Mid-Autumn Festival

The Mid-Autumn Festival is a big holiday for the Chinese.  It is one of the two most important holidays in the Chinese calendar (the other being the Chinese Lunar New Year).  Farmers celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season on this date.  Traditionally, on this day, Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat moon cakes together.

  We were able to participate in this wonderful festival, thanks to our employer and some wonderful Chinese students.  First we had dinner with the other foreign teachers at our university.  You can see them below:

Chase, female Japanese teacher, male Japanese teacher, Anna, Arleen, Kevin, Mindia, Collin (our boss), Spencer, and Kylie.

The wonderful students had a very warm welcome for us.

Here are all of the students who threw us a wonderful party.  They are so fun!

One of the highlights was a floating lantern.  We all got a turn to write our wishes on the lantern.  then  you light little candles under it and it fills with hot air and floats to the lady in the sky who will grant your wishes.  Unfortunately, on the way up to the moon, ours hit a tree and tipped over, catching on fire and falling straight to the ground.  

Happy Mid-Autumn!

Packages

I have the best family!  They sent us a love package and we received it yesterday.  So many tasty and wonderful items!  Such simple things like popcorn, peanut butter, and spices just made our day!  Not to mention the always wonderful Laffy Taffy (for Chase) and Big Hunk (for me).  I know, I know....Chase should be my one and only big hunk.  But when I bite into him I just don't get the same satisfaction!

Boy Naughty

Teacher's Day is a big deal here. Students show their teachers they appreciate them by showering them with gifts. These wonderful Chinese students...

...showered the 4 of us with wonderful gifts, including cards, fruit, flowers, a vase, and a boy naughty. Boy naughty? What's that? Look below to see.....(rated PG-13)

Lamp in the off position

Lamp in the on position.

Enough said.

Thank you students.

Chinese Life

Chase had the great idea to give you some insight into the costs of things here.  You always hear how things in China are so cheap.  Well, see for yourselves!

The currency here is the Yuan (pronounce "you in") or RMB. The conversion rate is about 6.85 RMB to 1 USD ($). I usually just use 7:1 to estimate prices. I will now provide a list of common goods or services that we purchase with their accompanying prices (approximate):

·  Can of Coke=2 RMB=$0.30

·  Bottle of OJ or Tropicana=3 RMB=$0.40

·  One-way bus fare=1 RMB=$0.15

·  10-15 minute taxi fare=14 RMB=$2

·  DVD of Hancock, Get Smart, or other unreleased movies=7 RMB=$1

·  Delicious breakfast pastry=1RMB=$0.15

·  Big Mac Value Meal at McDonald's=21 RMB=$3

·  12 inch Pepperoni Pizza from Pizza Hut=88 RMB=$13

·  Trip to supermarket for four days worth of food and miscellaneous household items=65 RMB= $9.70

·  5 gallon jug of purified water delivered to apartment=11 RMB=$1.65

·  Snickers Bar=8 RMB=$1.15 (not so much savings on the rarely seen items)

·  Costs and initial deposit to open bank account and get bank card=16 RMB=$2.30

·  Full-day bicycle rental in Yangshuo=10 RMB=$1.50 (no deposit, no names, no signatures)

·  Bamboo raft trip for 2 down Yulong River=150 RMB=$22

·  Package deal for 2: bamboo raft trip, mud cave excursion, full-day bicycle rental, personal tour guides, bus ride to caves=300 RMB=$45

