Pumpkin Party

Here in China, they take some things very seriously. Some of those things include families, respect, dumplings, and… Halloween. Most of China doesn't celebrate Halloween, but when they do, they go all out. Last weekend we had a big pumpkin carving party with the kids and it was a lot of fun. It was exciting to get all dressed up with the other teachers. And it was fun to see the cute little kids all excited running around and doing face pain on their cute tiny hands. Not very many kids showed up, but it was still a ton of fun and actually helped cut down on the craziness. Now onto our haunted house which is in a week… that's scary!

Jello!

Today in class we made jello. It was awesome because I would mix water with red crystal light, then put it in a cardboard box “fridge” then take out an identical container of real jello. Then I’d carefully hold it and walk up to one of the kids then suddenly “splash” it on their faces, but of course it was jello so it didn’t go anywhere! They would just look at me in shock then slowly lift up their hands to feel their face and then be even more in shock when nothing was there. That sounds horribly mean but it was seriously the funniest thing ever and they were so enthralled. Before I had the idea of "splashing" them I would just tip it upside down suddenly and watch their jaws drop when nothing spilled. Jello is not a common thing here in China!

You know you're late to class when...

Well today’s lesson went way better than yesterdays, and no one ate moldy bread so that was a plus. Romeo looks fine so I guess he didn’t get sick. He still had an appetite as made apparent by the crackers he stole from me when I wasn’t looking. That kid drives me crazy!!!

So today I left for class way later than I should have. We’re supposed to be at class 10 minutes early, so at 7:20. I left the dorm at 7:26 and that was a really bad idea. I dashed out and pretty much ran down the stairs and I could hear someone else behind me so I though “ok, I just gotta beat the person behind me!!!!” So I dashed down the stairs and out the door and as I was speed walking I looked next to me and a Chinese teacher was there and she started to run because she was late, too, so I started to run and I turned around and Caiti was there and we both started cracking up. So we both sped walked so fast that we passed the 3^rd most late person and we totally beat her to class but we were still both late. If the Chinese teacher next to you is running to class to be on time, you know you're really late! I got to class at 7:31 and of course Kelly the local coordinator was standing right there so she saw that I was late. But I dashed in and the kids were already lined up so it was ok since they had just got there but if I had been any later that would have been really bad. The kids are usually good for about 30 second after their Chinese teachers leave them so I had made it just in time before they started creating chaos in the classroom.