I just wanted to share a few random stories about whats been going on the past month here in Huangshi! First, I taught my students about Valentine's Day. They celebrate V-day here in China, but people are not very open about talking about love and relationships, so it was a lot of fun for me to get my students talking on this topic. I had them interview each other on love and marriage....questions like "what would their ideal partner be like?" and "how old they want to be when they get married?" I tried to explain that Valentine's Day is a day for love and to celebrate all of your relationships, not just for boyfriends and girlfriends. It was very funny, because all of my students get so embarrassed when I try to talk to them about dating and love! They are much more shy about this topic than most American students!
Valentine's Day is also Camille's birthday! She turned the big 24! We celebrated by going to a Korean BBQ restaurant with our fellow Zhong teachers and the Randalls.
Paul, Erin, Hope, and Aaron at the bday dinner.
Mercee and Grace. They brought us all Valentine cards!
Kevin and Chelsie!
Camille and I.
I was very proud of myself for this...I made Cam a two-layer chocolate cake from scratch in our toaster oven! And it was pretty darn good too! I wish I could take credit for the icing, but that was generously mailed to us by Cam's mom!
Aaron made these elephant cookies for Cam since her favorite animal is an elephant. We were all quite impressed by his skills in the kitchen!
About to sing Happy Birthday...
Making her wish...
I actually had to cut the cake with a chopstick since we didn't have any knives! But, hey, whatever works!
Camille and I decided to get our nails done again, only this time we wanted to try something a little more "Chinese" if you will! Many Chinese women like to get extra things on their nails like glitter or 3D objects like jewels and rhinestones. They really don't like to get just a plain color.
These are Camille's bejeweled fingers. She just had one gold diamond.
This is my hand and yep, that is a rhinestone bow! Oh yeah! It was fun to try this but I'm thinking this was probably a one time experience. It was quite annoying and would catch on a lot things like my clothes. It only lasted a few days because we kept picking at them!
MARDI GRAS!
Being from Louisiana, Camille and I thought it would be fun to teach our students all about Mardi Gras. We wanted to share a little bit of our culture with them. We used a projector to show them pictures and videos of parades, Mardi Gras balls, and king cake. We brought in Mardi Gras beads as prizes for the games we played. We could only get one projector from our school, which wasn't a problem most of the time, because our class schedules are different. However, we both teach a Grade 2 class at the same time on Wednesdays. We decided that the best solution would be to shove all of our students into one room and teach the lesson together! Sounds like fun, right?
Well heres what it looks like to have over 100 Chinese students in one classroom! Poor kids, they were packed in there so tight! But, they fit! Side one of the classroom....
Side two of the classroom....I'm pretty sure we were breaking some kind of fire code violation...if they even have that in China!
Every Thursday, Camille, Chelsie, Erin and I get together for a girls' b.ible study and to catch up! Since it was Mardi Gras, Camille made a king cake from scratch! It was delicious!
This might be the only time we ever make a king cake....we had no idea it was such a long process!
Almost done....
I really wasn't that much help...all I did was make the icing! Interestingly, I never knew that you put lemon juice into king cake icing! Learned something new about Louisiana in China!
We didn't have purple sprinkles, but if you squint your eyes enough the red and blue sprinkles blend together enough that it kind of looks purple! Almost! Are you squinting right now?!?! haha
Chelsie enjoying her king cake!
Erin eating her very first piece of king cake...EVER! Shes from the North! We sent the piece with the baby inside for Erin to bring home to her husband Paul. They actually followed tradition and made another king cake for us that weekend! Only Erin would do that!
Mmmm, so happy!
The next day, we celebrated Ms. Cheri Randall's birthday by all going out for pizza together. This new place called New York Pizza opened up just across the street from our apartment and it is pretty legit! They always give you a fork and knife to eat pizza with instead of your hands. Or if you're really lucky, they bring out gloves for you to wear so you're hands don't get dirty! Grace and Mercee were sporting the gloved look!
Camille made so much dough that we were able to make another king cake! Yummy!
Kevin's first time! I'm not sure, but I think they enjoyed it! :)
These are the workers at New York Pizza. He thought the cake was so beautiful, he asked to take a picture of it! We offered them some and they really liked it! Its unusual because most Chinese people don't like desserts that are really sweet the way we do in America.
Our Huangshi family!
Ms. Cheri was kind enough to put in an order for us on taobao, basically a Chinese ebay! We were so excited to get some Western food like salt and vinegar chips and cream cheese! We don't have this kind of stuff in Huangshi.
Another post coming really soon! Thanks for reading and pr@ying for all that the Good Lrd is doing here!
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