Chinese Cold Humor - "There was a brave butterfly who had a broken wing, but he could still fly, how?" "I don't know" "Because he was brave!" hahaha

One of the happiest days of my life!!!!! This is a picture of the bus list for my school's bus stop. I went out tonight and there was a new sticker for a NEW BUS!!!! All year I have only had one bus that goes out to my school. It adds a bunch of hassle and time not having more than one bus. So getting a second one is a BIG deal. I was so happy I did a little jig at my bus stop.


This is just a random picture. My mom sent me another package and there was a Christmas candy stick it! Don't really know why the abominable snow man made the cut.


There was a big race in Yantian including a 10K, half-marathon and full marathon. Most of my China family was participating in the race so I went out to support them. It turned out to be a beautiful day and I was glad I made the decision to go out and see them. They all did a great job and I was there to take some pictures and cheer them on. Afterwards we went out for hamburgers so they could celebrate their completion.


Cliff and I hung out at the mall most of the day. We were walking around and spotted some little kids getting ready for a performance. We stopped to watch and saw Eliza! She is one of our friends and sings with her church. So we stayed for longer and got a chance to hear her sing.


My two students Lyn an Alem (the two sisters) invited me over to their house for dinner. Kay, the boy, is another one of my students who lives in their building. The evening was a lot of fun! We had home made dumplings and hot pot. All of the food was great. Their family was also really nice, but didn't speak much English. After dinner their mom made us all Kung Fu tea. It turned out that the actual tea was not called kung fu, but it was the way it was prepared that was called Kung Fu. It is made in the traditional little clay teapots and there is a long process of making a couple batches of tea and doing certain things with them before making a batch to drink. Their mom also made her own wine. She kept it in a jar hidden behind their couch because supposedly it was supposed to stay in a dark area to get better. The wine was actually pretty good. When they served it to me and my students I commented that in America this would never happen because the students were old enough to drink and I would never consume alcohol around kids I taught. They laughed and said that in China it was ok. The evening ended with my students and me sitting around telling jokes. Alem introduced me to Cold Humor (the Chinese term for dry humor). It really is not funny but Alem has such a funny laugh herself that whenever she would tell a joke she would crack up and we would all laugh because she was laughing. The title of this blog was one of her favorites.


I have stupidly agreed to perform at my school's New Years Celebration in front of the entire school. This has been the bane of my existence for the last two weeks. I told them I would be doing the waltz and I found a fellow teacher to be my partner. Then I was asked if I could possibly dance while one of the other teachers sang. I accepted (worst decision ever) and since then our performance has changed a minimum of ten times. The song the teacher wanted to sing did not have a rhythm that was possible to dance to. So he wanted me to do an interpretive dance instead. I finally made it clear that I was not going to do such a thing and we moved on to trying to find a new song for him to sing so that my dance partner and I could perform to it. About fifteen songs later, he kept trying me to go back to his original song and approve it, not going to happen. We finally found one, set a dance to it and performed it in front of the choir teacher for approval. After viewing it she basically told us we needed to extend our dance by two minutes and add a lot more frilly stuff to it. This was the day before we had to perform in front of the principal for him to ok our performance for the celebration. So...we decided to scrap the entire thing, change our idea and instead do American line dances to an arrangement of songs. After we had decided on that, the singer came back again and said we really should have a Chinese song in there and he still wanted to sing so we changed again to add the Chinese song. The day of our viewing came and went and we didn't actually perform for the principal (I still don't know why). The next day I found out that the choir teacher was mad at me because we hadn't performed for the principal and that she had been waiting for me all day even though I have never talked to her by myself and she doesn't speak any English. So it turned out that the singer and I were supposed to perform but didn't. Now the big performance is on Wednesday and we still have not been ok'ed by the principal. And also I have asked a bunch of my friends to come and help me dance. I'm really excited about them coming but very nervous to see how all of this works out.


Welcome to the DVD store. This is in Dongmen and has a large array of bootleg DVDs. You can find whole sets of TV shows and an impressive selection of American movies, including things not yet out on DVD. It is also very cheap. One movie usually costs about one USD. The Seinfeld packet, with every season, costs less than thirty USD.


