Mid-Autumn Festival

You can kind of see the gaping hole
where the backhoe has been taking dirt from, such
a PRETTY view :)

So a new thing that has been happening the last few days are fireworks during the DAY. How does that make sense you ask? How would people even SEE or enjoy the fireworks? They don't! I can hardly see anything when its happening (which is almost constantly) and fireworks are becoming less special by the minute for me (mainly because now it just sounds like constant gunfire).

My work station for yesterday!

Yesterday I moved my kitchen table outside (copying my Melanie and another teacher here) and did my work outside on the "patio." It was AWESOME! So much better than doing it in my cramped up room. Then I also have the lovely gift of staring at the construction site opposite the patio, where a backhoe and two trucks have been coming in the middle of the night (and creating all kinds of racket) to steal the top soil (we think they MUST be stealing it, otherwise why come at 4 am on a National Holiday?).

Mel and I spent yesterday morning trying to learn the words to American Pie and Wagon Wheel (my little sister LOVES Wagon Wheel). Since the night before we requested them to the guitar player and then we couldn't actually sing the proper words; I'm sure the people around her apartment were super excited that that was how we decided to spend our morning (I'm an EXTREMELY gifted singer). Afterwards I did some marking, some lesson planning for the next unit and I even put together a PowerPoint so that my lecture of them on Monday can be organized (about how they don't cheat, they take notes and they ask questions when they do not understand something).

Downtown, near Wal...Mah
Obviously there's a KTV in the shot

Afterwards we went into town, by ourselves! The problem there is that we can't actually call cabs for ourselves because of the whole I don't speak Chinese situation. So we decided to just leave here at 6 pm last night and walk until we found a cab, we didn't end up walking long. The place we were going to eat at was right by Walmart, so we figured it would be just easier to say that's where we were going. The thing with going to Walmart, is its one of the few places that is the same name to the Chinese people and the foreigners. Except you have to say it like "Wal...maH" or they won't understand what you're saying. So we stopped the cab, said Wal...maH a few times, he nodded and off we went. Then both of us were thinking we were not going in the right direction (Walmart is in the North and we were definitely going towards the South end of town). He eventually stopped at our "destination" which was a hotel in the South part of town and so I looked at him and said "WAL....MAH. WAL....MAH, WAl.....MAH" and he nodded and started driving again and dropped us off at walmart; it was pretty funny. Mel could not stop laughing at my saying it over and over, but we were clearly just not saying it wrong enough in the "right" way. From Walmart we walked to the sushi place (yes we got sushi, it was awesome) and had dinner.

Yay so much sushi!

One of the people making stuff

Mel enjoying some "Binda Pygo" that is spelled
phonetically, not properly lol (Cold beer)

After dinner we wanted to go to the Red Cactus, the bar owned by the Canadian guy here. The problem is, we don't REALLY know how to get there.....at all. So after we stopped for ice cream at KFC (OBVIOUSLY) we just started walking in random directions. We had the name of the bar written in Chinese Characters on our phone, so we would walk up to people show it to them and then point (obviously to say which direction, my communication skills are impeccable). Only two people we asked actually admitted they knew what it was but neither of them were helpful. Then after wandering around for awhile (we were both stuffed and wanted to walk, otherwise we would have done this earlier) we hailed a cab. The cab driver would NOT let us in the cab, he just kept pointing behind him It turns out we were almost BESIDE the bar, like a one minute walk and we found it!

The Bar, he used to own a bar named Cheers, its still running
someone in town

It was fun, the owner's name is Matt and Mel's friends who taught at our school a few years ago are good friends with him. We ended up meeting one of our other teachers from our school there (she is awesome, she is trying to become fluent in Chinese, just got her motorcycle license and lives off campus, oh to be that brave). I met an Orthopedic Surgeon named Frank (his English name was Frank) who showed me photos from his trip to Italy (there were a lot) as well as photos of someone's thumb getting amputated (the kind of stuff that's easy on the stomach ya know?)! Then we met a teacher from Chicago and a teacher from the UK who work at other schools and have been in Jinhua for a couple of years. I like the teachers we work with but when the only people you speak to are the same like 6 people for 3 weeks (yes I've been here for nearly 3 weeks, that's nuts!) then it is SO NICE just to have other people to talk to, even if they are showing you photos of someone with a gaping hole where their thumb should be!

Oooo I completely forgot too that while we were walking people had set off SO MANY Chinese Lanterns, it was so cool looking!!!!

This is Jen, Mel and Matt. Jen and Matt own the Red Cactus

These are the other teachers we met, extremely
photogenic!

We eventually left the bar and went to get street food. I got some sort of meat on a kabob (I think it may have been lamb, but you can't be sure). It was TASTY! Mel tried one of the oysters, I was not that brave yet! We then got a cab, after one told us no because our school is too far away, and we were on our way home! There must have been something about yesterday though because this cab driver was also trying to drop us off in all sorts of places that were not where we lived. Thank God we at least know where we are (sometimes) now so that we can try to give them directions. I don't think it REALLY helped, but we eventually got there!

Since we got home late and I was tired I was 100% planning on sleeping in. That's the thing with living on a campus where music is blasted at 6 am (on weekends, during Chinese National Holidays, all the time). I was first woken up at around 6 to what sounded like mass amounts of gunfire but obviously it was just someone letting off fireworks for 10 straight minutes on campus; to be honest it sounded like it was directly outside of my window..... I do not get it! Then I fell back to sleep for a bit and then woke up AGAIN to the music...oh the music. I understand 4 words in the song, but I can sing the entire thing (and hum it flawlessly, similarly to the song that plays when you call people as the phone rings here). So then I just forced myself after getting about 4 hours of rest (not even sleep) to just get up for the day!

Mmmmmm....street food!

Mel, LOVING it!

Mel with her Mojito at the Cactus.

We were told about this cafe, Danny's Cafe, which is to be better than Amy Coffee; so I'm hoping we try that out today!! Maybe go there and actually do a whole bunch of work!!!! Then tomorrow we are off to Hangzhou!