud them.
Yesterday I was having lunch with one of the coolest professors i've studied under. We were discussing the future of Kinmen. We both agreed that the island would make a great college town. The trick would be to get more than one university to set up shop here.
Oh yeah, i also watched the sunset behind the mainland. The one good thing about pollution is the fantastic colors it produces through filtered sunlight. Also the smog hides the distant mountains so you never know when that sun will just disappear.
more later.
oh yeah, my camera broke, so i have to borrow most of my pics.
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