What is it?

What snack has to do with canons, velociraptors, pterodactyls, and hot
air balloons? and a crossing chicken?

And why do the above named items make me want to eat this product???

teaching english

Today we headed 1 hr to the Jinshan area to help teach english at
Mengshan Xuezuheng migrant school*. Our buddy works with several
migrant schools helping them with resources, arranging volunteer
groups from international schools, and 1-day trips to help them keep
their studies consistent

None of us had any teaching experience - yikes! Fortunately the
curriculum had already been made for us- it was about holidays,
specifically: Easter, Halloween, and Dragon boat festival. Our group
had the less experienced english learners- so much of the lessons had
to be translated into Chinese. It was hard to talk slow and enunciate.
Since I was useless for translating, I wrote all the words on the
board. We taught them the question words- and they stared at us
blankly, until it was translated. The other to classes the kids
probably knew more english than I Mandarin...

We had two boys in our class- one was huge and one was tiny. And the
tiny one was really shy. I asked him what his name was, and he
nervously smiled as he curled up in a ball hiding his face and turning
red! It was really cute. I wonder if I was ever like that?

Repeated they asked me about the words, "recieve", "activities", and
how to say "Halloween".

Halloween. Hall-wee? Ha-low-WEEN. Ha-low-wee. Ok. Good enough.

I didn't even know how to explain the the "c" in "recieve" sounds like
"s". They kept reading it, "Ruh-KEEv"

It was a long day, but we enjoyed the kids. The two girls you see
sitting in front of me were the class clowns- They were drawing these
bucktoothed silly drawings of each other and the "It wasn't me it was
HER" gestures. The two girls you see in Timon's photo were pretty
smart and were asking how old I was and stuff.

*Migrant schools are public schools for the children of migrant
workers. They can't go to the Shanghai public schools without a hukou-
or proof of residency for Shanghai. Previously private schools had
popped up to service the children without a hukou, but they weren't
regulated and sometimes of low quality. ANyhow, the school we worked
with today was fairly decent, one room had a TV mounted in the corner,
and the rooms were packed with two person desk and small wooden
chairs. It was a k-8 school with 800 kids- but on Saturday, about 40
signed up for our session, focusing on middle schoolers. All but 5
were giggling girls. Most of them came from Sichuan and Anhui province.

fourteen inches

I did it!

One busy weekend!

We've been busy! Like running around town and being crazy people busy.

Saturday alone I had 4 parties not just to attend, but prepare goodies
for two of them! So spent a few weeknight prepping, cooking, and
designing.

0. headed to the printer to print out the cards, decorations, 

stationary for Timon to write notes....

1. Baby party welcoming a very little Isabelle into the world! The
ladies from my small group and I all brought tea party-esque dishes,
cucumber sandwiches, curry chicken salad, cupcakes, scones, and I made
lemon curd and a cheese plate. The colors were mint green and pink-
our friend (who we were showering) already had about 50 pink "baby
congrats" cards on every surface imaginable- so it was easy to
decorate with flowers and stuff. I also designed little cards (quarter
sheet) for all the guests to write prayers and blessings for the baby.

2. Gallery opening/closing. A group of our friends joined forces to
have a small studio amoung an artist's community for about a year, but
after their first big gallery show found that the Gov't was planning
to demolish the entire studio block/area? to redevelop. This meant
everyone was forced to leave. : ( sad sad! Many of the local artists
had renovated and invest money into their studios- some even lived in
theirs! This last show: "Disappearing" was a sort of good byes and
last hurrah to the space itself- not sure if they are looking for new
studio space.

The show itself was small but well appreciated. One piece encouraged
patrons to scrape a bit of the fresco(painting on plaster while wet)
into an envelop to take with them. Another pieces translated a Chinese
story about a secret community that grew peaches. There was a
confessional tent- where they provided paper to write your confessions
then feed it thru the shredder (see photo). As the shreds fall, the
light catches them, and its fun to watch- sorry I was too slow to get
it on film! 

And the one in the back had me in it. Not kidding! The
artist, a girl named Faith, had illustrated a photo from an earlier
gallery opening (which had me in it). She had illustrated it on an
entire wall and then chipped away various parts.

3. Farewell party-
Farewells are sad. Farewells are happy. We all go through various
changes through life whether by choice or force of nature, and
sometimes we have to say goodbye to our pals- at least momentarily.
After many years in SHanghai, a couple and their two twins are moving
back to Michigan. We have just moved to SH when Jen went into child
birthing with her two twins. We enjoyed pizza, m&ms, and sun chips at
our friend's office sapce which has a large outdoor deck/patio. It was
a beautiful night.
Too dark to take photos unfortunately. I made them nautical inspired
flags to hang on the wall, for guests to write their farewell wishes
to the family.

4. DD's party: then we headed to an apt party hosted by a good friend
of Timon's. They had a large black frame on their living rm wall, to
project films onto- it was pretty awesome! It was a packed house, and
yet Timon (as usual) ran into people he knew- guys he had met YEARS
ago. It was amazing. Timon was like- "hey I met you at an event 4
years ago, remember?" Another guys from 2 years ago. Timon really has
an amazing memory. Its a good thing- since I can't even remember what
day it is.
At 11pm we headed home to catch up with T's sister, who was just
waking up in sunny Portland, Oregon. She had 4 birthday parties to go
to....

