Death by Moon Cake

Just a quick follow up from yesterday's post. Looked up the calorie count for the moon cakes I ate for the festival...Yikes!  Glad I only ate half of one.  

One Moon Cake

790-1200 calories 

Protein:  5-12g

Carbs: 60-90g

Fats:  30-45g

Can you believe how crazy this is????

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival Day!

Today is Mid-Autumn Festival Day!  It is a lunar harvest festival that includes eating moon cakes, family gatherings, and matchmaking.  As one of my students on QQ (instant messaging) told me, "the Mid-Autumn festival is the cowherd and the weaver girl meet festival, dating appointment of festival, why don't you find a boyfriend? Oh oh, China also has many excellent boys ah ~ you are so beautiful, should have good people chase you."  I thought that was pretty funny!

Moon Cake from my boss Diana

About to eat my moon cake!

The inside was filled with lotus paste and an egg yolk.  Honestly, it wasn't that good.  Other moon cakes are filled with red bean paste, cherry, strawberry, and apricot.  I also tried a cherry filled one, which was much better!

We have 8 days off of school this week for this festival and National Holiday!  Hopefully more fun blog post coming up soon!

Just the Usual

 I decided to document a typical day for me here in China.  Honestly, I didn't have anything to blog about so this is what I decided on.  I know you’re very excited to see what I do every day!  Haha

Most weekdays I have a morning class, so I have to get up around 5:30am.  This is very different then my schedule last year.  Last year I could walk to school within 10 minutes and my earliest class was at 9am.  This year I have the first class twice a week, which starts at 7:30am!  Eek! This means I have to catch the 6:25am bus to school.  We take a school bus for 30 minutes each way to and from school. 

Early morning…about to leave the apartment.

Pictures of my route on the way to the old school, where I catch the bus to the new school.  These streets are only empty like this at 6am! One of the nice things about getting up so early is China actually seems peaceful.  I rarely feel this way with all of the crowded streets and noise.  See, I'm looking at the bright side of an early morning!

 You know it’s early when the shops and street vendors aren’t open yet. 

Arriving at the old school to catch the bus.

 The teacher’s school bus.  All the students live at school, so only the teachers ride the bus to and from school each day. 

 The bus is jungle themed with ivy and a monkey hanging from the TV! Haha

 Arriving at the new school.  All of the students are walking to their first class of the morning. 

Something I do every day is climb a billion stairs!!!  Okay a slight exaggeration, but not by much.  One of our offices is on the 5^th floor,  the second office is on the 3^rd floor of a different building, classrooms are on the 2nd-6th floors, the dormitory is on the 4^th floor, the cafeteria is on the 2^nd floor, and our apartment is the 3^rd floor.  Most of these places I go to at least once a day if not more.  Let’s just say my calf muscles are HUGE and not necessarily in a good way! Eek!

My 5^th floor office with all of the English teachers from Grade 1.  

Having my quiet time and coffee in the office. 

Time for class, which is the best part of every day.  I really love teaching and my students!  They were so confused why I wanted them to take a picture. Haha

My area of the classroom, including a podium, chalk boards, and a stage so I can see the whole class even the students in the back of the classroom.  

Some days I eat lunch at the cafeteria.  I actually like the food, but most of the students think it is terrible.  It is much blander and less oilier than most Chinese food, which is why I like it and they hate it.

I forgot to take a picture before starting to eat, so it looked much better than this.  It is chicken, rice, and soup.  You can't tell from the picture, but the chicken did include a chicken foot.  Don't worry I didn't eat it!

View of the cafeteria 

Nap time at the dorm. This is one thing I think America should start doing!  For real though, a 2 and half hour lunch break where everyone quickly eats and then goes for a nap.  Awesome! 

Some days I teach afternoon classes, so I take the 5:20pm bus back to the city. 

On this particular day, Lesley and I decided to brave the meat market, so we could make chili for dinner. (This is not part of my typical day, but I decided to share it anyways)  It was by far the scariest experience I’ve had in China!  We kept asking for ground beef and we were sent on a wild goose chase through the entire meat market.  I will spare you the details, but let’s just say I won’t be going back anytime soon. We ended up with ground pork instead of beef, but it worked.

On the way home, we stopped for a Mango smoothie from Calca! We deserved it after making it through the meat market.  It was delicious! 

Back at my apartment.  It looks scary on the outside, but I promise the inside is much nicer. Sorry the pictures blurry!  

