Week 5

September 30 is mid-Autumn or Moon Cake Festival so the English Department had a Mid-Autumn Festival dinner for all of the foreign teachers.  It was very nice with lots of delicious food and we each received a beautiful box of Moon Cakes.  This is a traditional lunar harvest festival when families all gather and the traditional gift of food is the Moon Cake ... some say it's similar in culture to Christmas Fruit Cake.  Not everyone likes it but it is part of the festival.  The holiday can be traced back over 3000 years but was just made a government holiday in 2008.

Moon Cakes have many different fillings ... some sweet and some not so sweet.

We have all next week off as a holiday because of the mid-Autumn Festival followed by National Day.  However, we did have to teach our Thursday classes today, Saturday.  Why just make up the Thursday classes ... no one seems to know.  But since students had to attend class, we had an American Word party in our oral language classes.  I brought Moon Cakes and candies and then taught students Boggle, Pictionary, Charades, and some rhythm games with names and vocabulary.  They seemed to have a lot of fun and they loved the candies.

Other fun this week included having lunch with 2 Engineering students who approached me while I was walking across campus.  They just wanted to practice their English and finally convinced me to have lunch with them at the student center.  They insisted we go to the third floor where there was better food and then they talked a young girl working in the canteen to open one of the private dining rooms for us.  We had dumplings and soup and a fun chat.  They were so excited to have a chance to practice English and wanted me to take a picture of them.


I guess this week centered around food because I also had a great pizza and salad lunch with another English teacher and his French wife.  She is doing research on Chinese language acquisition and young children and wanted to talk to me about American schools.  It was very interesting.

Today after class a friend and I walked to our favorite park which was full of flowers for the mid-Autumn Festival and trees were wrapped with gold as they prepare to open a new circus pavilion.  We've seen an elephant, tiger, and several horses.  Once the Circus opens, we plan to go and I'll send pictures from the Chinese circus.  It was such a beautiful day in the park we didn't want to leave so ended up going on a "duck" paddle boat around the lake after our walk.

Duck Boat Paddle Boat

Park Musicians

Circus Ticket Office

Park filled with flowers for the holiday celebrations

Park Entrance - The dragon and background are all flowers

Park was full of couples taking wedding pictures

One last new adventure is that I was asked to be the president of the women's organization in my church.  It'll be fun getting to know more people and it will give me another "excuse" to go explore even more of the city as I visit the other women living in Xi'an.  On Monday, I leave for a 6 day trip over the holiday to North-West China following the old Silk Road.  From what I've read, it will be a great trip and a whole new ancient area of China.  I hope to have lots of fun pictures to share.  Have a good week and enjoy the beautiful colors that must now be appearing in Minnesota.