A Dali-ghtful Thanksgiving

As per the traditions that were created last year, I returned to Dali for a taste of the holidays with friends last weekend. The leaves had changed, the cold was crisp but comfortable and I was with a handful of the friends that I've just begun to make this year.

CAUGHT: This boy was kicking the tree to make the golden leaves fall faster. 

Dali's pretty small and there's really nothing to do if you've done the bike rides and the deaf massages, Laura and I did a lot of random shopping and food eating. We found this:

How lovely.

We ate this:

It was so dark at the time that sadly, this is clearest picture of the food that I ate and I'm seeing it for the first time- 3 days later. Is it sad that since coming to China that I don't mind eating mystery foods in the dark as long as the promise of delicious rings true?

I think there might be as many pictures in this post as words. In short, Thanksgiving was necessary and I give thanks that I could take an excursion and spent the holidays with friends and loved ones. I can't wait until Christmas!

I haven't used my camera in so long...

that I imagine it must have mold on it - just like everything else in my room.

Seriously, for once, I have no idea where my camera is. I'm horrified and also incredibly lazy because I have one of those breakfast-in-bed things trapping my legs in place and I don't want to move. I will put it on my to do list for tomorrow morning. "Find camera." Why don't I let you get a peek of the things on my to do for tomorrow?

1. Drink delicious coffee. Eat Nature Valley bar.
2. Find camera.
3. Watch entire new season of the League while sending out a billion emails. (That's right. A BILLION.)
4. Lesson plan.
5. Make mac 'n cheese for lunch.
6. Lesson plan some more because I have to lesson plan for four hours today and three hours tomorrow. WHAT up. That will be so much fun.
7. Pack for tomorrow.
8. Remember to buy scarves for students in Dali (it has been very cold here. VERY cold - the only part of my body that is exposed right now is freezing - that would be my nose and my hands :( boo)
9. Class - class - class - class. (Bring camera to class - see it all makes sense)
10. Dinner????
11. Number crunching and email searching and finishing emails.
12. SLEEP. 7:20 wake up in the freezing cold :( for Thursday = Thanksgiving.

Shenanigans - a weeks back. Camera, come back!

A little bit of CUTE for a happy Friday!

I found this on my laptop - Tom Hoffecker created this in the middle of a meeting we were supposed to be paying attention in  -

I think the nose makes it cuter. The lightening bolts from his hands give him the potential to be a super hero!

B-b-b-b-b-beautiful blue butterfly!

He wandered into Megan's apartment last Tuesday. He's gorgeous and if he were mine, I'd name him Karl.

How do I know if this butterfly is he? I don't. Rural China brought Karl to me. Thanks, rural China. In this instant, I remembered how beautiful you could be.

Halloween Kitty gets in trouble!

Oh, Halloween. Halloween is always a fun holiday to start off the holiday season. A holiday for parties - you certainly start off celebrating Halloween with your parents, but as soon as it becomes unacceptable to start taking candy from strangers, Halloween becomes a holiday where you start drinking candy flavored drinks :)

Monica + Laura + Christine = hilarious. Click to enlarrrrge.

It pleases me to say that this year, even though I am still in rural China, was hilarious and no different.  I was Hello Kitty, a lifelong dream of mine - which might be sad, but if you know anything about me you know that I love HK. I wore my bow huge and proud as inspired by the big bow Hello Kitty:

Rawr. Hello Kitty you are cute! Here are some more highlights from the night:

MEOW. we are cats. and on the same team. Yay Phoebe and Christine at Shaojie.

LAURA, WHY ARE ALL YOUR FRIENDS ASIANS?

Chen yuan, you make me laugh laugh laugh

Oh, mummy!

ONLY CHILDREN.

Lucas and I on repeat. Click to enlarge!

Karman as Downey - who is my teammate and next door neighbor

A-BRO-ham Lincoln disapproves of Bangmai Barbie's outrageous ways. 

In character, BMBB is sooo glamorous. How can A-bro-ham disapprove while playing beer pong?

Hello Kitty loves rainbows!!

As you may or may not be able to tell, sometimes I lost my yellow nose, good thing I brought a whole slew of stickies and replaced my nose about 5 times. Later, it became unsafe for me to use scissors. 

Happy Birthday, Hello Kitty!

LOVE,
Christine (as Hello Kitty for Halloween!)

Lesson - Planned

Being a teacher is awesome sometimes when you get to draw cute pictures in your lesson plan that you know you will reproduce the next day. When I plan for a lesson, sometimes I hate the computer and therefore plan it the old fashioned way, on paper. Then, I let technology enhance my experience, take a picture of it and save it on my computer anyway.