It has arrived

I got my first mosquito bite last night. In our 10th floor apt. Summer is officially here. I could feel the heat eminating from the balcony door before I touched it. I stuck my arm outside for my daily temperature check to see my neighbor to my right putting her beizi out the window to dry. We made eye contact while I was still "grasping" the temperature and she gave me the "your crazy look".

I have been waiting all winter for warmth, even though I know summer will be suffocating. I considered this while I headed into the subway- only to find a few hundred extra people breathing the warm underground air on the platform. The usual 5 min interval train hadn't come for some time, and longer we waited the more people came down - packing the platform to the brim.

F1

We headed to the outskirts of Shanghai to go experience F1. One of T's
work friend got a small group of us in for free, and seats in the
grandstand- right above the starting area and where the garages and
tire changing takes place! It was so cool! Super loud. I was thankful
we bought ear plugs outside. I was rather clueless about the F1 and
car racing and all looked forward to was watching them change tires.
(Which only took 5 seconds!!!)

Over 100,000 people head to the F1 in Shanghai for this annual event.
A 45 minute ride on the metro line 11 brought us the Shanghai Circuit.
On exiting the metro train, was an open air platform with a large
decorative pool of water and the huge stadium in the distance. People
had flags and their F1 Tees representing their countries. On exiting
the turnstile we were immediately chased by hawkers selling hats,
tees, tickets, and ear plugs.

I couldn't believe how huge the track was. Tiny people sat on the
grass in the distance, overlooking the track. And they had to go
around the track 56 times- how dizzying would that be? With the
unbelievable volume ringing in your ears. It shook your whole body.
Small children cringed. We saw a tire fall off the Red bull sponsored
car. We saw two cars almost crash. We followed the scared on the TV
screen - I was trying to figure out which drivers went with which
country, Russia, Switzerland, Australia, Britain, Germany.

The Hilton provided the food services... which explains why they
charge 30 rmb ($5 USD) for popcorn. For popcorn! Thats 6 times the
normal street price. Mercedes-benz was there with a few cars to
showcase- two antiques and two modern ones. One was a retro race car.
I wish I could've seen one of the F1 cars up close- they looked like
awesome aerodynamic forms.

Tire changing was cool- the 20+ pit crew with their matching uniforms
and shiny helmets moved like a machine, getting into formation with
the utmost efficiency, and doing their task in a blink of an eye. The
car drops to the ground with a bounce then speeds off.

After the 56 lap race, snacks, and photos, we got in the queue for the
metro. Huge pens herded people in groups of 50 to wait then proceed to
the metro, to prevent chaos. When we arrived at the platform it was
plenty full of patrons and when the next train arrived, I felt the
crowd lift and push me inside the train.

Upon getting back into the city where we parked our electric bike, we
found the batteries had been stolen. See photo of it smashed in, and
with our new batteries inside. It was 6pm then, the sun was setting
and we were still about a mile for our apt. So we walked the bike over
a bridge to the closest bike shop and ate street food while we waited
for him to fix it. The second photo is of the mechanic cutting a
cookie tin to cover the smashed hole in our bike, to prevent another
theft. what a day! We were thankful the entire bike wasn't stolen!
(And our fancy helmet)

Xiamen

T and Hud the husky

Ferry to Gulangyu island

art made of fish bones

This photo is for T's mom who plays the organ. This was a museum- of huge and tiny organs. A staff came to play one of them.

View from tram to peak from bird sanctuary. SOme roofs had plants arranged to spell things.

This is the garden where the 12 grottos are. Its twelve "caves"- one for each zodiac animal. It built into a hill, with concrete steps and narrow pasasgeways- a bit scary since the sun was setting as we ventured through. What the sign should've said was: "Big rock maze through tunnels and caves. Takes 30 minutes at least and bring a snack"

The beach and bridge thing valve that let water into the garden area.

hello!

For Qingming_Festival holiday we worked saturday and got Sun-tuesday off. (its common for the Gov't to mandate working on a weekend in order to give a weekday off) We flew to Xiamen, on the coast of the Fujian province map Saturday night and got in to our hotel after midnight. This was after we found out that our pre-booked hotel was 2 hrs away and no car would take us so we had to re-book in an instant. We spend sunday hanging out with an American friend of ours who owns a factory and has the cutest husky puppy named Hudson Rex! I got to sit in the back seat with him throughout our day of driving around the city.

After a leisurely brunch and drive, we got a personal tour of his factory- pretty awesome. They make picture frames and stuff with university logos on them.

That evening T and I walked the neighborhood - lots of stores were open late- nearly everywhere. (Usually in shanghai its just the main streets. It reminded me of Hong Kong. The next day we took the ferry to Gulangyuan island of things to explore. Touristy things. Organ museum, fish bone art museum, piano, and calligraphy carving things. There was also a TON of people- even though it was cloudy and chilly. I had imagined lounging on the beach.... but we ended up doing a fair amount of hiking and eating.

Since I'm composing this in email via "instablog" I can't caption the photos. sorry!

-The fish bone art was pretty impressive- this taiwainese guy who was balding with really long hair preserves the bones then glues them together to form really organic looking sculptures. meticulous!!
-The puppy bit Timon's toes and was chewing on my sleeve thru his cage.

We had a great time, tho we hadn't counted on there being so many people on Gulangyu. There were many quaint/modern/cute boutique hotels there we hope to stay on *next* time we go.

ciao! k