Happy Birthday Calvin and Millie

So yesterday was Calvin, a kid on another team here in Harbin's birthday. After fellowship we had a birthday party for him (he turned 8). It was fairy tale themed so we all "dressed up" as fairy tale characters, ate Chinese food and played games including fairy tale charades and telling fairy tales from memory with a flannel board. Pretty interesting to hear people's renditions of the old stories we have all forgotten.

That night we celebrated my teammate, Millie's birthday by going to this Middle Eastern restaurant near our school. It is a little pricy but so good. We had all kinds of great food and enjoyed the great atmosphere of the restaurant.

This week is going to be an interesting one. Thursday is May holiday and so we have no class on Thursday or Friday, which is nice. I thought about taking a trip but decided to save money and work. So, tomorrow and wednesday I'll be giving midterms and then the last part of the week I am really going to try to get all my grading done and the tests for my thesis picked out to give in China and the US. I am studying the potential connection between creativity and computational math performance in the US and China so I'll be giving a creativity and math test in both China and the US so I have to get the tests picked out soon, translated and given.

Not much else exciting going on. 60 days until I fly back to America for the summer. That is pretty exciting. I'll be back on June 27, in grad classes in TN June 29, graduating from grad school on July 26, and then flying back to China again on August 15 so it will be a short trip but I am definitely looking forward to seeing many friends but also wanting to enjoy the rest of my time here this semester!

Pictures

Eating at Han's BBQ with some former students

About to go to KTV Karaoke















Singing at KTV!















Trying to stay warm!














Catherine and I staying warm!






So flickr is currently down in China so here are some pictures I have been talking about the last two posts! Check flickr in the next day or two though and hopefully it will be back!

Note-pictures are now up on flickr (www.flickr.com/photos/chinamegan)

50 degree temperature drop? No big deal

So last Sunday it was around 85+ degrees here. Beautiful weather-it was wonderful; all the flowers were blooming. Fast forward to Wednesday 35 degrees with huge snowflakes for 5 or so hours. I was so sad to bring back my wool coat and put the chaco sandals back in the closet. I am so ready for it to be warm and spring but I still have to wait. I guess we do need to keep those long underwear out.

I got interviewed for the Heilongjiang Daily (newspaper of Heilongjiang (my) province) on Thursday. Pretty exciting. They asked us about the changes we have seen taking place over the last 30 years. Since I have only lived in China for a year and a half, it was pretty difficult to articulate. So we just kind of talked about what foreigners know and think about China and why we came and all that. It was fun at least to hear my Chinese colleague, Leslie, do translation (they really only spoke Chinese and my Chinese is not that good). It is so helpful to hear something in both languages-really gives me a better understanding of grammar.

So you know that peg game they always have at like Cracker Barrel and places like that where you jump pegs until you only have one? Well I got sent an Easter one of those and got it out tonight while hanging out with my Chinese friends. I was always pretty bad at the game and never had patience to figure it out. The next thing I knew, 3 different people had mastered how to play it in just a few minutes. I tell you, these HIT students are smart! We had a fun time just hanging out tonight-they were all tired so we just relaxed. We cuddled under blankets (since our heat went off a few weeks ago and it's cold again our apts are pretty chilly), talked a lot, listened to Norah Jones, made chocolate chip cookies, watched a little "House" and even did a little yoga.

Last week I gave the written part of the midterm for Oral English Sophomores. This week I will be continuing their midterm with the oral part and giving my juniors the writing midterm. It is a fun filled week. They will also turn in their research paper. So, I have 40 oral midterms, 40 writing midterms, and 40 research papers to grade-fun! I always thought writing a bibliography was hard to learn growing up. I've decided it's also quite difficult to teach-so many rules and so picky! Hopefully they looked at their notes carefully when working otherwise I am going to be using a lot of red pens!

Our email is down right now-well, kind of. We can get emails but we can't send emails unless we go through webmail so if I am slow in responding to any of your emails, that is why! Also why I am writing on here. Hope you are all having a great week! Check out my flickr for pictures to come soon I hope!

Back again

So we now have access again here in China so we'll see how long it lasts again! Here is from my latest email and I'll try to update hopefully a few times a week here so check back. Make sure to check out my flickr site of pictures at www.flickr.com/photos/chinamegan

So Friday night I met up with some of my students from last semester. They met me at my dorm around 5 pm and headed to the "famous" Han's BBQ in Harbin. Students really seem to love this place. We got our own special little room and first went through the buffet line. In the buffet you get cold dishes such as fresh vegetables and fruit, some fruit salads and Chinese cold dishes. Among these included a dish made from "fish skin" and another with cow stomach (at least that is what I am pretty sure it was. At least someone's stomach-when I got it my students said they thought it was tofu; it was not). I did not get the strange looking dish that was "fish skin," however my student did and then asked me to try it. It wasn't skin like you peel off when skinning a fish, but more like white gelatin like material with some grey. The texture was indescribable.

Then later the waiters bring around various meets off of skewers and put it on your plate. Some were quite tasty, others were quite interesting. These included various animals' legs, chicken hearts, squid (very tough), a lot of fat, and many other parts of meet that my students did not know how to translate, which was OK with me. I don't eat a ton of meat really and so this kind of restaurant is somewhat challenging for me. I just cover it in this barbecue/ketchup sauce and put it in without thinking about it-mostly tasted pretty good!! The restaurant is sort of Russian themed and so we used forks and knives, which was fun to use with Chinese students-we talked about the "proper" way of using them (mom-you should be so proud). My favorite was one student, who always kept both in his hands and while chewing put the ends to the table like a child; so funny.

We had some great conversations and afterwards went to KTV, the Chinese oh-so-popular karaoke. We got our room and had some great times signing, using the tambourine and laughing together (I even sang Thriller for them and did the dance-it was great!). Around 10.30 I went ahead home because I was tired from classes all morning. It was a great evening.