Jiaozi Making Party

One of my favorite classes invited me and another teacher to make jiaozi with them the other day, which was cool. Jiaozi (or dumplings) is probably most comparable to Ravioli in America, except without the spaghetti sauce. Actually most people eat their jiaozi with vinegar. Its one of my favorite meals to get if I go out. On the left you can see how it started. Then on the right we have them rolling out the dough, getting them ready to be filled with the stuffing...which is what they are doing in this next picture. The stuffing was some sort of blend of meat and vegetables...and its kind of hard to stuff the jiaozi - or at least they were much better at it than I was!
After making probably a thousand or so - if not more - we took the trays of jiaozi to the chefs and had them boil them for us, as you can see. Once they were done boiling, they were done and were ready to eat! They weren't the best I have had, but it meant a lot for them to ask us, their teachers, to make jiaozi with them. They had so much fun doing it!

Chiner Christmas

Christmas was definitely different this year. There weren't too many times I was humming, "Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas." :-) But it was still a good time, for the most part. I woke up around 7 on Christmas morning, opened up the box my parents sent me and then headed down to breakfast. Jen had made some banana bread for all of us, which was a nice change from the norm and tasted really good. Then since we were having a Christmas dinner for the whole Peter Hall staff that evening, there were a lot of things to do to get ready. So several of us worked at counting out all the plates and cups and such that we needed, made table name cards for our guests, and then decorated the cafeteria. You can see the difference. I know, it looks ghetto, but it was the best we could do :-) I actually did not get to enjoy the dinner with everyone because Gabe, Meghan, Sarah and I had already planned a small Christmas party with several of our students. Our party went pretty well. We had them do a Christmas word search puzzle, played a game, and then watched Home Alone II, which they seemed to thoroughly enjoy. I would have loved to have been home with my family, but that wasn't in HIS plan for this year. For that reason, I am glad that I was right here :-)

Vacation plans!

After many meetings, my travelling buddies and I finally nailed down some more definite plans for the break. Here is our itenerary:

January 6 - Depart Zhengzhou by train to Guilin, China
January 7-8 - Hang out in Guilin
January 9 - Take ferry ride to Yongshuo, China
January 10 - Hang out in Yongshuo
January 11 - Take bus back to Guilin and depart on train for Hong Kong
January 12-13 - Hang out in Hong Kong
January 14-15 - Take bus to Macau and hang out
January 16 - Depart Macau by plane to Bangkok, Thailand
January 17-24 Hang out in various places in Thailand
January 25 - Depart for Cambodia by...some form of transportation
January 26-Feb 1 - Hang out in various places in Cambodia
February 2 - Depart Cambodia for Bangkok
February 3 - Depart Bangkok by plane to Macau
February 4 - Depart Macau by train to Zhengzhou

And that's about it! I'm sure some of those dates won't be the exact day we leave certain places, but its a good estimate. It should be an awesome adventure!! The 6 people going with me are Brent, Brian, Katie, Melissa, Autumn and Jen...don't worry there will be plenty of pictures of them later :-)

Rugged

Our beard growing fiasco came to an end the other day. Here's a shot of me and the guys I'm closest to here. From left to right: Gabe, Brian and Nathan. They are all great, Godly men and have been examples to me in many ways. It was fun just to see what it looked like, but I shaved it all off. The next day several people commented on my nice haircut. I said, "Thanks, but I didn't get one." Then it would finally hit them what was different :-)

Zhengzhou

This past Saturday I spent the day in Zhengzhou with my friend Brian and a random student we met named Betty. Her English is really good, which as a freshman is very impressive. Its funny, China being what it is, you wouldn't expect to see many Christmas decorations or hear much Christmas music. But as you can see, they do decorate and if you were in the stores you would hear them playing all the Christmas carols you know and love back in America. How bizarre. Now, if only they wanted to celebrate Christmas for the right reason and not because they just want to copy everything Western...

Gifts

As you can tell from these pictures, I have been enjoying the fruits of being a teacher and receiving lots of...well, interesting presents :-) I really am grateful for the hearts of those that gave them to me, because I know they genuinely were showing care. Plus after I sell these jewels on ebay I probably won't have to work at all.
I'd been eyeing this for awhile now, I can't believe I actually got it!!


One cultural difference between America and China is how guys treat and talk to other guys. I don't particurarly care for that difference, but this was a really funny card anyway.

Christmas Party!

Holidays present a good opportunity to tell students about "American Culture"...or the true meaning of Christmas in this case. So in my classes that meet two times a week I had a party during the second class last week. In all my classes that meet once a week I divided the class in half and invited each half over to my apartment for an hour (actually I didn't think of this until after having my first class last week, so I'll have to make it up to them somehow next semester :-/ So this picture is from last night's party, which went really well. I bought some snack foods - which I had to practically force them to eat since they think its rude to accept gifts sometimes...and then I told them about how most Americans celebrate Christmas by showing them pictures of Santa, a reindeer, a house with lots of lights, a Christmas tree, Christmas stockings hanging off a mantle, and a Snowman. Then I explained to them that while those things were fun, they had nothing to do with Christmas. I then read to them a lot of THE Christmas Story and stopped to explain what was going on every few verses. In this particular class I do not know if anyone actually understood anything, but almost all of them paid a lot of attention. In talking with other students whose English is much better, I've found that most of them have never heard anything of why we really celebrate Christmas. I had already taught them a few Christmas songs in class, so we didn't sing any at the party. Other than that, I just let them ask questions and give suggestions for what they wanted to do differently in class next semester. Overall, I thought it was very fun and successful, because that was truthfully my least favorite class all semester, but last night helped change my perspective of them. I've got another party tomorrow night...if I get any cool pictures from there, I'll post them. Oh yeah, and you're probably wondering about the facial hair, right? Well, some of the guys have been having a contest to see who could have the best beard by Christmas...its interesting, I've never not shaved for this long (almost one month now I think).

New Coat

When I moved over here, I wasn't really thinking all that clearly and thus did not bring a coat, because I was thinking about how much space it would take up in my limited amount of luggage room...not even thinking about how I could have just worn the coat on the plane. Despite that mistake, I have still been taken care of by my Shepherd. He led me to a tailor that makes really nice down winter coats, which you see above...yeah that was made specifically for me! Pretty incredible, especially when you consider it cost only 12 US Dollars. Its got an inside pocket, just like I like coats to have, and it has a removable hood! Most importantly, it's kept me really warm.