Hey friends! I thought I would give an update of the events that happened last week. So, since Monday was Halloween, we teachers decided to give the kids a little break and play with them the entire morning! We set up a room for the kids to get their faces painted, a room for balloon coloring, and in the last classroom was a place for them to watch a Halloween movie. I was stationed at the face painting and I loved it! These kids looked awesome! I started out painting small things like bats and butterflies on their cheeks, but eventually it turned into a full face painting of tigers,cats, lions, and spiders. It was so great! I was pretty surprised to see that the Chinese teachers were actually having fun with the kids... they are usually very strict. You don't mess with the Chinese teachers. ;) The American teachers and I didn't really have much planned for Halloween so we all kind of just did our own thing. Em and I decided to go hit up the dumpling restaurant to get some Gua Ba Row, which is this super delicious sweet tempura pork. MMMMMMMmmmmmmm! I love it! I'm gonna have to figure out how to make it when I get home so I can make it for everybody! It's awesome! Anyway, after we got our dinner we walked around and were kind of weirded out because we were told that the Chinese celebrate Halloween in Weihai, but it sure didn't seem like it. It was just a totally normal night at the market. NBD. So, Halloween was fun that morning, but we ended up just having a pretty chill night. The next day was turned into an extension of the Halloween merriment because when we got to the school there were probably around 70 pumpkins left on our supply room table. We figured we better use them, so we set up big tables and helped the kids carve the pumpkins and color them. The kids LOVED the pumpkins... probably too much because they started getting really rambunctious. I can say that day wasn't as fun for me as the day before, but the pumpkins ended up looking awesome and the kids had a really good time. Later in the week Cami, Jillian, Em, Abby, and I went over to city center or "Big World" as we all call it and had a great time wandering around the markets. It was dumping rain profusely while we were walking around. I'm grateful that I remembered to bring my umbrella with me that day, because I wouldn't have survived! :P It was pretty bad, but we still had a lot of fun over there. There is this "mall" type of place you can go at Big World, but it's pretty much just an indoor market where they sell loads of random things. I've bought chopsticks, winter gloves, necklaces, Chinese relics and a bunch of other things there. It's cool because everything is already so cheap, but if you don't have enough money to get something a lot of the time they will just let you buy it anyway. It's really nice. After about an hour and a half of shopping we decided to get some lunch. We were heading out of the store and Em and I saw this underground food market that we made the mistake of walking through one time and told everyone to avoid it. It basically looks like an alley where people sell meat and fish, but they have live animals down there and it just reeks like blood and filth. Horrible, horrible experience! Anywho... we continued on our way to get some food. One of my friends, Jillian told us about this little cart that sells these wrap-like things for only 4 yuan. We headed over there and she grabbed one of those. I've been a little hesitant to eat street food, but she let me try it and it was really good! It basically was a fresh tortilla with egg, lettuce, meat, and this brown sauce. Super good! Nobody else seemed to want that though, so we hit up McDonald's after we went there. Once again...In America I've never been a McDonald's fan, but here it really is the greatest thing in the world! After we all ate we decided to head back home. It took about 40 minutes for the bus to come pick us up, but we kept busy talking about our Chinese names. My Chinese name is Kǎitè (pronounced Khy-chua) which means triumphant and special. Pretty cool I guess... It also can mean victorious secret agent, but whatever. Haha! Once we got on the bus, my friend Cami met this lady who had horrible English, but was determined to talk to her. The lady managed to ask what her name was and Cami told her. The lady asked her again what her name was. Again, Cami told her what her name was... this went on through out most of the bus ride. Finally, the lady asked if she knew the song My heart will go on. We all said yes. The lady then asked us if we would sing for her. Now, something you need to know is Cami isn't one to step out on an opportunity like that, so she definitely said yes. Once we found the song on Em's Ipod we all just went for it and started belting Celine Dion so loud that everyone on the bus could enjoy the performance. It was epic! People were smiling, laughing, and clapping along. It was a proud moment for all of us. Once that song was over, we decided to give the people of Weihai one more musical treat. Of course, it had to be Justin Bieber's Baby. Once we popped that song out I think it freaked most of the bus riders out. And of course the rapping part! That was a joke! I thought one of the Chinese ladies eyeballs were gonna fall out of her head! She thought we all were crazy! I guess J. Biebs is just to advanced for the Chinese. Oh well... It was fun while it lasted! Well, this week was fun! Not a whole lot happened, but we still had a good time! Well, I gotta go! I'll write more later! Loves!