This is the China Post office. I have had some strange adventures in there. My first two times I went with some fellow Chinese teachers and they helped me sort out the chaos. This past time I went by myself and ended up receiving assistance from a fellow patron who started mimicking planes and boats to help me figure out how I wanted to send my package. Things to know about Chinese mail - you can only mail a package with a China Post box, they search through your stuff before sending it, and unless you send it by air it will take up to 40 days to get where it is going. The other funny thing is that some of the methods of the post office are a bit behind the times. To close an envelope or put on a stamp there is a lovely bottle of glue sitting at the table. You help yourself to use the glue brush to spread on an appropriate amount to hold the stamp.


My mom is awesome. She has been great at sending me packages throughout my stay in China. The last couple have been Christmas related and included a stocking, presents and Christmas necklaces.


I bought this the other day when I went dancing with my friend. Around Shenzhen there are tons of what I call "plastic stores". They sell an arrangement of plastic stools, garbage cans, etc. It is strange how large of a need there is for these items, but plastic stools are everywhere and now I am a proud owner of a "I love you, Happy Everyday" stool!


Thanks to Greg's idea, I am starting a book club with some of my more fluent students. Saturday I invited five students to come to the local Book City and choose an English book for us to read. They ended up deciding on Around the World in 80 Days (the future would show us that this book is too hard for their level, but oh well). After our meeting I was going to catch up with Andrew and Cliff at the library next door. Some of my students asked if they could join so they came with me and met my fellow Americans. It is interesting, there is a set of generic questions that almost every Chinese person thinks of to ask an American if they see one. Our hope when we bring Chinese people with us to American outings is that they will think of something beyond those questions as an opener. Nope...once my students met Cliff the first thing they said was "You are so tall! Do you play basketball?"


On every bus there is a set of two TVs. These provide immense entertainment to the various riders throughout the day. The interesting part is the selections of showings that are played. There are the typical Chinese commercials and such, but the rest is an assortment of America's Funniest Home Videos and English people doing crazy things. You can see circus performances, comedy routines, strange dances, etc. We are all convinced that the Chinese are being taught that all white people not only have some strange talents but like to regularly show them off to fellow white people as well - no wonder we get stared at so much.

Ting Bu Dong - I Don't Understand

Why it's going to suck to pay for things in the US once I get back

Prices you can find in Shenzhen:
1.5 Liter Bottle of Water - 3 kuai - 0.45 USD
Good Chinese dinner - 30 kuai - 4.50 USD
1 night at a hostel - 50 kuai (but can usually find cheaper) - 7.50 USD
A big bottle of beer (they rarely have American sized beer bottles) - 3 kuai - 0.45 USD
Pitcher of beer - 8 kuai - 1.20 USD
Three oranges - 2 kuai - 0.30 USD
Street bread which I eat for dinner usually - 2 kuai - 0.30 USD
King Cone ice cream - 3.5 kuai - 0.53 USD
Most Bus rides - 1.6 kuai - 0.24 USD



So the main downfall of China (in my mind) is that it has not really gotten online yet. There is a rare website for restaurants/stores/anything. The banks have websites but they do not provide personal account services. To make up for this everyone is given a yellow book. You take this with you to the bank, go up to an ATM like machine and stick your book in the slot. The computer reads your information and prints a summary of withdraws and deposits since the last time you used the machine on your book. Not the most convenient when it takes you 20/30 minutes to get to the bank.


We went to buy our tickets to Thailand for the start of our January break. The plan is to arrive in Bangkok on January 17th and then spend 23 days traveling through Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The guy at Air Asia is my new best friend. He spoke English and was extremely friendly and helpful.


This is Will. My student stalker. He has taken a liking to me and has proceeded to follow me around, escort me to lunch after his class, run up to me with arms wide open saying "I have missed you so much since the last time I've seen you" (I will not let him hug me), play with my hair when it's down, try and figure out where I live so that he can come to my home, etc. He does have really good English, so I give him props for that. But he creeps me out like no other and I'm not quite sure how to handle it.


We have nap time from 12:30-1:50 everyday. Just in case a teacher doesn't have a room to go to, every desk is equipped with a fold out cot. The staff keeps blankets in their cubby holes and everyday you can stroll through the offices and see sleeping professionals (not that I do that).


Andrew and I headed to the library today to do some research for our month long vacation time in January. As we were about to reach the building this guy passed us with a snapping turtle dangling in the air by a string! The man paused, put the turtle down and squatted down waiting for who knows what. This was so strange that even the Chinese people were staring at him and his pet.

