But first of all, a few items of cultural amusement:
Item #1.) MONSTER NOODLES: the love of noodles begins at an early age! (i later discovered that this ginormous bowl was being shared with Mama too!)
Item #2: SERIOUS EDUCATION: you thought your kids had a head start? i bet they didn't have prenatal "fetal education" lessons! parents here do absolutely everything they can to ensure their child's future welfare, paving the way to the fiercely competitive college entrance examination.
Item #3: You thought the 3-legged race was fun as a kid?! Did you ever try an 11-legged race?! Talk about coordination & cooperation!In mid-March, the campus finally started coming to life. Trees and grass turned green and beautiful bushes and trees started to bloom and flower. Our campus is actually famous for being one of the largest ones in China and has also won some awards for being populated with so many trees. Enjoying the new scenery, me and 2 of my freshman girls, Melissa & Maggie decided to take some pretty spring pictures together.
Here I am with Maggie
Melissa, me, & Maggie by a flowering bush on campus
Easter is always a special time of the year to share traditions. I got to do an Easter lesson in class, as well as have a small group of students over to celebrate Easter with me. They came over to dye eggs, then had an Easter egg hunt and read a metaphorical Easter story.
It was a bit interesting to attempt to dye the natural-colored brown eggs as opposed to the white ones, but it still seemed to work.
Cara wanted to learn how to empty out the eggs. She did a great job! Kristi... does this bring back any memories?
This was their first time ever to decorate eggs, so they did so with great detail, adding a chinese flair to their decoration style- bamboo, mountains, and rivers.
The finished products:
After the egg dyeing, they got to have an Easter egg hunt.
playing some basketball & badminton
arts & crafts projects... they had an animal theme, so everyone made paper tube animals. i taught this little girl and a couple of her friends to play "duck, duck, goose!"
Our team wanted to do something for our students for Easter as well, so we invited a group of them over for dinner. Afterwards, they had an Easter egg hunt. These eggs, however, were filled not with candy, but small objects representing the story of Easter. Numbered and read in order, after the search for eggs was over, our students had a chance to hear the full Easter story put together.
The mad rush for the eggs begins...
Each of them successfully found at least 3 or 4 eggs
They each took turns reading the paper and sharing the objects in their eggs.
Around the beginning of April, our school had a week-l0ng break due to the annual school sports meet that the freshmen and sophomores hold every year. I took advantage of this break to go back to Beijing to visit my students, teammates, and co teachers from last year!
I got to go to the international fellowship I went to last year, and it was great to be back again. This particular week, my teammate Ben's family was doing a live recording of their new album! Their band members from countries all around the world were there together to play the new album's songs. How exciting to be there for this special event!
~HuiJia students and teachers!!~
One of the afternoons in Beijing, me and 2 other teammates from last year stopped by our school to visit everyone. My kids had grown up so much in just 1 year!
Here I am with my class 4 students and their homeroom teacher. They were all shocked and excited to see me again. They did a double take at first after walking by, expecting to see their current blond-haired foreign teacher from this year.
Me with several of my class 5 students
We joined our co teachers for dinner in the school canteen. It was so great to see them again!Even though we couldn't visit the teachers for long, due to the crazy busy schedules that they hold, I was thrilled to have a chance to see Amy again! Here is a picture of the 2 of us...
The week-long break at our school aligned perfectly with the wedding date of a Chinese friend of mine, Karen, so I, along with 4 other teammates from last year, was able to go! Karen was a co-teacher at HuiJia along with us.Her and her fiance arrived in style to the wedding... a red BMW convertible covered with beautiful flowers!
They stopped to pose for pictures before the wedding...
The wedding ceremony was a combination of both traditional Chinese and Western ceremonies. Here, Karen & Aaron pour out a glass of wine together, making a flowing fountain as each cup filled to the brim and poured down a lower tier. They also lit a unity candle together and crossed arms and drank a cup of wine during the ceremony.
The parents are an important and vital aspect of Chinese weddings. They actually came up on the stage during one point and joined in the ceremony.
Following the ceremony, a banquet was held for everyone. Both the ceremony and the banquet were held in a restaurant, a typical location for Chinese weddings. The banquet tables were filled with plate after plate of Chinese delicacies. Pictured below is an elegant meat slice dish in the shape of a flower.
And a wedding would not be complete without a cold cooked chicken, head, eyes, and all smiling on the table in front of you! yummmy... :S
I thought these dried noodles made a really cool bowl for the celery & lotus leaf dish!
A teammate reunion... enjoying Karen's wedding and some interesting food at the banquet... check out all the dishes on our table!
Posing for some shots with the new bride and groom! This is the stage where they had the ceremony...
Note that Karen has changed from her white wedding dress into a traditional red Chinese dress for the banquet part of the ceremony.
Several days before the wedding, couples usually have professional wedding pictures taken in a variety of outfits, both modern and traditional. They usually print out at least one picture and hang it as a banner at their wedding. Here Ben & Luke pose with the Karen & Aaron's wedding picture banner...
While in Beijing, I also had a chance to visit the official Beijing 2008 Olympics Flagship Store. A gigantic, monstrous store devoted solely to the selling of every item you could possibly imagine with a Beijing 2008 Olympics logo stamped on it! The Fuwas, or "friendlies," also reign in this store. These 5 creatures represent the different parts of China and their names, when put together, form in Chinese the phrase, "Beijing welcomes you!" Their gigantic versions are here with me in the picture below...
Overall, its been a great semester so far with some neat opportunities. I look forward to seeing what the rest of the semester holds. If the blogger website continues to work as well as it does now, I may try to keep you updated on the rest of the semester. I'm also counting down the days until I will soon return to the states for the summer to see all of you! I can't wait to see everyone! Hope you're doing well, and I look forward to seeing many of you soon!
