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.