Match Made in Mafia Heaven

There are not enough elaborate words or perfect pictures that could fully express how extravagant this mafia-sponsored wedding was but I will try my best. 

Anna works with Andrew in his main English class as his bilingual teaching aid. She's a really nice girl and a very strict teacher but you can kind of tell that she really doesn't need the job nor does she want to be there. She's a little on the rich side and she just got a whole lot more rich. Her husband is the son of the Chinese mafia leader in our area. Yes, that's a real thing. When the other teachers were telling us about his line of work on the "black road" they whispered even though it was clear no one around us could speak English. It was surprising that the other teachers thought that Anna was going to have a bad life because of the family she married into, like in all situations they were very blunt about their opinions. 

It is probably impossible to tell that Anna is six months pregnant in these pictures but they have actually been married since last year. It's common to get married legally and then talk to a psychic who looks at both of your birthdays and possibly other factors to decide what date you should hold your ceremony on. A lot of Chinese people are very superstitious.

The reception is a big celebration that focuses on joining the two families. It's really beautiful. This wedding will be the most expensive I will ever attend...I'm sure of it. We were told they spent $50,000 USD on the lights alone! Not to mention they hired two CCTV show hosts to narrate the night, a man who sang Michael Jackson songs (we shared a moment), an opera singer (ouch! I don't particularly like Chinese opera), and a group of performers to dance to Gangnam Style. 

FOOD FOOD FOOD!! I lost track of all of the courses. It seemed endless. Mostly everything was delicious but then again I did choose wisely what I put on my plate.

This was only a portion of the room which held 150 tables!

Halfway through the evening Chinese brides change out of their white dress for a much more oriental red gown and make their way to each table for a toast. Everyone stands, gives their congratulations, and takes a drink. It's a lot of work when there are 150 tables! Anna looked stunning the entire night and I love how her dress has a big bow to cover up her baby bump. She is, of course, hoping for a little boy.

Upon entering and exiting the hotel your eye catches the over sized portraits of the bride and groom. Everything at this wedding was the biggest and best it could be. They spent months going to different locations all over China to photograph and even made a short silent film of "how they met". It depicted a couple repeatedly running into each other and then slowly falling in love- riding bikes over bridges, eating ice cream, shopping together, and other adorable things. The entire wedding was a massive production.

They are a beautiful couple and I think the other teachers were wrong about Anna's future. Even though she may have married into the mafia she's going to have wonderful life with her husband. She gets to spend her life with the one she loves and will soon be a mommy. What's happier than that?! 

The Beginning of Something Great

Those who are near and dear to me probably know that Sunday is a very special day. It marks the 25th anniversary of the day I was born. I am always excited about celebrating holidays and when the holiday honors me it just makes it all the more exciting. I think I will still love my birthday even when I am turning 55. It's an excuse to eat cake and have people shower you with gifts and songs.

Today has been a pretty fantastic start to my birthday weekend- yes I like to milk it for all it's worth and celebrate as much as I can.

I had great lessons in my English class, was surprised by the sweet teachers I work with, and enjoyed a fancy meal with the entire school. No, they didn't have the dinner just for me but I pretended like it. They were celebrating the Chinese New Year that is just around the corner.

It was afternoon play time. The kids were going crazy running around the room screaming. The phone rings and Judy tells me we have to go upstairs to Bella's classroom with all the other English teachers. My first thought was, I hope we're not in trouble but she reassured me that we weren't. I had no clue what was going on.
Then when I walked in to see everyone singing to me and a big cake I was overwhelmed and felt so loved. I was not expecting anything and really appreciated my Chinese friends trying to make my birthday feel special.

TOMATOES!

That evening we set out for our employee dinner at a fancy hotel's restaurant. I drank a lot of orange juice whereas the majority of the Chinese people were chugging wine like it was water. It's the culture to drink a lot at dinner parties and continually have a reason to say, "Cheers" and drink up. The funny thing is none of them even want to drink but it is the boss that pressures them into doing it. Strange. They do this knowing that their faces will turn bight red and they will be throwing up an hour later. I've been told that alcohol poisons them or some say they are allergic to it and that's why they turn red. But it doesn't stop them.