Tomorrow, our lesson will be on a few pieces of furniture that someone deemed was necessary for 7th graders to know:

I never said I was an artist! and I can't explain why my plant is a dead one or why I didn't just draw a flower...I don't know if you can tell but I also don't know what a TV looks like...I'm NOT the art teacher! :)

Happy Belated Birthday, Nora!

It was fun fun fun! Nora hosted an impromptu birthday party at her Lincang apartment where there was chocolate cake and Skyy (at least it was vodka) vodka! You can't deny that the Skyy bottles are so pretty. If only there was Grey Goose in rural China.... anyway tangents aside - it was really great to see everyone, however briefly in Lincang. As you can see here, Laura and I posed with Nora several times, Monica, Yen, and Sam Verran. Strangers! I miss you.

Nora's apartment is so nice! There was a kitchen and a nook for washing clothes as well as an area to hang out - and furniture! My standards are very low, but still.... it was luxurious compared to my extravagant one bedroom set up here in Shaojie..... I put a little Hipsta tint on these photos. Hope you enjoyed! PS. Please look at the various expressions of LZ in these photos. KTHXBYE

Addicted to peas

In America, I'd always loved wasabi peas and this summer I found China's answer to wasabi peas.  They come in tiny little bags which are frankly wasteful in packaging but really convenient when it comes to limiting your consumption of them - if you want to. I have the ability to eat several baby single serving bags of peas in one sitting. 7 to be precise.  U.S.A. peas. Peas from America you ask? NO.

PRODUCT OF THE PHILIPPINES! Those tricksters, branding your product USA. Quality and smart! It definitely caught my eye, although I have to admit the white ghost thing hanging off of the pea leaf thing really is not appetizing and strangely haunting. Oops. I love salty snacks and this is my salty snack of choice right now!

Quiet! Oh, it's quiet!

ANGELS!

I've decided to get my students involved in art and the card making business. My students are in the process of making cards to send back to my friends in America. Rarely in my class of 34 boys and only 16 girls are my students well behaved, involved and quiet. There's always someone involved in some snarky unsanctioned goings-on that I don't approve of that I have to shake my head ... it's amazing how many things I can do at once these days!

Today, I split three packs of markers, a pack of colored pencils and a 64 pack and a 48 pack of Crayola crayons among my 50 students. Never have they been more concentrated or quiet. It was so nice! Fpr close to 40 minutes, I didn't even have to glare menacingly or make the straight mouth face that I often do in class. Illustrated like this: :-[ (sides of the mouth bent downwards in disapproval). Silly me to think that they could have lasted like this for more than one period. Boo. On a positive note, their cards are kind of awesome. Pictures to come soon.

To looking good in Beijing!

This post is to those of you who look good living in Beijing. This is certainly not how I look all the time - This is only how I look when I'm out of rural China - and even then sometimes I fear that I'm not properly measuring up. I'm just a small country girl in the big city these days! In this photo, I'm literally small. and short!... THANKS, TALL PEOPLE! I miss you guys! :(

R.I.P. Phoebe's ducks :(

Phoebe used to have 2 duckies. They were twice as big as I thought they would have been - but still pretty cute. On the bus back on Sunday, Phoebe wanted to tell me their names, but since I had planned on eating them - in the name of not eating things that I have a personal connection with... I asked her not to tell me. Good thing too, because one day later, one is for sure dead. Sad. It's wild here in rural China - those fat cats stay fat off the food of humans and the feeding of slow small things.

So cute. So sad. This was them hiding under some wooden branches. Originally, Phoebe put them in the same pen where the chickens are but they didn't like it there and were clever enough to sneak out! RIP brown one, and other brown one!

When worlds collide

In this photo and how we're connected: me, my co-worker and friend from rural Yunnan - Ken, my cousin Grace, her friend Angela, and her friend's boyfriend Jerry.

Ken is the only resident of Beijing in this photo - here, he took us out to Maomaochong, Chinese for Caterpillar, a cute pizza place with amazing drinks during our short visit. While we were at dinner, Angela mentioned to Jerry  that I used to IM her on AOL - her screenname was something that I had gleaned from Grace's AOL account. That was when I was 12 and I didn't have enough friends of my own and I could read fast enough to see Grace's screen and Angela's screenname just so happened to always be on top... far be it strange for me NOT to be mortified - see, it's been so long that I can laugh, she can laugh, and we can all get fun drunk off of flat bread pizza and delicious drinks in a hutong in Beijing. 

Plus, given the fact that I lost all semblance of shame in 2002, this was just something else that I can look back on positively from this past vacation. 