20 eyed, 40 armed, running navy sprinting group

Jess, Cliff, Andrew, and I went into Hong Kong for the day. We first went over to Stanley, a different part of the island that is known for beautiful beaches and more of a touristy section. So there were a lot of tourist markets and cutesy restaurants. This area also houses the Murray House, one of the older buildings of Hong Kong that got moved from Central to Stanley in the 1990s. Then we headed back to Central and went to another market that had antique Chinese items. Cliff helped me bargain prices down for some of the items that I was looking at. I always hate that part of shopping but by the end of the night I was getting pretty good at it. Then we hopped on a trolley and traveled through town. We stopped at a free art museum and got a little culture. One exhibit was pictures of these families. It turned out that the photographer went to an area of China that had been hit by natural disasters where a portion of the population had been killed. After the disaster a lot of people had lost their husbands or wives and had ended up needing to remarry. Despite the cause of the remarriage, it was still viewed as improper in the culture. So these families had to go through the pain of losing their loved ones and then through the pain of not being approved of in their society for remarrying another widow. After the museum we went looking for a good view of the city and then went to dinner. We headed home shortly after, having had a very nice day trip to the city.


We went to the beer garden for the evening and the stall we were at had a kitten! She wasn't in the best shape - her fur was all matted - but she seemed well fed and was a friendly animal. She let us pick her up and kept playing with us, swatting at our fingers. We started teaching English to one of the Chinese guys and got him to at least know "cat".


I started tutoring a Senior student a couple of weeks ago and this is where she lives. If you look at the little kiddy ride on the right, the staircase up to her place is right behind that. Her family actually owns the apartment complex and runs the building. What is even more amazing is that not only was her mother born in Shenzhen (very unusual) but her grandmother was born in Shenzhen too (VERY VERY unusual). The Shenzhen that we know and love today is only 30 years old, before that it was a fishing village. So almost no one is actually from here. Most of my students were born here but their parents came from some village out in China somewhere. I really want to have a lesson with my student where she translates what her grandmother says as I ask her questions about what it used to be like here.


Go Andrew! Leah, Greg and I went to Andrew's basketball game tonight. He's been playing for his school. A lot of the Shenzhen schools ahve teacher leagues and go around town competing against other schools. If the school has a male foreign teacher (especially American) they usually get roped into playing. If you didn't know it, all male Americans can play all sports and are automatically good at them too. It was fun going out to see a sporting event and cheering for the different teams. The school that Andrew was playing against was actually Leah's school so we made sure to cheer for both teams.


I love China. I went and had dinner with Andrew and Leah tonight. We went to this jiaozi place in Andrew's neighborhood that we hadn't been to before. Jiaozi is very common and really good, especially with vinegar and spices. This plate of dumplings was 2 kuai! Less than 50 US cents. The place wasn't the cleanest in the world - while we were sitting there a cockroach climbed from the outside into the restaurant but was dealt with eventually by the waitress - but it was good food and super cheap so who cares?


Saw this in Xili on the way to the store. They are advertising the different types of meat you can get at their restaurant. Take a look at the upper left hand corner or the second from the bottom on the right.


This has been sitting on my shelf for at least two months now. My Aunt Jane asked me before I left if I could bring back some empty coke cans for her kids because they really like seeing the different designs and the written language. I was looking at this can and realized it is pretty cool seeing how different countries have the same types of things just slightly changed.


Yay for Thanksgiving (the day before)! Today was the CTLC Thanksgiving dinner. The night before I had a "China family" dinner at Jess and Marie's placec with Jess, Marie, Andrew, Cliff, Ben, Greg, and Becca. After Chinese class we had all headed out to Longgong and started cooking. We had tacos (soft and hard shells), chili, corn on the cob, homemade salsa, and then no-bake cookies and ice cream for dessert. It was wonderful! And we had a lot of fun getting the dinner ready and just had a good-feeling evening with good company. Then in the morning we all got up and started cooking our contributions for the CTLC gathering. We headed to Patrick's (one of the coordinators) schools and joined the party. The food was amazing. Everyone was instructed to bring something with them for the group and there was a large arrangment of different foods. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, bread, brownies, pasta salad, macaroni and cheese, etc. You couldn't find a more American meal. Then we went out and played Frisbee for a while on the soccer field. It felt just like home (they don't really have Frisbees in China so I brought one when I came). Afterward we headed to Jenny and Genevieve's for Jenny's birthday celebrations. For her birthday, I made her an entire game from scratch (with the help of Matt Hauser, Megan Moore and Cliff Burke). It was a trivia game with a twist. We had a lot of fun and everyone enjoyed the game.