The big bosses were there handing out $1000 RMB left and right as prizes ($160 USD). To my surprise my name was pulled out of the box. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME! I jumped up and ran to the front. I gave the stranger a hug and said, "thank you". Then they demanded I sing a song. Apparently to earn the prize you have to perform so I went along with it and sang "Happy Birthday". The entire room sang to me and I was beginning to feel like this was the beginning of a really great birthday.

Pork Ribs

These were me and Andrew's favorite. 

Pumpkin Soup

Bamboo. Very spicy but good.

Fish

They each won a 32 inch flat screen tv. That man is one of the owners-aka "big boss" aka "the tall one".

CHEERS! 

It's not a party without Gangnam Style. Is it crazy popular in America? It's everywhere here.

It was all very exciting! Especially when you hear your name for a prize!

Screaming for the owners of the school to give away more money. Which they did until their wallets were empty. I think they gave out a total of $25,000 RMB!

If your name wasn't called you won a steamer. We now have three...

Mashed Potato Tacos

A week isn't too late to talk about Thanksgiving is it? Well, even so, I say it's still okay to discuss the fabulous party we threw for our Chinese friends (and one Filipino) to give them a taste of American food.

I was feeling really homesick and was hoping this party would help me feel better. When you can't be home what could be better than being surrounded by friends, eating good food, laughing, and having a great time. We invited about 12 people for dinner and surprisingly almost everyone came. My Thanksgiving dinner was a memorable first one in China. 

It's possible that some of our Chinese friends were not anxious to eat an entire smorgasborg of foreign cuisine because they came stocked with food from the market and headed to the kitchen to whip up a couple familiar dishes. Little did they know that after cooking for 3 hours we had prepared some of the most delicious food they would ever eat. At least that's how I feel about all the American food we made. I guess all of the food wasn't exactly "American" per se but they were foods commonly found there. The only traditional Thanksgiving food we consumed were the homemade mashed potatoes made by Wayne. They were creamy, buttery goodness and unlike anything you can find in China. They were a huge hit. They couldn't stop talking about how good they were. I had to agree. Wayne did a great job and it made me feel a little closer to home during the holiday.

No, we didn't have a turkey or a ham and probably nothing too similar to what you had on your dinner table that evening. But we did have tacos with homemade tortillas and salsa with chips. Andrew made a perfect bowl of my favorite food: spaghetti. We had fresh watermelon and pineapple. It really doesn't get much better than that. Oh and we have the random stir-fried vegetables and a fried egg and tomato dish.

It can be embarrassing going out to dinner with our Chinese friends because they have to teach us how to eat certain foods, tell us what things are, and there are occasional snickers coming from across the table when we mistakenly dip something in the wrong sauce. I always thought it was strange that they didn't realize that eating Chinese food just doesn't come natural to us foreigners and some things need to be explained. That was until Thanksgiving. Have you ever had to explain what a taco was or how to eat one? or that the chips are supposed to be dipped into the salsa? You would think it's obvious and that everyone knows how to layer toppings on a taco. Wrong. We all had to learn that at some point and for these folks it happened in their mid-twenties. After explaining that the meat was beef and the orange stuff was cheese we showed them a tutorial on how to layer everything on a tortilla and then wrap it up.
I think we may have placed the mashed potatoes too close to the taco toppings because poor Ella didn't know that obviously they don't belong on a taco. She didn't think anything of it and just ate it right up. It was probably delicious!

I am happy to report that there were more Chinese leftovers than American. We may be onto something with the whole tacos in China thing. I think I was too busy socializing to get overly stuffed like I usually do on Thanksgiving but that's never a bad thing. It was so comforting though to eat such familiar food. Mmmmm. You don't know what's good until you don't have it. Cliche but true.

After eating we played a couple rounds of charades and Mafia, which some of them were familiar with so it wasn't too hard to explain. Laughter ensued and we all had a blast.

