Enough moon cakes to feed an army

So here at Yantai we have a thing called english corner. It's 3 times a week and it's a place where students can come to talk to foreign teachers about anything, as well as, practice with each other. So basically what happens is we go and are suddenly encircled by students who just start firing questions at us. I went twice this week, an both times some of the chinese Profs brought their little girls. There are 2 in particular who are just crazy adorable and very very funny. For soem reason they took a fancy to me in particular and love to run around finding random things to bring to me while yelling "teacher! teacher! what is this?!?!?" at the top of their lungs. They also seem to enjoy filling my pockets with stones. yesterday these 2 little girls came again but other teachers showed up with their daughters as well. At one point the little girls surrounded me while jingling little pea-sized bells and sang a chinese song for me. It was so cute. One their mothers then asked me to read a piece of paper to them. on it was written the weirdst translation of little red riding hood, entitled "little red hat" they have been a nice change from just going and answering questions for an hour.

The mid autumn festival is coming. it's a festival celebrating the moon. during the festival,everyone gives and eats little moon cakes. some of them are kind of gross but some are actually kind of tastey. they come in in boxed sets that are really cool looking. as a nice gesture the school gave the teachers a huge box of apples and a set of mooncakes. I swear i could probably make about 3 apple pies with all the apples they gave me....if only i had an oven.
Then three really sweet girls from my self study class gave me a beautiful green set because they noticed that i like to wear green alot. I have SOOOO many mooncakes now.


































Today in my soph. speaking class i played Gnarls Barkley's version of Gone Daddy Gone and the Violent Femmes version. then i had them discuss the differences, which one they liked better, which one the thought came first...etc.
To my surprise they actually like the violent femmes version better. At the end of class they wanted to listen to more. there's something really entertaing about watching a room full of chinese students concentrating on trying to listen to the Violent Femmes.

We have a week long break coming up and Jess and i are planning doing some travelling. So if you e-mail me and i don't get back to you that's why.

and how about just some random pictures...just for good measure.

In the market area at night they often have performances and fashion shows. one night there were these really cool dancers.The Big glass ball all lit up

Me and maggie going out for BBQ. She's the girl who's been helping me learn chinese.

Last week my freshman classes started and went pretty well. The kids are great. Lots of fun. For most of them, i'm the first foreigner they've ever met, let alone had as a teacher. So they had a great energy and were really enthusastic. In my tuesday class, i was in front of the classes speaking and all the sudden they all start raising their hands, and suddenly i realize that they were all taking my picture with their cell phones. Now the room that i have this class in is on the first floor of the building i'm in. In the room it was rather stuffy so i opened the windows. and probably only 20 minutes after i had to ask them to stop taking my picture, i look over towards the window and there is a small group of people standing outside listening in. The class is HUGE. There are about 50 kids all in this one speaking class and a group of them aren't even supposed to be there, they just saw me in the class room as they walked by and decided to join.

In my other freshman speaking class on thrusday, i again had to stop them from taking pictures during class. so this time i offered to take pictures during the break. I spent the whole 10 minute break posing for photos. and many of them told me they couldn't wait to send the picture to their parents. You can really do no wrong in the freshman's eyes it seems. When i had them introduce themselves i had one boy tell me that "i love my home town.....and i love you"

Most of them didn't have english names, so more naming went on... it makes it so much easier to remember them when they pick names of my friends and family.
I now have a marian. the girl wanted to know my sisters name and then wanted to be called that. I also have a phoebe now as well, as a Jean, another Tony,Emily, Zoe, Linda, and lots of Maries. One girl stood up and told me she had one english name in middle school, but it highschool it was changed to....of all things....Barbara. Yeeaaah. the younger students really do love to try and flatter you as much as possible

This weekend was spent in Weihai and then a rather crazy, but loads of fun, saturday back in Yantai. Which did include my first venture into the world of karaoke. good times. but now it's back to work. and tonight will be filled with catching up on all the lesson plans i didn't do this weekend.... but that's what i mondays are going to consistantly be for i think.

I know i am behind i e-mailing many on you. i promise i will..but just because i don't get back to you quickly doesn't mean i'm not thinking of you.

A couple shots of Weihai

Weihai is kind of small, but it was very pretty and nice to get away from yantai for a bit.
We found this place with AMAZING deserts. soooo tastey!

jess and i found these "for men" and "for women" wipes in our hotel and found them rather amusing.

Prevents any infectious diseases...pretty impressive huh? hahahaha

well, my listening class went waaaay better than last week. i didn't feel like a complete moron this time. thank god for good old Mr. Hao who giggles at me everytime i come to his office with another question. i just feel really bad for the kids though because that class is so boring and there's not a whole lot i can do about it because i'm required to present certain information. they literally look comatose during it.

i actually managed to get my self study kids out of their shells. we had so much fun in class on monday. we worked with introducing one's self and basic conversation starters. and then later in the evening some of them came to see me and actually used some of the phrases i had gone over in the class. it made me feel pretty spiffy. i have had one student though who comes to me and wants to talk about very emotional things. They wanted to talk to me about how they tend to feel sad alot and it makes them not want to make the effort to talk to people. it really caught me off guard and i really didn't know how to approach it or what i should say.