This was the first day of the competitions for the sports meeting. Some of the events: 100 meter sprint, relays, 400 meter run, high jump, long jump, jump roping (they have this activity they do where two people are swinging the jump rope and then about 15 people line up and run through the swining rope, each person jumps over the rope right after the previous person), something like shot-put but instead you throw the ball over your head and try to send it as far behind you as possible, and the ten-person 3-legged race. I sadly missed the ten person race because I had to go to Chinese class, but I got to see some of the classes practice and they are actually really good at it! Well anyone who was not competing in an event was instructed to sit along the stands. Each class sits together and most of them had shirts made for their group so the stands are an array of colors. On Friday, Class 3 Senior 1 gave me on of their shirts! So during the competitions I went and sat with them for the day. It was a lot of fun. They were all really excited that I was there so they were all asking to take pictures with me and wanted to come practice their English while we were cheering for their classmates. It was nice to hang out with my students outside of the classroom setting.


Today was the start of our Sports Meeting! Fuat and I got to sit with all the teachers in our new track suits that we all got for free (mine is bright pink) and watch the students parade around the field. This was the same opening ceremony that I saw the previous week during practice. Since then the students have been hard at work trying to perfect their performance. THe head master felt they were not doing as good of a job as they could be so he called in a handful of Chinese soldiers last week to teach them the right way to march adn stay in formation. Hopefully he was please with the final outcome because they did a really good job. Just like the practice sessions, each grade had an event that they came out and performed for the crowd - either the morning exercises, a kung fu routine or jumping rope. This time though there was someone either on the red platform or on the track that related to the performance. For instance the kung fu group had the kung fu master first do back flips across half the field and then lead their exercise on the platform. My favorite was the jump roping. The school hired a professional jump rope group to come and perform on the track while the students were doing their routine. I was able to take some video of it, but unfortunately can't load it onto my blog.

A gnat keeps flying by my ear when I'm trying to sleep!

New crazy things I've eaten in China:
Cow stomach lining (tripe) - sort of really gross. It's really chewy so you are trying to eat it for about five minutes and the entire time you're thinking "this was the actual stomach of a cow", not cool
Pig's blood in block form - not bad. It comes in bricks sort of like tofu. Actually it is very similar to soft tofu. The grossest part was that I was at a hot pot place when I had it so you had to dip it into the boiling broth first. When we did that, blood leaked out and turned the pot red for a second.

Some observations:
The Chinese think we are as crazy as we think they are about the whole toilet situation. Marie and I went into the bathroom at a more Westernized mall one day and there was a line. We could see ahead that a few of the stalls were still available but no one was going in them so we assumed they were out of order. When we got closer Marie asked the lady in front of us if we were right and they lady spurted out some Chinese and made a circle motion with her hands. Marie looked into the stall and started laughing. The woman had been saying that there was a Western toilet in there and that she didn't want to use it. All the women in the line were refusing to use the Western toilets and preferred to wait rather than use one.

The first day I didn't have my camera on me I missed a great China picture. Andrew and I were walking around his neighborhood. In China they still use the wooden stick method a lot to carry heavy loads - attach two even loaded things to each side of a stick and then put the stick across your shoulders or over one shoulder. Well we came across a man with his stick and two heavy loads - but instead of food or tools or anything else, he had cages full of pets that he was just walking around the neighborhood selling. There were bunnies, hamsters, small birds, pretty much any small animal you'd want. A bunch of women had crowded around him it seemed looking for a pet to take home. And no...these animals were not dinner, they were pets.

Fun word I learned - niu zai ku - which means jeans but the actual translation is cowboy pants




All around town are these blue and white small easy-build apartment buildings. They are the construction workers living spaces and since all of Shenzhen is under construction we've got a lot. This is the nicer version of worker living spaces, for a lot of them they get little shacks put together by pieces of metal.


