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Published: November 2nd 2008
On Friday (Halloween) I went to class as usual. When Lisa and I were leaving the school at noon, we stopped to chat a bit on the sidewalk in front of the building. Suddenly, we heard a man yelling and turned to see someone running toward us. A man grabbed us both and yelled and made crazy noises. I screamed, Lisa screamed. It was Mark. He had sent me a text message about meeting for lunch but I had my phone on silent. So he ended up coming by the school to find me and surprise me. My throat hurt for a few hours post-surprise. I really screamed. But I was glad for the surprise. We had a quick lunch and then we both went to the school to help out with Emily's Halloween party. We peaked in on Nathan's party too. Emily was so excited to have her dad at school. Mark helped me with a Bingo game (ghost instead of bingo). Mark also read a spooky story to the class and did a great job keeping the kids engaged for the entire story. The kids wore costumes to school and had a lot of fun with their end of
day parties. I was surprised to learn that Halloween is celebrated at all here...I guess I just figured we'd skip it since it's not a Chinese holiday. Oh how wrong I was. The day was packed full of fun and candy. Our neighborhood did not have trick or treating, but Nathan's friends house did and he was invited to go there and spend the night.
Friday night, I left Emily with the ayi and headed downtown to meet Mark. When I got on the train, I looked up and saw a familiar face standing next to me. It was the guy who was our English speaking liaison and hair washer at the hair place Mark and the kids get their hair cuts. We both did the scissor in the air to confirm our mutual recognition and had a choppy English/Chinese conversation. He spoke to me in English and I tried to answer in Chinese. His English was way better. I still find it hilarious and amazing each and every time I recognize or run into anyone unexpectedly in this hugely populated city.
Mark and I had a fun Friday night out with our friend Ray. We went to
a bar and then to dinner and finished the night off with foot massages. It's nice that when you don't know what to do, you can always just go get a massage. It's like our dinner and a movie back home...dinner and a massage. It is never a bad choice. I found that because I had (too many) drinks before the massage, my tolerance for pain was much higher. It was like anesthesia. Rumor has it that I fell asleep during the massage. I can neither confirm nor deny whether this is true.
Today, Sunday, we had a super fun day. Lisa came over and we made dumplings from scratch. Even the dough. They were so good and we all helped make them. Emily did all the dough mixing--which she loved. Nathan was chief dough ball maker and we all helped rolling out the dough. This was Lisa's recipe and the filling was pork with fresh minced scallions, garlic and ginger. They turned out really well and we had very late lunch feast after a lot of cooking. We also made a beautiful fruit salad with mango, papaya, kiwi and dragon fruit. We bought a bunch of exotic and
never before tried fruits and we sat around tasting them and discussing them. This was Lisa's brilliant idea--and we had such fun cutting open the mystery fruit and discovering what was inside. We tried a prickly--and very cool looking when cut open--type of lychee fruit. The kids tried every fruit (I think because Lisa offered it rather than me).
In other news, it's raining a lot now. I have to invest in a poncho. People wear ponchos on mopeds and bicycles. It's impressive. I think I can still walk to school if I cover myself and my backpack up with one...we'll see how that goes. On rainy days, the sidewalks are full of people and umbrellas, but somehow there is order. I have tried to capture the scene with my camera, but it never really conveys the large number of people that are on the streets with me. Same is true on the train. I would love to take a picture of a really crowded subway ride, but I can't really take that picture because when it's that crowded, I can't lift my arms up AND I know I'd get some mean looks if I tried to take a
picture and pointed my camera into the sea of bodies.
When it rains, the buildings and restaurants have these umbrella check in stands. you stick your umbrella into a mini locker type thing and take a key. This prevents the dripping on floors, elevators and stairs in the buildings. I also see people handing out a lot of plastic bags for umbrellas in malls and buildings too. While this makes sense, and helps prevent water from dripping everywhere, it's totally contrary to the ban on plastic bags being enforced in retail stores. Oh, and speaking of plastic bags, the grocery stores still insist you put your fruit and veggies in bags before they are weighed and priced. They also seal off these bags with a huge staple gun machine to prevent you from adding more items to the weighed bags. This makes it impossible to reuse these smaller plastic bags, though, which stinks. Hopefully, this will change.
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Linda
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I'm like you, Suzanne...I'm surprised that Halloween is celebrated in China, even in the international school. Does this mean that other countries' holidays will have their days as well...at the school? Or is Halloween such a perfect kids' event that it just exports well? It's great that you and Mark could help with the festivities. I bet Nathan and Emily weren't sighing about how much they missed Halloween at home.