"That's so cute!!"

This, apparently, is my new catchphrase.  I just can't help myself when I see certain things, and China is just overflowing with an abundance of cute things.  They make everything cute- pens, gloves, scarves, notebooks- everything has cute animals or happy flowers.  At least once a class period as I walk around the class, I point at something a student has and exclaim excitedly, "Aw that's so cute!"  My students think it's very funny and they always laugh.  The example from today was gloves shaped like alligators.  Even the lights in my apartment's living room have little star lights that twinkle blue, pink, and green.  What can I say, I guess I'm a child a heart, and little cute things make me happy.

I'll have to take some pictures of the cuteness so you can share the experience.

Coping

There is a lot going on in my mind recently.  Mainly, I am trying to stay warm and  trying not to get too sad about the fact that I will not be home for Thanksgiving or (for the first time ever) Christmas.  I have missed Thanksgiving before (when I studied in Mexico) but never Christmas- I have always been home with my family on December 25^th to wake up early and open presents together and then eat cinnamon rolls and drink hot chocolate while listening to Christmas music.  But this year I will be on the other side of a world in an isolated farming town that does not acknowledge western holidays.  I never thought about how hard that would be until now!  My strategy will be to try to keep as busy as possible with my students and do things to keep me from dwelling on how much I miss home.

            On that note (keeping busy, but also staying warm), today I made my first circle scarf.  It’s so easy, I don’t know why I never bothered.  Maybe because I’ve never actually depended on scarves for keeping warm but here I really need them.  The inspiration for this was two-fold: first, my friend Lindsay made one and she’d looked super cute wearing it when I visited her last weekend, and I feel that the scarves for sale outside my school are a little pricey (I mean if you convert it to USD it’s not that expensive, but I’m paid a volunteer salary and we’re paid in RMB so I don’t like to convert too often.  I’d rather save my money for travel… and baking supplies!).  I had been knitting a scarf (just simple knitting- I have never been able to figure out how to do the fancy stitches!) but I stopped because it looked boring and it wouldn’t be long enough with the yarn I had to be a good-size scarf.  But then after seeing Lindsay’s and the expensive ones, I decided to finish it.  Then I just used the extra yarn to “sew” the two ends together, and voila!  I’m really happy with it because it keeps my neck warm, and it’s more my color than the green and red scarves that were left here by the previous volunteer.

Purple!  I have some beige yarn so I think I will use that to make my next circle scarf. So warm!

            I mentioned the cold.  Temperature-wise it really hasn’t been that cold (lowest is low 50s F), but add that to the fact that my apartment is made with concrete walls with no insulation, and the window panes have gaps in between even when closed as much as possible.  So I can’t leave the cold outside and come in to a warm home.  I’m told my heater works but I haven’t bothered using it because apparently if you have it on for too long (how long is too long??) it kills the power in my apartment.  But let me tell you, I have recently learned the wonderful value of an electric blanket! I never understand the need for them before, but now I plug it in about an hour before I go to bed, and it is such a relief to be able to get into a bed that’s already warm.  I definitely have to wear a sweater, jacket, and scarf just to sit in my house.  Also ear muffs have become my friend.

            You know, just trying to cope with new things!

Halloween in Jiangyou

I taught many Halloween and fall related lesson plans the past two weeks. Examples:

·         A fill-in-the-blank to introduce fall vocabulary and then asked them to tell me about fall in China.

·         Make as many words as you can using the letters in: Jack o Lantern (I also used Autumn Leaves, Harvest Time, and Haunted House).  They really liked this activity, and were surprised at the amount of words that could be made with just a few letters (the one that had the most was Harvest Time, which was over 110).  I invited the winning teams of four classes to come to my house and bake (cake or pancakes).  It was fun to see them get so excited about English words!  I learned that some of the students are pretty competitive.

·         I introduced some prepositions and showed a picture of ghosts inside a haunted house, and had them write sentences for each ghost (for example: In the living room, there is a ghost sitting on the sofa).

·         I talked about the origins of Halloween.  Did you know that people in England and Ireland originally started wearing costumes (a long time ago) so that ghosts and spirits wouldn’t recognize them, and at first they carried lanterns made out of turnips?  Then when the Irish came to America, they started using pumpkins instead because they were more readily available.

·         I introduced some common costumes and explained how to make them. Then I had them brainstorm what they would be for Halloween if they could, and also how they would make the costume.  Some of their answers were really creative, like UFO, Mickey Mouse, a fish, a bird, a fridge, Fruit Man, and an ice cream.

I made some great decorations for our English Library.  The students were very helpful, and if they saw me working on something they would ask to help.  We made paper chains, streamers, paper pumpkins, ghosts, and bats, leaves in fall colors, tissue ghosts, etc.  By myself, I also made a large paper tree to help cover some of the ugly blank white space on the wall, and pennants saying Happy Halloween. It’s great to know that any time I want to decorate I only have to show the students what I’m working on, and they’ll jump in to help.  Many times they have to do art projects for their classes but it’s rare that they can do it on their own, so I think they love the opportunity to make some easy crafts without worrying about them being perfect.  My site placement was pretty awesome in that respect, because I have lots of craft ideas and the desire to do artsy things.

Wall decor

Students helping me make the paper chain

Our Halloween party last Wednesday was a great success!  Mary baked some plum cake and bread, and caramel for dipping apples in.  She had figured out that you can make caramel just by boiling a can of condensed milk for 2.5 hours (that’s all you do- and then you open it, and bam, it tastes pretty close to caramel!).  We started the party by letting students make pomelo jack-o-lanterns (there aren’t many pumpkins at the market here, and the ones they have are long and skinny and not good for carving.  They wouldn’t have been able to stand up on their own).  We played pin-the-nose-on-the-witch, and they loved it!  It was so funny to spin them around blind-folded and see them stumble towards the poster.  The best one was when someone put the nose on the wall, a good two feet from the poster!  I taught them the Time Warp dance (from Rocky Horror Picture Show) and then we split everybody into two lines of 9 people each and then two people at a time would dance down the aisle.

Making pomelo lanterns

 Although Mary and I had come up with activities beforehand we didn’t plan things exactly and we just played it by ear during the party, which worked well.  I had wanted to do bobbing for apples but after the line dancing (which was spontaneous- Mary’s idea) I thought it would be good to have a calmer activity, so then we played Uno and Twister.  Also throughout the night, I was randomly coming up behind students and scaring them.  As the party was starting, I waited in the shadows with Alice and Sunflower and when two girls came towards the corner we jumped out and gave them a really good scare.  The funny thing was later I scared several people in quick succession- you’d think that after they heard someone scream they’d be alert for sneaking feet!  I showed the students a video from YouTube of Halloween lights flashing to the beat of the Gangnam Style song because several of the students are learning the dance for a performance, and then they taught some of the other students and we all danced it together.  It’s really such a fun dance to do with a bunch of people! 

Twister! Always fun

Not all the activities were exactly Halloween-related, but as far as being a really fun party we totally rocked!!  I know the students had a blast.

This was my playlist for the party:

·         Time Warp

·         This is Halloween (from Nightmare Before Christmas)

·         Jack’s Lament (Nightmare again)

·         Sally’s Song (Nightmare)

·         What’s This (Nightmare)

·         The Remains of the Day (from Corpse Bride)

·         Monster Mash

·         Purple People Eater

·         Witch Doctor

·         Michael Jackson’s Thriller

·         Grim Grinning Ghost

·         Addams Family Theme

·         Theme from Edward Scissorhands

·         Ghostbusters song