Since being in China I do not think I have bought a single article of clothing in an actual store. Across Shenzhen there are street stalls and the such selling anything you would ever need. Sometimes it's literally just a person with a hanging rack standing on the side of a busy street. Most of the times if I see one of these I'll stop and glance through seeing if I can find anything for 30 kuai or so (about 5 dollars) that would help my wardrobe out. Unfortunately most of the items aren't the best quality so I am afraid of putting them in the washer. As some of you might know, I am not very good at being domestic and I procrastinate. The pile of stuff needing hand washing kept growing. So I was very proud of myself this evening because I did a whole load of laundry by hand. I even went out and bought a special bar of soap to accomplish the task.


Cliff gave me the idea to play the question game in class. You ask every student to write down a couple questions and put them all in a bag. Then you go around the room and pick a student. The student gets to choose either to pull out a question and ask you or have you pull out a question and ask them. The catch is you need to screen them a bit before you start asking, I am dealing with high school students so some were not the most appropriate questions...But there were still some great ones and these were some of my favorites that I received. (click on the picture to make it bigger)


I was cleaning out my bookshelf and came across this. We all got certificates at a large banquet in Beijing for completing our TEFL training.


Oh Chinglish :)


Harry Potter!!!! I was so happy to find out that HP7 was a world premier and even in China it opened on November 19th. I of course sent out an email to everyone in the program asking who would like to join me for the great event. Eleven of us headed to the Chinese theater on Friday night and had a great time watching the film on the big screen (with Chinese subtitles). It was interesting because we were the only white people (not surprising, China is in love with HP too) and if a joke or something funny happened in the movie we were the only ones in the crowd to laugh. The humor just didn't seem to get through the translation, poor Chinese people - no laughs for them.


This is Windows of the World at night from across the street. The lit up tower is the mini Eiffel Tower and the rest is part of the German village.


Sort of random picture. This building is on my walk every day to the bus. It was having a celebration of some sort and had put out all these big red balls. I just thought it was weird that it had that clear plastic covering as well. But after I noticed them here I started seeing them all over the city that week.


In China, they don't have true popcorn. Any time you get some at the movie theater or at these little popcorn vendors it's caramel corn! Granted, caramel corn is pretty good too, but sometimes you just want that nice salty buttered popcorn that you know and love. The only place you can find it is in Shekou, around the Western part of town and there you can get the great Act II Butter Lover's packaged microwavable popcorn. I finally caved and got myself a couple packs. I went to eat some the other night and it was my first time using the microwave here. I had never noticed before that there wasn't the usual "popcorn" and such settings (not that I ever really used those much before, but it's still nice to have) - instead we've got things like rice, fish, and skewers settings. Well luckily microwaving is easy and every true American knows how to pop some great popcorn without burning it.

Holy Shenzhen speed, Batman!

Every year our school has a sports meeting. This is where all the different senior classes and teachers come out and compete in a number of activities. Today they had a rehearsal for the big event that is coming up. During the practice each group (a couple hundred kids) came out and performed their specialty - either kung fu, jump rope or this wake up routine that they know. I ended up sitting with a couple of my students which was fun and they kept me informed about what all was happening.


Starbucks has even taken over China. All of the drinks are Western prices, which hurts, but it is nice to go sit, have a hot chocolate and read a good book. It makes me feel like home.


We stayed at Leah's after eating curry at Jenny and Genevieve's. In Leah's neighborhood there is every kind of street food you would want, including a lot of barbecue. This is the stand the boys stopped at and each ordered a few random things on sticks. The men barbecue the food right in front of you, throw some seasoning on it and away you go. You can see in the picture a lot of different options, including bananas on a stick (in front of the black shirt to the right). In the far right of the picture you can see hot dog type things - these were all shriveled up and did not look appealing. I personally went with some seasoned green beans down the street which were delicious as always.


It was Ben and Jenna's birthdays this week so they had a joint party on Friday. They rented out the top have of this wine bar. You paid 150 kuai to get in and it was all you could eat American food and all you could drink wine. Unfortunately since so many people came the food went really quick, but it was still a fun night.


This ship resides in a tiny pond in Shekou, the Western section of Nanshan. There is a bar and possibly restaurant on board that are both very expensive. But in this picture I want you to focus on the white wall that is in front of the ship. I have been warned before that in China, if you see something you want to buy or want to do, DO IT NOW! Because it will not be there two weeks, one week, possibly a day from now. This wall taught me that lesson the hard way. In Shekou there was a nice shopping building that had cute Chinese souvenirs. One shop was selling little tea sets for 40 kuai a piece. I had been planning for two months to go buy a couple sets for people back home and finally made it back to Shekou to do so. Well....this wall had arisen, completely barring me from the shopping building. Finally I found a way around and to my dismay, all the little shops were gone due to no longer having walking traffic because of the wall. It was a disappointing day.


