teachers day, turtle funerals, and chinese militants

Well, we're now 2 weeks into the semester and i'm already feeling a bit swamped.....
It's amazing how much comes up in a week.

Nate had some exciting news. He got his HSK (aka big bad china test) results back. He scored a very very high 6 which is really good. And it is high enough that he was told he was allowed to enroll in normal university classes, meaning taking classes with the chinese students. So he went over to another campus and has officially signed up for medical school in china.

Monday was Teacher's Day in China. Last year all i got was some "happy teachers day" texts from students. this year one of my classes gave me a beautiful bouquet of Lilies. And another classes did a little Happy Teachers Day oral presentation for me. It was great

This is my sophomore writing class....the flowers are sitting on the desk.

The beginning of the first semester always means that the new freshmen have to go through their required military training. Which basically means the march around campus a lot looking very communist. Nate was hoping that because he was freshman in the medical school he would be allowed to do the military training too....but alas no dice.

So in my last post i mentioned a new turtle.... well what i didn't mention was he was a little special. And by special....i mean he had no eyes. Meiyou Eyeballs. So i named him Old Blind Joe. Unfortunately Old Blind Joe got rot inside his shell and ended up passing away yesterday. So i thought the only proper thing to do would be to have a viking funeral for the little guy. My other turtle, Panda, is still going strong....maybe i should be suspicious that his roommates keep dying.
Anyways.....back to the viking funeral....


This was the crazy set up Nate and came up with. You can't see Old Blind Joe in this pic....but he's proudly placed on the lookout of the boat. we thought if we tied it to the box of sand it would help it float.

the grieving mother...

We knew it wouldn't light up on it's own.....that some sort of lighter fluid would be needed.....so we poured Baijiu (Chinese liquor) on it.
The solemn march to the water. The boat was also a music box...so we wound it up as we entered the water. The sound of it's little tune playing with the sound of the waves, and the fog on the water made it actually a little creepy.
This is us trying to light the boat...unfortunately it didn't go as well as hoped and the boat sank...
but hey, it's the thought that counts.

This is Eun Hye...and being the good friend that she is, she was the pallbearer for our funeral procession from my house to the beach.