Now that it is almost Christmas. . . .

Figure it is about time to post some Halloween, Thanksgiving and other pictures! Yah, we are slacking on the blog posts. For Halloween, we taught some lessons about Halloween the week before the 31st, and spent the week organizing a party for our students to attend -- we ended up having somewhere around 800ish students come to see us dressed as a pirate and witch Halloween night between 6pm and 8pm. For all of them, it was their first Halloween celebration -- very exciting. We handed out candy to everyone who said "trick or treat", and carved 2 jack-o-lanterns (lucked out finding some 南瓜 that were the right size!), and decorated a space outside the foreign teacher's apartments. I also made a Halloween playlist and brought the laptop outside, but had no way to plug the speakers in outside, so the music was drowned out by students pretty quickly.


Here are some pics from Halloween in Jiaozuo!

During Halloween day, we walked around campus and let students take pictures of us in costume

Jack Sparrow ain't got nothing on my fake sword and hanger-hook!

Kim!

We were mobbed pretty hardcore

Kim and I hammed it up for the students

Thanksgiving came quickly after Halloween, so we didn't have a big bash, just a small get-together with other foreign teachers in our school and Henan Polytechnic University. Maybe 15 people total -- Russians (teach mostly Russian language, computer design, and music at our school's old campus, in South Jiaozuo -- Kim has 3 classes there also), 2 other Americans (Bill teaches at JiaoDa, the school attached to ours, and Katie teaches at HPU, a few miles away from us), a teacher from the Philippines (Jenny) who teaches at JiaoDa), and some Chinese students. We had a great time, everyone brought some food. Sasha, one of the Russians, made 3 awesome tasting salads. Kim and I brought some bread w/ blackberry jam.


During the dinner, Bill and Jenny presented Kim and I with a cake to celebrate our 10th anniversary of when we met and started our relationship ;). It was a huge cake, and very thoughtful! We were very surprised and happy. 


Pics from Thanksgiving:

Our Anniversary cake, with Anastasia on left. The Cold War really is over, Russians and Americans feasting together!

Sasha saying his seat cushion is, "For Russian ass only!"

Our time here has been filled with activities -- every Friday night from 6 til 7 we hold English corner, outside the boy's dorm. Anyone who wants to practice English can come -- though sometimes, it feels like a waste of time, since it usually ends up being random students asking the same questions to Kim and I over and over ("Do you like China?", "Can you speak Chinese?", "Where are you from?" and so on...) instead of students speaking English and us helping them. We want to figure out a way to move it from us talking and them listening to them talking and us helping.


Also, Friday nights from 7 - 9 or 10 there is usually a performance by different departments -- one night will be Art department, the next might be Math, etc. It is amazing that all of their departments have talented (well, and some not-so-talented) students who are willing to sing, dance, do plays, cross-talk, or any other kind of performance. I can't imagine U of L's physics department performing a song and dance routine to Lady Gaga's "Poker Face"..... These are held in a huge auditorium that is always full with around 1,500 or more students. This last month, we have participated and gone to many of the shows. I played a game in one of them (I was a little slow on the uptake, since they explained the game in Chinese, of course, but my team still won!), and Kim and I were asked to sing during one of them! She sang "I Will Survive" and I sang "小芳", a Chinese song about love between a sent-down city student and a country girl during the Cultural Revolution. We both thought we performed horribly, but everyone still enjoyed it. Here are some pics from that night:

Backstage before the performance

Kim singing "I Will Survive" -- people rush the stage and give flowers or anything to show they like the song ;)

My performance....I had a cheat sheet with the lyrics, but couldn't see it because too many people gave me things, 哈哈

Kim joined me on stage, during 《小芳》which the audience loved!

Some of my students that performed a fan dance that night!

Also, we spend some of our time with Anastasia (from Russia) and Jenny (from Philippines), two good friends of ours that are also teachers here. We had hotpot together last week, and we usually have coffee together every week and talk (bitch? /grin) about teaching, our countries, culture, language, everything. . .Anastasia is a huge Joss Whedon fan, so Dr. Horrible's has become part of our bonding, and Jenny got Kim and I hooked on "Smallville", which has turned out to be very fun, albeit sometimes predictable and corny.


Anastasia and Jenny:

Anastasia and Jenny having hotpot with us

We also spend a lot of time with our students; going to parks, cooking food, practicing pronunciation, chatting, walking, shopping, and more. Here are some pics of us with students, from one weekend.....

Taking a rowboat out on a lake at People's Park

A group of my students (all roommates, 6 students in one dorm room) taught Kim and I how to cook some Henan and Hunan dishes.

This weekend is also extremely packed. Saturday we have lunch with some students, then I am taking my tourism class to 龙源湖, a park nearby to make up a class I missed when I was sick a few weeks ago. Sunday we are going to buy Christmas decorations, a tree, and anything else that will help us celebrate / teach Christmas. Then, we are going to movie city, a HUGE movie studio in town where most of China's movies are filmed. We are going with a couple young kids that we are tutoring when we have time. After that, we will be whisked to English Play performance, where they have asked us to host the night. We will be given a suit and dress to wear, and Sat. night they will give us our words to memorize. . . .busy! Also, Sunday night I am participating in one of the play's with some students -- I will be Qin Wang, Emperor of the Qin Dynasty. And somewhere in there, we need to plan our lessons for next week (Christmas lessons).


Hope everyone is doing well, and looking forward to a good Christmas this year. Over here, we are hoping for some snow, but the temperatures are holding in the 50's for quite a while now. Send some snow our way if you are getting any!