We made cookies!!! Who thought it was possible? I had my doubts. I stayed over at Jess and Marie's and since we had failed at making cookies the last time I was there Jess and I wanted to try again. She had found baking powder at one of the international stores which was our missing ingredient last time. So a little time, patience, and watching the toaster oven very carefully we created 20 M&M Oatmeal cookies without burning a single one! If you didn't know, in China people don't really bake and cookies are not eaten so this was a very exciting time for us.


My cafeteria! Fuat and I receive three meals a day here for free. Breakfast is by far the best, but there are a lot of good lunch and dinner dishes as well. You get to pick three different things for each meal and add some rice for lunch and dinner, some fruit during lunch or some soy milk during breakfast and you are good to go.


This statue of Deng XiaoPing is in Lianhuashan Park on top of a small mountain. Deng XiaoPing was the leader of the People's Republic of China from 1978-1992. He created the Special Economic Zones (SEZ), therefore founding Shenzhen as it is known today. Obviously, the people of Shenzhen love him and try to remember him in every way. I visited Cliff's school and he lives walking distance from the park so we decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and do some hiking to see the statue. We sort of thing Deng XiaoPing's statue resembles an older version of Robin Williams...just saying...


One of my fellow teachers bought this for me for my birthday.


Oh Chinglish :) This is in one of the high-end malls in Nanshan. This was also the day that we went out and celebrated my birthday. A couple of us went ice skating in the mall and then hung around for awhile, got some ice cream and played cards. Afterward we met up with a bunch of people at the Basketball Beer Garden which was a lot of fun.


I went out to a banquet with the Senior 2 teachers. Afterward, one of the teachers, Tracy, invited me to join her and her friends in a night of Mahjong (麻將). They play it as a gambling game, each putting in 100 RMB at the beginning and different things happen to win you 5 RMB at a time from other players. The table that you play on is amazing. There is a circle in the middle where you press a button. The circle raises up and you push in the Mahjong tiles after the hand is done. Then the slots that you can see in the picture each lower down for each person, a new set of tiles is pushed onto the slot and the slot raises back up with a whole new set of tiles. Tracy taught me how to play and after awhile I got to take her spot for a bit. I couldn't play as fast as the rest, but I won a number of my hands and understood what was going on. I had a great time.


Nothing stops for rain in China, including the motorcycle taxis.

Vomin on the Bus

Vomiting on the bus....this is an art form in China. We still haven't figured out why in China so many more people vomit on the bus than in America, but it seems to be true. Every bus is equipped with a pile full of little black bags for anyone to grab who is feeling the urge. Andrew has had the pleasure of seeing one lady forget about the bag and just vomit all over the bus. We've decided that since driving in China is so crazy, that possibly the jolts and movements of Chinese buses are so much greater and therefore lead to higher chances of throwing up. I'm not going to lie, there have been a few buses that have been so jittery that I have even contemplated grabbing a little black bag. But lets all hope it never comes to that.


So this is one of the paths on my way home from the bus stop if I walk. (Mom/Dad - Don't worry, I know it's dark but it always has lots of people on it and at the next block the path lights up a bunch) So the reason I took this picture is because of the fact that it is very dark. Due to this, this short stretch of walkway has become the "Lovers Lane" of Xili. Almost every night I take this route there are at least five couples talking/holding hands/making out. It is this weird phenomenon that they all congregate at this one spot. I tend to quickly walk past with my head down because walking through a bunch of people PDAing is just not a comfortable thing to do.


