Moon Festival Weekend

After this week, I'll be happy if I never see a circle again. This week's theme was circles and for my Wednesday thru Friday activities, I had the kids trace and cut out pages for Circle Books. During the classes, the kids focused on making the pages, and then I spent about three hours stapling the pages together and making sure each child had all the pages. This week is holes, so we're talking about foods with holes, pipes, and stuff like that. I'm planning on having little to no crafts this week. The other English teacher does enough crafts for the both of us, anyway. I prefer games with big groups of small children rather than crafts. You don't have as big of messes to clean up.

This weekend was the Moon Festival, which people celebrate by having tons of barbecues. I wondered if I should feel a little guilty about celebrating this weekend while everyone at home was all sad about September 11th. I read a few articles about people remembering September 11th and felt a bit better. I remember exactly what grade and class I was in when the attack happened. My mom and sister came and picked me up after school that day because they were worried.

Anyway, I didn't want this post to be about that. Steph was away in Taipei for the weekend. I got invited to two barbecues, both held by church families. It was interesting to see the kinds of things that the Chinese barbecue compared to Americans. They have the basics, like hot dogs and chicken (mostly for the children) and then for the adults, its squid, bacon wrapped around onion sticks, and a meat called Tianbula. It doesn't have an English name since it isn't really exported to any English-speaking countries. The fact that there was a full moon this weekend had special significance, too. If there's a full moon, it means everything is complete.

It was very relaxing, at least. The kids were all playing while the adults were cooking and I had the chance to try and listen in on their conversations and practice understanding what they were talking about, with varied success. I have plenty of pics from both events so you can see what it was like. They really know how to stretch out the cooking so that you can eat all you want, but it takes longer to get full so you can enjoy more. It took us three hours to cook all the food during my second barbecue, but it was delicious!

One thing I find funny is that the people with dogs as pets shave the fur on their tales except for the ends. They have pom-poms! Like lions! It's a style that they think looks cute. They don't really have a beauty standard for dogs.

Earlier today the missionaries invited me to go out with them to explore a giant temple close by our church building. It's the largest one I've seen since I've been here. Apparently, it was built in the memory of a woman who had a saint-like status. I took a lot of pics. One of the people working there said that we had to ask the God for permission before taking pictures. You do this by placing your hands together and bowing them a couple of times. People who haven't asked the God for permission sometimes find that the pictures they took of the inside of the temple have disappeared. I love stories like that, but when I checked my camera, all of mine were still there. I did ask for permission, I just wasn't sure if you had to do it every time. Maybe the God recognized my awesomeness and was pleased, so he/she allowed me to keep my pics. I'm truly honored!

The parents of my tutoring kids have been giving me tons of mooncakes for the festival. They come in really nice gift sets and boxes. I've been slowly eating through them throughout the entire weekend. I swear these people are trying to fatten me up. XD

This is a more traditional style of mooncake. You might notice the others are more rounded and the insides are filled with different stuff. The most common fillings are red and green beans, I think.

A couple of pictures from my usual Saturday excursion to the ocean.

On my way home from the beach, I spotted a farm with some turkeys. One of the turkeys was waddling around outside, so I stopped to take a picture. Her husband wasn't too happy with this development and paced back and forth behind the fence. There was a goose back there too, honking its head off. If I hadn't been protected, I probably would have gotten torn apart by some pretty pissed off birds!

We spotted a Ferrari on our way from the first barbecue. So of course, we all had to stop and take pictures with it.

There's workout equipment in just about every park here. They take fitness seriously.


The clouds and the mountains were actually a lot brighter than show in this picture, but I thought that the amount of exposure in this one looked cool.




This is one of the pieces of grilled squid in my bowl. I've actually tried grilled squid as an appetizer in a sushi restaurant in Illinois, so I wasn't new to it.

The middle gate to the inside of the temple, marked by a red gate, is strictly the entryway for the God. Us mere mortals are supposed to get in by the side doorways.



A statue of Confucius. The native Chinese missionary said that it was strange that the statue would be at this level since it elevates Confucius to a God-like being, but he was really just a man whose teachings the Chinese respected.

These murals depict stories. I just thought they looked pretty.





This hall had huge, gorgeous statues. I find it interesting that each one has its own unique face and thing that it's holding.