Friday, Saturday

Friday 3/15:

Friday I read my class the book Stone Soup which is one of my favorite children's books for some reason. I actually bought some veggies at the market to use as props so we make stone soup in class together and it actually turned out to be a really good lesson. After lunch we went to another training meeting with the Chinese teachers. They feel the need to have us observe them teach and then give them feedback. We're getting sick of the extra time they're asking us to commit. Especially on a Friday afternoon. Once we were free we went looking for what the last group dubbed the 'pastry man' but his shop was closed for the day. We did however see another school getting out for the day with all of the kids wearing yellow hats and later found another random pastry store. That evening back at the dorms Mark and Mikelle made an attempt at dessert pizza. It turned out.. ok. Great for China though :)

Saturday 3/16:

On Saturday Mars picked Melanie and I up and we went to her apartment where we hung out for the day and actually had a lot of fun. We practiced reading Snow White, translating back and forth between English and Chinese, where we'd teach her a sentence in English and then she'd teach us the Chinese. Pretty cool. After that was one of the most interesting eating experiences I've had here. She brought out a bar of Lindt white chocolate (all the writing was in Italian) and I we went to break off a row but she brought out plates, a knife, and spoons. We cut off some pieces of chocolate and ate them with a spoon off of our plate. So weird. She had us pick some music to listen to so we had Dumb Ways to Die and 50 Ways to Die stuck in our heads for the rest of the day. Mars showed us her imitation Olympic torch that is built out of scrap metal they used to build the stadium in Beijing in 2008. They only made 200,000 (which, for China, ain't many) and it cost 29,000 yuen which is about $500. After that she showed us some stuff in her room including a panda hat, mittens, and numchucks. Also a full skinned zebra being stored on the top bunk of her bed that apparently they got when she and her mom went to Duabi. Rich much? We looked at a world map and compared places we'd been too and then went outside and played volleyball and took turns riding her bike. Then we went back to her room and played computer games on various Apple products until lunch. Apple products are all super expensive here. An iphone 4S is about $1000 and apparently Mars has one, her mom has one, and then they have an ipad and an ipad mini. Again, rich much? Lunch was delicious and homemade :) It included pork ribs (eaten w/chopsticks), tomatoes with sugar on them (actually really good), celery, rabbit dumplings (rolls she shaped like rabbits), clam and tarrou soup, rice with cilantro (it's really weird to eat cilantro not in Mexican food), boiled eggs she cooked in sauce and cracked so they actually had flavor, and fish.

After that we headed back to the dorms and I napped and listened to people in hall right outside my room for a bit before we all met downtown at 4 and wandered around for food. The place Jay picked I wasn't really interested in so I passed and got some chicken nuggets at KFC later. We went back to street market we had found earlier (it has now become a home away from home) and bought boys' underwear that are actually suuuper comfortable and wonderful. We also found a DVD shop that has lots of American movies in English with Korean? subtitles but they're only 6 yuen each ($1) so I bought Source Code to test out and watched it that night with Sam and Mikelle and then Wolverine. It felt really nice to have the 3 of us cuddled up together. I super miss my red couch.