I've definitly become alot busier and my days just fly by. at the end of this week i will have been here a month....kind of hard to believe. it doesn't feel like it at all. I'm really enjoying encountering and learning about all the little quirky differences in mentality and such between western and chinese thought. i'm definitly learning alot from talking to my students and other people outside of a classroom situation.

ohhh...i had a girl the other day tell that the reason i look asian, but don't actually have any asian background is because i was made destined to have a chinese husband. hahha, quite an interesting theory. the girls here love to find out if you a have boyfriend or girlfriend, but the best is when i say i don't and they offer me advice on how to meet a "nice chinese boy".
I've been sick lately with a bad cold so my voice has been sounding more like a 12 year old boy going through puberty. i also have one of those amazing loose crazy sounding coughs. so in all my classes i've been beraited with lists of chinese medicines and tricks i should use in order to get better. They all always sound so concerned...everywhere i go, as soon as someone hears my voice, i get a lecture on how important it is that i take care of myself and how i should be resting.
it's kind of like being surrounded by jewish grandmothers all day.

i have some sad news....my handy man friend no longer seems to work here. the building seems so empty without him ;)


i'm really starting to feel settled here...and it feels pretty good. I'm sure this can just be a called a "honeymoon phase" but i find myself loving it here more and more everyday.
Sorry America I just don't miss you yet...

Penglai-PART 2

More pictures from Penglai!

I love this picture because its the perfect tourist picture. hahaha anyone from PA who has been to gettysburg will appreciate this pic.

this kid was just waaaay too adorable...the US could learn a thing or two from the chinese when it comes to dressing children

Hahahaha yes i took a picture of garbage cans.....but they're just so cute!

Aparently it's really popular to propose at Penglai....so you see all these crazy statues of GIANT rings.

Heights make Dale a tad bit nervous. haha

I think by the end of the year i'm going to have a collection of all the awesome signs you see in china.

Penglai - PART 1

last weekend dale jess and i went to Penglai and it was soooo beautiful there. so i of course took a ridiculous amount of photos that i can't wait to share with you. But since i took so many i figured i would spilt them up into 2 separate posts. Oh, and I wanted to give a big "Hello" to all the 1B students at Corpus Christi who have been visiting my blog and learning all about china!

it was great day to visit because we had bright blue skies but it was CRAZY windy!!!
Penglai is known mostly for a "magical mirage" that occurs every so many years. Sometimes it last only minutes, and once it lasted 8 hours. Bulidlings and roads will suddenly appear in the distance. We watched a video of it thatw as filmed during one of the longer mirages. it was pretty cool. It is also assicated with a story about 8 immortals crossing the sea.

This was our adorable tour guide, Jeff.

This little guy was my favorite
People try to toss coins at this old geezer of a tortoise, and if it lands on his back it's good luck
Dale gives it a try....unfortunetly he wasn't so lucky.

Sorry this picture is so dark. this was one of my favorit parts of the trip. A tea tasting room
This is a table made especially for drinking tea. Someday when i'm really rich i'm gonna try and talk andy brehm into making me one.
These are the 8 Immortals
They represent North South East and West
I have a special place in my heart for the crazy eyed guys. they always look like they just seen the most shocking thing ever.
If you want to become better at Kung Fu the guy on the right is the Immortal you walk to talk! The Guy on the left is known for helping people become better students.
This is a statue of the high heavenly goddess
The God of WineAll of these pictures are from the tourist center at Penglai. The next post will ahve pictures from the actual Pavillion

yesterday i taught my first real lessons. My first class, listening was a diaster!!!! mainly due to technical difficulties. I have to use the computer to teach the class....but it kept freezing!!! UGH. it was a mess...god knows what the students thought. after that i was sooooo nervous to go to my next class. It was a writing class, i decided to do a day on Figures of Speech. Similes, metaphors, personification, and alliteration. It went so well!! the stduents really seemed to have a good time. After explaining each figure of speech to them I put them in groups and passed out an english newspaper in different sections. i had them look through it and try to find examples of each. they seemed to really like it. after a while i had everyone come bakc together and each group shared what they had found. so i asked the first group what they found...a girl stood up and says...."we found personification, 'my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard'." HAHAHAHAHA i nearly died. i start cracking up and they had no idea why. they had no idea what a milkshake even was...let alone that song. so i explained it to them,and they got a pretty big kick out of it.

Ohhhh!! and i've managed to get a chinese tutor for free!!!! Penny asked me if i would help her friend Maggie practice her english. I said i would so Penny introduced us. We actually get along really well and she has offered to tutor me on thursdays!! i'm really excited. Last night the two of us went out together for BBQ, and i tempted fate and ate some delicious BBQed fish. no worries though i woke up feeling fine this morning. We also went out for a drink they call Milk Tea. It's very very tastey!! Here in china, if girls are friends they walk around holding hands, or they walk arm in arm. When i met maggie last night she immediatly grabbed my arm and held it while we walked....i think it is their international sign for "We are friends now".