never be lacking in zeal...: Costume Bowling

My bowling team!

This Friday was Halloween so we decided we needed to do something fun-who wants to study on Halloween!? We decided to go costume bowling. My tutor came over to my house early to help me get dressed-I was a TV. She is SO creative and helped me get my outfit together so well. She has been my tutor for the last 7 weeks so we have grown really close. I am sad to have to change tutors next week! (We change tutors every month but last month was an exception for me and my tutor so we got to stay together longer!)

We met at the usual meeting place, McDonalds on Tongzhi Street, at 7.30. It was great arriving and seeing the crowd of Chinese onlookers already gathering. It is not an everyday thing to see a bunch of foreigners and a few Chinese friends dressed extremely strange standing outside of a major shopping area! People were taking pictures, asking us why we were dressed this way and where we were from and complementing our "standard Chinese." (It is culturally polite to compliment us like this, even though our Chinese isn't that good they still complement us-good for self esteem!) We finally all arrived and hopped in taxis to head to the bowling ally inside of a nice hotel (most bowling allys in China are in fancy hotels).

waiting outside of McDonalds

We got four lanes, our snazzy shoes and started bowling. We had so much fun taking pictures and spending time with some of our tutors who came with us! It is so fun to be able to spend almost the whole night mostly only speaking in Chinese, even with each other. Granted my conversations aren't super complex in Chinese but my tutor and I have a great time together and communicate all we need to! It was her first time ever to go bowling so I showed her the basics of bowling pointing to the importance of follow through. She told me she thinks she will be good very soon because "she is very good at sports." Sure enough, she was AWESOME! She had a score in the 80s I think the first game and a 98 the second. We tied! It was a great night with my classmates and with our Chinese friends. Our tutors here are our most important relationships that we build usually so it is good to spend time with them outside of the 2 hours a day of tutoring!