My birthday!!
A bunch of people came out and shared dinner with me. It was a great night. We all went to the local Communist restaurant in Xili (look at my September 7th post for my info if you want). The meal was pretty good and I received three cakes from people! So we all got to try some carrot cake, some Chinese pink cake, and a chocolate cake that Jessica had ordered special. Jessica came all the way out from Longgang for the evening. So she came home with me and got to see the wondrous 2nd Senior High. We had a fun night just sitting and chatting, plus I taught her some stuff about Bridge. All in all it was a great birthday with fun friends. And I get to celebrate more on Saturday!
From the Left: Trevor, Jessica, Fuat, Courtney, Me, Stephanie, Garrett, Jenna, Julie, Genevieve, Jenny


Today was the book festival at my school. Every student brings one book from home that they like that they would recommend to others. Then as a class they try and sell all of their books to the other students at discounted prices. I was walking through and one of my classes grabbed me and insisted I buy something from them. The only book in English they had was Twilight....So, despite me having already read it and knowing it's not that great of a book, I decided to buy it so I could help them out. My deal with them was that if I bought it then they all had to sign the inside cover. Now I have a signed copy of Twilight with all sorts of Chinese names, I think it was a good deal :)

Also this night I had my first experience with KTV. In China, karaoke is really really popular. But instead of going to a bar and singing in front of everyone, at KTV you get a private room with your friends and just sing to each other. Our school treated all the Senior 1 teachers for classes 1-10 (my classes) to an evening out. So we went to a beautiful building in the center of Nanshan, had a buffet dinner, and played games and sang all night. Both Fuat and I went so we were able to support each other on the English songs. We luckily were only talked into three (neither Fuat nor I can sing and I was still sick). We sang Hello, Goodbye by the Beatles, Hotel California by The Eagles, and Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. Bohemian Rhapsody was by far the best because the other Chinese teachers got into the rhythm and were jamming out with us.


So the problem with Halloween was that I had already been sick with a cold before I went out to the party. And despite me only having half of a beer the entire evening, on Sunday I felt like crap. So....the only times I got out of bed were to get lunch and dinner, and even then I got them to go and went back upstairs and ate my meals in bed. I think I watched 14 episodes of Glee that day. Except for my annoying cold, it was a very relaxing nice day where I literally did nothing.


Halloween Celebrations!!! Cliff and I started the day out in Dongmen shopping around for warm clothes and halloween costumes. I decided to go as an autograph book (I reused my idea from last year). Unfortunately Cliff got sick before the festivities started and couldn't come out to play. So Andrew and I head to the beer garden where we were all meeting. I started the night out with a relatively blank white shirt and pair of pants and by the end of the night had signatures all over the place!
Some of the more memorable signatures:
Hello, I am Cara. I'm fine, sank you. And you?
Nothing fina than a cow in a diner! -Nora
Pity the Fool - from Mike who was dressed as Mr. T
Al says: "Good day to you sir" (he's British)

And of course there were lots of "----- was here" and things of that nature.

At one point in the night we all got on the metro to head to the next bar area. Collin decided I needed more Chinese characters on my clothing (which was true) so we started going to random Chinese people on the subway asking them to sign my shirt. Most of them thought it was really funny and enjoyed participating. One girl, for fear that we would ask her next, actually hid her face in her hands and tried putting herself as far away from us as possible until we left. The night was a lot of fun. We spent most of the time at a dance club in the more Western part of town. There were a ton of people there, foreigners and Chinese, and everyone was dressed up. So China does know how to throw a great Halloween party after all.


One of the many food options at the infamous Basketball Beer Garden.


During the Yunnan trip one of my pairs of jeans got to the point where they were beyond repair. Since this is China and we all have relatively few possessions, I didn't want to just throw them away. Jessica and I brain stormed and we came up with making a picture frame out of them. And not to seem boastful, but I think it turned out really well. All the pictures are from our trip and now I have a nice (slightly weird) piece of wall art to hang up in my room.


This has the best pizza in Shenzhen I'm pretty sure (by best I mean closest to American pizza). It takes forever to actually get your order, but it is definitely worth it.


Tuesday nights are our dinner nights either in Xili or a neighboring town. This Tuesday we went out to our friend Lisa's place which has an area of old town China that has turned into tons of street vendors and cheap restaurants. At dinner I was reaching under the table reaching for something and my friend Conner asked "What did you lose?" I came up and said "A puppy!" Not quite what he was expecting. The restaurant owner ended up also being the owner of this puppy and a cat that just wandered the place saying hello.


Every Monday the entire school goes out onto the soccer field to watch the raising of the flag. Fuat and I don't have to attend, and to be honest this was only the second one I went to in the last two months. Beyond raising the flag the Principal gets up and gives a long speech in Chinese so it's rather boring (even the other teachers say we shouldn't go since we don't have to).