We hear it every year: Thanksgiving isn't all about the food it's about giving thanks. I've spent the better portion of this post talking about food (which is something in and of itself to be thankful for in a foreign country) but there are many things I've come to be thankful for living in another country.

I am of course thankful for mine and Andrew's family. They are all so supportive of us and we are lucky to have such great people in our lives. You are all important to us. Even if we don't talk to you regularly you have each impacted our lives positively. Thank you. We miss you all. I am grateful for God and my faith and that although I am currently living in a communist country I have the privilege of believing what I want and attending church regularly. My time in China has given me the opportunity to rely more on God and for that I am grateful.

To prevent this from being an overly sappy post I will just say that everything I'm grateful for stems from my family and my faith and leave it at that. That is except for the fact that I'm grateful the local happy fruit guy got a shipment of strawberries. They are the first I've seen in the entire country. Expensive but worth it ($2 USD for seven strawberries)!

Why was your Thanksgiving especially memorable?

I can't help but think that next year when I'm in America surrounded by family chowing down on turkey and sweet potatoes that I'll look back on this party and be grateful for the time I had in China. Happy Thanksgiving!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

I hope everyone is enjoying all things spooky and sweet! 

I on the other hand have been battling a cold the last week and have been slacking on the blog. Sorry bout that. Aside from that my Halloween day has been pretty awful. Not every day is perfect in China. I am super worried about tomorrow because all of my student's parents will be coming to watch me teach and give criticism. I would be okay with this in America because I'm confident in my ability to speak English to English speaking children. However, speaking English to a group of 3-4 year old Chinese children, 16 of which are boys and 4 are girls, is not the easiest thing in the world to do. I struggle on a daily basis to teach them while they continue to scream and run around the room. And now their parents get to witness the chaos. I'm incredibly scared just thinking about it. My fellow English teacher's tell me not to worry but they have the pleasure of teaching much smaller classes of older children who can actually speak. We have two very different experiences. We will see what the day brings tomorrow! I will just keep trying to stay positive. It will be a great day. It will be a great day. It will be a great day.

Now on to the original reason for this post: Halloween! It is genuinely one of my favorite holidays most likely due to the fact that I have the biggest sweet tooth ever. Side note the prune candy and others of the Chinese variety are disgusting, all I really want is a pile of Reese's right about now but I am stuck with just looking at pictures of them. Eat a few for me!

We've been so busy preparing for "Parent's Day" that we aren't doing anything to celebrate today. I forgot it was Halloween until Andrew reminded me this afternoon. Believe it or not there aren't reminders of pumpkins and witches everywhere in China. We actually celebrated last Friday with our Pre-School. 

After trick or treating that night, we performed a play that Wayne wrote himself and ended with a bang as we danced off stage to our choreographed version of "Thriller". It was somewhat of a spin off of The Wizard of Oz. The plot was simple enough for the children to understand. The Mad Scientist (played by myself) demands that her lab helper Igor (Wayne) go into the village and find the remaining three parts she needs to complete her greatest creation: Frankenstein (Andrew). He goes into the woods and gets an arm from the wolf (Lucy-a teacher in Wayne's class). Next, he gets a heart from a bat (Bella- from Hannah's class). Lastly, he gets a brain from a mummy in the cemetery (Judy- from my class). They all return to the Mad Scientist who completes Frankenstein. After a few MUAHAHAHA's Frankenstein comes to life and walks toward the crowd to give them a good fright. It was probably the best part of the whole play because Andrew was hiding under a sheet on a table the whole time and I painted his face green with black circles around the eyes and some stitches. He probably looked terrifying to the children. And if you're wondering Hannah's role was as our devoted narrator. We all worked really hard to create the sets and props. We practiced everyday for a week. We could not have done a better job the night of the performance. It was a good feeling to be done.

