I Love Children

The more children I see here the more I want to babysit all of them! Every single one of them are so cute and precious in their own way. They remind me of my nephew and nieces and it makes me miss them more and more! I went to a little shop across the street from our campus to get a drink (drinks cost around 2 kuai there...5 kuai in the school store. I think the walk is worth it) and there was the most adorable baby just hanging out in its baby seat. I couldn't help myself and did the whole high-pitch-voice-because-I'm-talking-to-a-child thing and he absolutely loved it! He basically started jumping up and down with excitement. The lady that was watching him started laughing and saying "阿姨/ayi/aunt" over and over since he couldn't talk.  Eventually I decided I should probably leave, but we all know I would have stayed there until they kicked me out.

Friday Linden and I were woken up to the sound of what seemed like hundreds of children outside. I grabbed my glasses and threw open the curtains. There were tons of kids with their parents on the steps outside our window! They were probably elementary school age, and what they were doing at our school we have no idea. A lot of events seem to go on here and we never know what they are. Sometimes there's adorable children, sometimes there's older people dressed in suites and dresses. Once I even saw someone doing some sort of recording that could have been for a News Channel.

Our bathroom "rained" friday. I took a video of it because I couldn't get the water that was dripping and running down on our walls with just a picture. Sorry for the bad angles - I tend to forget when taking videos that you can't simply rotate them later to fix it. I had to upload it Youtube because for some reason it wasn't uploading with Blogger. So here's the link!

My Bathroom Is Raining

I've been regularly going to a Bible study Monday night. It's an English focused Bible study so the whole thing is in English and the purpose is to study the Bible but also improve English for the Chinese people. It is completely legal, as is the church I went to that one Sunday, as is the public worship service we put together ourselves during our Beidai weekend. I would love for everyone to be able to come to China and experience the religious side of it because it is nothing like I thought. During orientation we were told that evangelizing is illegal, and that is very much true, but being a Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, etc, is not. Everyone just goes to their respected registered areas when they would like to worship. During dinner we pray together - out loud - in public areas.

Thursday we went to The National Museum. It's located right across from Tiananmen Square and The Forbidden City - two places I have been to before, but I never noticed the museum right by it. It's HUGE and free!

Too many people...

I took a picture of this because these are closer to the original Chinese characters and are more pictorial.

I wish I could paint like that.

I'll admit that I didn't get very good pictures of The Forbidden City (above) or Tiananmen Square (below) because I had been there before and already have pictures, so I didn't really try for good ones again, sorry.

Remember me mentioning how I usually eat street food and how cheap it is? Well I learned an interesting fact about my beloved vendors.... they're illegal. I was told by our professor that selling anything on the street is illegal. Now it makes so much sense why people put all their items on blankets. They can just pick it up and run! There's a whole separate official group that goes after street vendors. The other day I was with a friend getting some food from a vendor we regularly go to when he received a phone call. He quickly finished, handed me my food, called to the vendor next to us, said sorry to my friend, packed up, got on his bike, and took off! The other vendor did the same and they were both off in less than a minute! We just stood on the sidewalk and watched as they seemed to vanish into thin air. A few of our other classmates said that one time they had paid for their food when their vendor heard that these officials were coming and just took off with their food. This happened to be a dumpling lady, and her dumplings were still frying and bounced along and she quickly rode to the safety of the other side of the street. Our classmates said they wanted their paid for lunch so they ran right along with her and got their food once she stopped. Life here is interesting! 

One night we made a trip out to the night markets. We knew it was going to be packed, but not this packed! I have a fairly large bubble space so having people constantly touching me as I was walking was not my favorite. 

These were the real reason we went to the night market - Micah wanted to try a scorpion. Because it's a picture you can't tell that the scorpions are still alive. Their little legs sure were moving before put on the fryer. He tried one and said it tasted like a potato chip... I told him I'd take his word for it. There were also silk worms and other insects you could choose to fry. Don't worry Mom, I didn't and do not plan on trying any of this. I stuck to eating something like a vegetable egg roll that night.

On our way out Linden got a coconut to drink the juice out of. It was good, odd, but good. 

This week was the Mid Autumn Festival. This holiday is celebrated, but isn't a huge deal. Mainly people give each other moon cakes, and then people regift the moon cakes, and regift them again. My friend Susie (she's from Beijing) texted me saying that she had a ton of moon cakes her friends had given her and she wanted to give me some of them. I readily agreed and we met up. I was expecting a few moon cakes in a bag. Nope, she came carrying this ... 

Just like Pizza hut pizza sizes are not the same as America, KFC sandwiches are not the same. Linden ordered a chicken sandwich one day and this is what she got.

Chicken pot pie sandwich maybe? It had peas and carrots in the patty. We all laughed for quite awhile at her misfortune. I was forewarned by Susie not to eat meat at an American style fast food place so I didn't order anything but fries. My classmates then learned of my love of ketchup. It's kind of funny because had we been in America they would have known how much ketchup I use, but since we're in China we haven't had anything to use ketchup with! 

We went to a place our professor knew of that had pizza American style. I was a bit iffy as to whether or not this was true based off of our past experience, but he was right! The pizza was also MASSIVE! We ordered two of these! We couldn't put our plates on the table because the pizza took up the whole space. Our group of eight finished all but one piece. 

This upcoming week is going to be quite busy. It's the week before our National Holiday week break, so we have midterms in our language classes and finals in culture class. With any college course the first exam is always learning the teacher's style, so it makes me nervous for what a Chinese teacher's style is like. I'll be doing plenty of studying this week that's for sure!