Why Christina Milian's Dip It Low has meaning again

I had always seen it attached to the top of the television but wasn't ever compelled to use it by myself. My cousin David has an XBOX 360 Kinect and a nice collection of dance party games. XBOX makes DDR seem like child's play. While I was in Beijing, I invited Ken over on Cinco de drinko for a little XBOX pre-game which turned into an extreme dance-a-thon.

There are still certain parts of the song that I chant - "whisper, whisper" and "smooooooth, smooooooth, smoooooth, smoooooooooooth" - dance moves that the XBOX has taught me that I will now try to use every time I'm on a dance floor. Although I do have to say, I question the sexiness of hunching over and rubbing one arm at a time - maybe it's all in the eye contact? 

Now that I've re-watched the actual Christina Milian video, I wonder when XBOX Kinect will be able to teach me how to smear my body in oil and let about 10 guys spin me on a white platform. I'd also like to know how to fall to ground in heels, pick myself up and be able to shake all parts of my body while wearing nothing but black underwear. 

Thanks XBOX. If you don't have one and you have access to a TV (which I don't), I definitely recommend getting one and inviting me over. 

Me Miss MEAT

These are pictures of meals I just ate in Beijing last week.

OH endless meals full of meat. I miss you.

Downton Abbey

I'm obsessed with Downton Abbey. Not Downtown. It's a historical television show on ITV that covers England from the time after the sinking of the Titanic through currently in the second series, WWI.

It's strange how I don't particularly love any cast member, but I'm absolutely infatuated with the show.

Watch it! Get back to me. If you're a fan - email me!

Birthday Box!

Please enjoy this fun collage of photos from my birthday! Feel free to click to enlarge!

It started with one table.

I invited everyone to dinner after the conference. A casual invitation - I've been super busy with work and didn't have time to plan a birthday party out the way I would have wanted to so I entered the night with no expectations. Wow. My friends are wonderful.

It started with one table. I sat down and almost immediately they had to combine the first table with another. Then, John Kuo and Monica helped to move more tables together. No bigs. But where was the cake? I was disappointed but then I reminded myself that I had lowered my standards. Fine.

I practiced my bitch face a little bit and drank more tequila. It's amazing how in one day I can look so much older than the last. (Actually, I hope I look like I'm 21 forever.) So everyone settled up and then I wanted to start heading toward the river. Yunxian is located right on the Mekong River and there are some new bars open that I wanted to perhaps explore. But Monica had other ideas.

I'm young here!

Let's go get a yogurt, she said. I held a bottle of tequila in my hands and shrugged. Why not? Some lime juice might make a great margarita. I stood around and took several photos before Monica invited Axel back to her hotel room to pre-game. I was confused. She spoke as though I was already a part of the plans, but I shrugged and started moving toward my favorite room in Yunxian.

I excitedly asked Monica if she was staying my room, one I've nicknamed, the penthouse. She laughed and when she opened the door, I was greeted with this:

ALL TFC fellows. ALL people I love!!! I was so pleased! Thank you, friends!

Chesty shot from Axel

For my birthday, Axel took a random picture of his body for me.

Thanks.

Birthday Beginnings

My birthday has past - it was September 24th and I'm so pleased to say that it was one of the best moments of my life to date. You would think that living in rural China would make things difficult to celebrate one's birthday.  I'm happy to tell you that for the second year now, I've had an amazing birthday.

This birthday started way too early. September 23rd was actually another fellow, Justin's birthday and when midnight came around - I was tired and eager to go to bed because the next morning would be the beginning of our first professional development (PD) conference of the year. Blah. On my birthday of all days.

I went to bed, woke up too early, got dressed, was grumpy, and then continued on the entire morning in the conference. During lunch, Monica and I went to a place that made Taiwanese flavored crepes and behind the counter was a 9 year old girl. We had found a stalker. A fourth grade girl who never introduced herself made our crepes and then proceeded to walk next door and peer into the windows of our training room for the next four hours during our training. ENTERTAINING indeed. In our last session, she got even ballsier and started playing with us in our training.

Her pants were fake Gucci. and she hated Tom Hoffecker.

She only wanted to be in the picture with Phoebe because she thought Phoebe was pretty. She called Tom a "hei hei hei hei (count them.. 4) gorilla."

She's pushing him away in this picture.

and this is her running away from him. Among the other nicknames that she handed out that day - "black gorilla" - just one hei for Axel.

White fox for Tim Worm.
Little Ant for Chris.
Dragon Lady for Sasha.

She brightened my day. Thanks, little Taiwanese crepe maker!