Cooking chili on the stove for dinner.  A great way to end the day with a yummy Western meal!

You made it through a typical day with me!  Thanks for reading, if you made it this far! 

Traveling Already!

Last Sunday Diana took us on an unexpected trip to Huanggang, which is a city about an hour drive from where we live.  When I say unexpected, I mean we thought we were going to dinner and to have a visit (as Diana says, which usually means just to talk) and next thing we know we are driving out of the toll gates of our city very confused. I guess she really meant a visit this time. It turned out we were going to see a famous general’s home named Lin Biao and to see the Dongpo Red Cliff.  We, of course, didn’t know about either one of these things, but apparently both are very famous here in China.

Diana’s husband and daughter came as well.  This is Diana’s daughter.  Her English name is Flora.  We brought her back a princess outfit from America, so she is wearing the crown.

In front of the general’s home with Diana, Flora and her husband.

Some other friends who joined in on our trip.

This gal loves a camera!

About to go to Dongpo Red Cliff park with Diana’s family and friends.  It rained early that day, so Lesley and I are sporting our China rain boots!  Looking cool...in our defense, we had no idea we were going to another city or we probably would have left the boots at home.

The park was really beautiful!

Told you she loves it!

Next to the Red Cliff with Flora.

What a cute family picture!

All of these characters were carved in stone.  The big one means to have a long life!

A picture of the actual Red Cliff.

At the park, there were many rides and games for children.  Flora was all about it!  She really wanted to do the bungee cord trampoline one, but then got scared once she was all hooked up and didn’t want to fly very high! Haha  

After the park, we headed to try a famous snack known to this city that Diana loves…it was black tofu and potatoes covered in a red sauce.  At first, Lesley and I were skeptical, but it really wasn’t that bad.  I preferred the potatoes over the tofu.  Go figure!

This girl just keeps getting sassier.  She continuously wanted to pose for my camera!

Flora took this gem of a picture...up close and personal. 

After getting a snack, we headed for dinner.  Yes, I know all we do is eat!  The dinner was actually delicious.  In Huanggang, they use different spices to season their food and I loved it!  It was much tastier than the spices in Huangshi. 

I'm Back!

Well I’m back in China for year 2!  I’m not going to lie; it was much more difficult to leave my family and friends this go around than last.  It is never fun to say goodbye, especially when you know it will be a long time before you see the people you love again.  However, Father has been my constant companion and comforter.  I am confident this is where He wants me for another year and I’m excited to see what He has in store!

Here are some pictures from my first week back.  Not too many fun pictures at the moment, but I’m sure that is soon to change!

These pictures were taken at the Lafayette airport where we said goodbye to our families.  Many tears were shed and I’m sure everyone at the airport was confused why we were so upset when we were just flying to Dallas! Haha 

Lesley and I with our panda neck pillows!  Don’t judge.  They're cool in Asia!  

Family picture!  Shout out to my awesome sister, who made me a scrapbook with pictures of my friends and family including a note from everyone!  I love it so much! Thanks Cam!

Funny family picture with my dad handing me money, my sister strangling me, and my mom upset over me leaving.  A pretty accurate depiction of their feelings towards me leaving again! Haha 

We had 4 flights to take, which was exhausting!  We traveled from Lafayette to Dallas, Dallas to LA, LA to Shanghai, Shanghai to Wuhan and then had a 2 hour drive to our city!  We ended up in our city at 3am.  Our boss picked us up and thought we would be hungry at 3am so took us to get street food! We couldn't even make it one day without Chinese food! 

The next few days were spent cleaning our apartment and getting our school schedule.  These are a few pictures of our messy apartment while unpacking.  Who knew you could collect so much in a matter of 10 months!!!

We are now teaching at a new location.  It is the same school as last year, but the school has moved out to the countryside and the campus is HUGE! We are now country folk during the week and city slickers on the weekend! hehe Here are some pictures.

The teacher apartments are not complete yet at the new school, so we are still living at our old apartment, which is about a 30minute drive away from the new school. The school did give us a dorm room to sleep in some nights if we wanted to.  As you can see in the picture below it isn’t bad for a student dorm, but not really prime for living in all the time for us.  Also, our mattresses are made of wooden planks!  

We are almost settled in now with the majority of the cleaning and unpacking behind us.  We taught our first week this past week and of course I love my kiddos!  More to come on that subject soon! :)