Thanksgiving has come and gone here in China without much excitement at all. Joel and I tried to explain to our students the whole concept of the holiday, but much was lost in translation and the kids seemed less than excited about this day of eating and watching football. We forced them to make "hand turkeys" and told them that it was a tradition, even for older people, to make these turkeys at Thanksgiving. We also had them write some things that they were thankful for. The grateful hearts of nearly all 600 of our students extend only to their parents because they give them money, and KFC which gives them chicken. One of my not so bright and lazy "cool" students Mark wrote the lovely title of this post on his hand turkey. He's so smart and wordy, isn't he? I'm really proud of what my 3 months of teaching so far has done to these kids. Teacher of the year in China goes to LIZ!
Joel and I, for some strange reason, decided that on Thanksgiving we would try all of the kinds of ramen noodles our grocery store has to offer. Seeing as this is an entire aisle of the store, upon buying the packaged instant noodles for our feast, we had to pick just one brand to try. I think this was about 15 packs of ramen. After a breakfast of pancakes on Thanksgiving day, we weren't hungry for our meal until about 2pm. After one pack of ramen each, we were quite full. Needless to say, our ambition was squelched and we only ate 2 packs each on Thanksgiving. At the end of the day we ended up just depressed that we had eaten ramen noodles for Thanksgiving and in order to try and salvage the seemingly funny challenge, we've been eating ramen quite a lot ever since. Eventually, we will post a video of our endeavors, but for now, just enjoy the pictures.
In other developments, we are planning for our one month Chinese New Year holiday. We had hoped to go to Tibet and Nepal, but Tibet seems too difficult and expensive because you have to go with a tour group. After seeing Chinese on tours with a tour group, this is really the last thing we want to be a part of. Ever. So...we decided to look into plane tickets just to Nepal. Sadly, these flights are over $1,000 a person and fly through either Bangkok or Mumbai. Too bad terrorists and anti-government protesters really knock this option off the list. Out of curiosity, we looked up tickets to Paris and flights there are cheaper than to any other neighboring country of China. We're seriously considering a trip to the city of love for Joel's birthday and a good break away from here. We'll keep you updated as our hopes of it actually happening unfold :)
The only other piece of news, that is not very interesting, is that we are reading more. We finished all of Grey's Anatomy so we can't use that to fill our time now. I am getting back into fiction and enjoy living vicariously through fake people. I just finished Saul Bellow's Rain King, which was really quite amusing and now I'm lost in The Secret Life of Bees. We have the movie downloaded and ready to watch, but I am forcing myself to finish these last 40 pages before we do! Has anyone read the book and watched the movie? Will I be disappointed with how it is portrayed if I watch the movie? I like the book so much I just want the characters to come to life so I'll probably watch it anyway. I really hate that Queen Latifah is in it thought. Really, Queen Latifah doesn't fit any of the Boatwright sisters! Thankfully, my students are awful and my patience is low so I get a lot of reading done while "teaching" class.
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