·  Full dish of fried noodles and beef=10 RMB=$1.50

·  One night stay for two at Bamboo House Inn in Yangshuo=150 RMB=$22

Hammer

I'm going to go freaking nuts!  There I was, lying in our bed reading (okay, sleeping) when I hear "BANG, BANG, BANG!"  I ignored it, rolled over, and thought I would fall back to sleep immediately.  But OHHH NO!  The hammering continued....and continued....and continued.  It has lasted for over 20 minutes.  I swear the people on the first floor of our building must be trying to make the building collapse.  It's so loud and I CAN'T STAND IT!  So I got out of bed and complained to Chase and you know what my sweet husband did?  He found me a funny Jack Handy story to make it all better.  And I must admit, it did just that.  I will now share it with you:  I remember I was hammering on a fence in the backyard when Dad approached. He was carrying a letter or something in his hand, and he looked worried. I continued to hammer as he came toward me. "Son," he said, "why are you hammering on that fence? It already has plenty of nails in it." "Oh, I'm not using nails," I replied. "I'm just hammering." With that, I returned to my hammering. Dad asked me to stop hammering, as he had some news. I did stop hammering, but first I got a couple more hammers in, and this seemed to make Dad mad. "I said, stop hammering!" he yelled. I think he felt bad for yelling at me, especially since it looked like he had bad news. "Look," he said, "you can hammer later, but first-" Well, I didn't even wait to hear the rest. As soon as I heard "You can hammer," that's what I started doing. Hammering away, happy as an old hammer dog. Dad tried to physically stop me from hammering by inserting a small log of some sort between my hammer and the fence. But I just kept on hammering, 'cause that's the way I am when I get that hammer going. Then, he just grabbed my arm and made me stop. "I'm afraid I have some news for you," he said. I swear, what I did next was not hammering. I was just letting the hammer swing lazily at arm's length, and maybe it tapped the fence once or twice, but that's all. That apparently didn't make any difference whatsoever to Dad, because he just grabbed my hammer out of my hand and flung it across the field. And when I saw my hammer flying helplessly through the air like that, I just couldn't take it. I burst out crying, I admit it. And I ran to the house, as fast as my legs could take me. "Son, come back!" yelled Dad. "What about your hammer?!" But I could not have cared less about hammering at that point. I ran into the house and flung myself onto my bed, pounding the bed with my fists. I pounded and pounded, until finally, behind me, I heard a voice. "As long as you're pounding, why not use this?" I turned, and it was Dad, holding a brand-new solid-gold hammer. I quickly wiped the tears from my eyes and ran to Dad's outstretched arms. But suddenly, he jumped out of the way, and I went sailing through the second-story window behind him. Whenever I hear about a kid getting in trouble with drugs, I like to tell him this story.

Pizza Hut!

In downtown Xiangtan (about a 20 minute bus ride, costing 1 RMB=$.15) there are 3 American restuarants--KFC, McDonald's, and Pizza Hut.  We were craving some familiar cuisine and decided to go to Pizza Hut.  It was delicious!  The cheese tasted a little different than home, and there were a bunch of pizzas that you would NEVER see in the US, but they had good 'ol pepperoni so we were in heaven.

This was on the wall in the Pizza Hut (which was really fancy, by the way).  It doesn't make sense really, so I took a picture.

The two Chinese students you see in the pictures are Sheri & Austin.  They helped us set up bank accounts earlier in the day so we could get paid (sort of important).  They also showed us how to get to downtown.  They love showing us things and taking us places and practicing their English with us.  As a thank you for their help we treated them to pizza.  Sheri had had it once and Austin never had.  He picked his up upside down...funny.  They were such a huge help and we love hanging out with them.  Neither of them have taken English classes at this university and have gotten really good just by watching American movies.  So sometimes they say funny phrases.  For example, when we were standing around getting ready to go Austin said, "Okay, let's get the ball rolling."  It was so funny!

Yangshuo-Day 2

Kylie & Chase in front of one of the many motorcycle shops in Yangshuo. This is for you, Bridger, Jedd & Dad. The only downer is they only sold one model (this is Chase talking...like I would know the difference)....they were all 125 cc. But they were given a bunch of different make and model names for the exact same bike. Very few of which were Yamaha.

In front of a different section of the Li River. We took a bike ride past this section and were much cooler while on the bikes than when we stopped (hence the sweat).

Chase was particularly fascinated by this....scaffolding made entirely of bamboo and twine.

Beautiful view of a secluded section of the Li River.

Chase had to wear his sandals on the wrong feet all day because he had blisters. =( He got a few laughs from some Chinese folk....and from us.

Yangshuo-Day 1

So the day we arrived in China (after 24 hours of traveling) we got back on a bus and drove another 11 hours to a beautiful placed called Yangshuo. These are pictures from our first day there. In all of these pictures we will look hot and sweaty...very sweaty. That's because we are. The humidity was crazy and you never stopped sweating. Doesn't that sound lovely?? =)

Chase and me in front of the Li River (notice the Dr. Suess mountains....that is the landscape here!)

Chase in the cool (not temperature) streets of Yangshuo. This is where you could get some real bargains on a bunch of stuff you don't need.

Our favorite part of the trip--going down the Yulong River in a BAMBOO RAFT! It was so relaxing and beautiful! (This is actually Kylie & Spencer, but they have the picture of us....you get the idea...)

In the mud caves. I didn't go in because I was the "official" picture-taker....and murky water just isn't my thing.

Chase thought it would be a brilliant idea to dive head-first down this little mud slide thing. He regretted it.
If you didn't have swimwear they made you buy some....this is what Chase & Spencer were fortunate enough to wear....and what the rest of us were fortunate enough to look at.
This was the view when we came out of the caves....well, this is only about 1/4 of it. There were beautiful rice patties everywhere and it was just so green and picturesque. It was so typically China.
Spencer, Kylie, Chase, and me on our walk back down from the caves.