Thanksgiving Part II

Thanksgiving Extravaganza began on Friday with our Thanksgiving Feast that Clayton, Jeff and I threw for Makoto and one of Clayton's Chinese tutors...It began with our trip to the East market to buy 2 chickens (yeah...no turkey but chicken is a close cousin) with Makoto as our guide. We bought the two beautiful birds you see below:

Then, following the directions of Clayton's sister-in-law we prepared our first roasted chickens. Below you can see Clayton being "zesty" with an orange...

Our orange , butter, and seasoned birds ready for the oven!


Then I carved our chickens...yeah that's right, I'm the man of our China family (big surprise right :) Our feast also featured: mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing, buscuits, and cranberry sauce (even if it was the jellied kind that apparently no one else has EVER seen before! they were all hating on the poor Ocean Spray Cranberry Sauce until they tasted it and decided that even without chunks of cranberries it was delicious)

Our lovely Thanksgiving table (decorations thanks to Ben and my mom who both sent me WONDERFUL care packages!)

Day 2 of Thanksgiving Extravaganza featured a lunch hosted by the ELIC teachers. There were also other ELIC teachers from all over Shandong Province who came (a total of 30 of us ate together). Clayton, Jeff and I prepared the wonderful mashed potatoes...they were a huge hit! And a good thing too...because we made our first serious Qufu dialect mistake and accidentally paid 40rmb for the potatoes instead of 14rmb! ooopsies...good thing that's not a big difference in USD or CND :)

mmmmm thanksgiving food...soo good when you've been eating Chinese food for about 3 months! (p.s. decorations are thanks to Traci's Sophomore Culture Class)

So....Clayton and I made sure to represent the "Kiddie Table" even all the way over here in China. We're super mature, and should always be allowed to sit together!

Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving.
I was invited to go and meet primary school students in the next town over (yanzhao).
When i arrived, however, "talk" meant speak about Thanksgiving in front of 1000+ elementary school students!!!! I was like...wait what?!? haha But it went alright, I'm sure they had no idea what I was saying, and they were all waaaay too excited that I was there to even listen to what I was saying anyway. Then, After speaking in front of the entire school...I was asked to "interact" and "improve the oral English skills" of the 4th grade students...yeah sounds easy until I realized that there were 500+ 4th graders! So...I taught them "head shoulder knees and toes," and "Simon Says" and then some key phrases and answered some questions. So yes...I am now Mrs. Amanda, professional English Clown! :)

on the plus side: the kids were super duper cute and I wish I had my camera!!! And they took me to dinner which was really yummy and all the administrators were super nice!

BALLOONS!

On the 3hour bus trip back from Rijao...Joni WOWed us with her AMAZING balloon animal skills...and then let us try! This is what happens when you give bored English teachers balloons on the back of the bus....


My FIRST balloon animal!!!

Bret and his first ballon animal!!

Clayton and his frist balloon animal...parents whould you let him play with your children!? :)

Oh man are we cool or WHAT??!?! We're really excellent, mature, teachers...we make good role models for all our students! :)

Rizhao Adventure!

All the foreign teachers reunited and took a trip to visit the city of Rizhao...a new city on the coast, not too far from Qingdao. We left on Friday, spent the night in Rizhao at the Qufu University's campus there, then took a day trip to Qingdao for some shopping, spent another night in Rizhao, and visited the Rizhao beach. It was a fantastic weekend...we did tons of shopping, ate at McDonalds (had a mystery soda that we thought was coke but didn't taste anything like coke and the China version of the apple pie = green pea pie!), visited lots of beaches, saw tons of brides (in China they don't get married in the white dresses, but they take their pictures in them so you see crowds of brides in white dresses getting their pictures taken!), ate some delicious seafood, and took lots of pictures! fun times were had by all!

Birthday!

My first Chinese birthday!

My PhD students took us out to a wonderful lunch!

They even bought a yummy Chinese birthday cake...actually not bad, not as sweet as American birthday cakes!They had me eat noodles...a Chinese custom, ensuring the birthday person a long life

Then I ate birthday cake with chopsticks!! Actually, much easier than one would think...

Then...aparently it is a custom to put frosting on the birthday person's face....imagine my surprise as my PhD student reached over and dabbed frosting all over my face (Clayton and Jeff were paralyzed with laughter...or baijo, poor Clayton had to drink glass after glass of the incredibly bad tasting alcohol in honor of me :)

Then they helped me wipe it off...I felt like a little kid!

My adorable Freshmen presented me with flowers and sang to me when i walked into class...

The birthday song in China is "Happy Birthday to you" over and over (no dear Amanda...blah blah) it was quite cute.

My awesome coworkers and fellow foreigners arrived at my door with birthday goodies, singing happy birthday!!!

Aixia gave me this cute plant...i think she said it is for goodluck, or happiness (I can't quite remember...)

Cake No. 2 was given to me by my department at the Cultural Exchange Center! It was very yummy and arrived right in time for my Freetalk, so my students and I had another little celebration!

Birthday goodies! What a wonderful day!! :)

Halloween China style

This is how we celebrate Halloween Qufu Style...

Step 1: decorate door with halloween things mom sent me

Step 2: Carve incredibly small pumpkin we found at Bai Yi (supermarket)...carve with Jeff and Clatyon, but get too excited and accidentily do all the work, then feel guilty that you didn't let Clatyon and Jeff do anything...especially after Clatyon tells you he always gets to carve the nose

Step 3: Admire incredibly cute tiny Jack O'Lantern

Light Jack O'Lantern with the only small candle you can find...

Hand out candy to Traci's students who have made their own costumes (please take note of the awesome mummy in the back....he had toiletpaper wrapped around his face...brilliant!)