After we ended with our dance we lowered the large white sphere aka the pinata moon. The idea of a pinata is completely foreign in China and if you can picture how viscous and excited a group of children get when a pile of candy drops from the sky then multiply that by 50. It was completely chaotic. I was trying to reach into the mass of people to grab candy and throw it to all the kids who had no chance of getting any candy. I successfully went down once and returned uninjured. After trying a second time I gave up because it was too scary for even me.

 

I think the children had a great Halloween and it was really cute to hear them say "trick or treat" as they got candy from the shops on our street. I saw a couple batman costumes, some princesses, but mostly pumpkins. I really couldn't take pictures because Hannah's camera died after one picture, my camera is broken, and my old iPhone 3GS takes some not so good pictures as witnessed above. #bloggerproblems

Although it doesn't feel like Halloween as I go to bed tonight it is definitely fall as the temperature has dropped here in Zhangjiagang. I miss my cinnamon candles, hot chocolate, and of course Halloween candy. With that in mind I am off to cuddle under my covers dream of fall comforts and watch the Addam's Family. Ohhhhh on second thought I think I would rather have an Almond Joy right now. Mmmmm.

Happy Halloween everyone! Have a Spooktacular Day!

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! 中秋节快乐！

For those who don't know about the Mid-Autumn Festival or the Moon Festival it is the second biggest holiday in China. There are a lot of not so delicious moon cakes being consumed but supposedly some are really good. I've had only one that was mildly delicious. It's a time when everyone travels home for the week long national holiday to spend time with their family. We are excited to be making the trip later today to Xi'an for the holiday. This is where the Terracotta Warriors are located.

Friday evening the school put on big celebration to honor the holiday with lots of food, music, and people. It was weird that they actually put a limit on the families because they were permitted to have only one adult and one child attending. In America the whole families would have been there but I guess not everyone would show up. Nearly every student was there. It was a huge party.

We couldn't really help with the set up because all the little pink tags with the food info on them were in Chinese so we just sort of walk around aimlessly for about an hour. 

This area where they brought all the tables and chairs is where the morning exercises take place. 

Everyone who came brought a dish to share for the pot luck. There was a lot of really weird stuff but we were so excited when we saw what looked like the most delicious pizza in existence. Trust me, it was.

A couple of Wayne's students

It's not a feast without pizza and chicken heads, Yum!

Everyone waiting at the gate to get into the party.

My student Eric. He's really smart. He gets bored and it makes him very....aggressive.

The people have arrived!

I teach the little girl in the green shirt in the class I only have twice a week. They're all very young.

It was really important to the principle that we perform for the parents and students. Mostly because they really like to show off their American teachers. We're a little like puppets at times. We sang the song Rainbow Connection, made popular by Kermit the Frog, and a couple songs that we sing with our kids in the classroom. At first Andrew and I really didn't want to do it but Wayne was all gung ho for it so we wanted to support him. It was surprisingly a blast. We had such a good time up there singing and "dancing". Even if we did mess up a little it didn't even matter because there were probably only a handful of people who understood what we were even saying. Everyone was clapping, smiling, and taking our picture. Not to mention the big city news camera in our faces the whole time. I guess it was a slow day in Zhangjiagang. 

This is Bella. She is the teacher that Hannah works with and  her English is probably the best in the whole school.

Some of Andrew's students playing a game. They had little events in all the classrooms.

Andrew's student, Steven. He is always dressed in the craziest Chinese fashions. He's pretty cool.

This is my student, Iris. He was trying to  do a funny pose. He is a really sweet kid with a lot of energy. He  loves to cuddle and it melts my heart.

Judy and I. She is the amazing teacher that I work with. She has such a good heart and I love that girl.

My student, Tim. I found him on my way out and had to snap a picture of this cutie.

All four of us with the wonderful Bella.

My student, Leo. His English is really good and he's obsessed with any sort of car. Which explains why he has one in his hands at all times.

We had a great time celebrating the Moon Festival with all of our Chinese friends. Now I really need to go pack my bags for the week because we're leaving in a couple of hours. 

Happy Moon Festival! Take a look up at the moon on the night of the 30th to celebrate.