Kaboom!

 Last night was the end of the Chinese New Year and boy were there a LOT of fireworks!  The thing about fireworks here is that there are no safety regulations.  You want set it off right between two buildings?  Sure!  You want to set off 10 at once?  No problem!  These are huge fireworks-very much 4th of July worthy.  I remember my brothers being excited about setting off bottle rockets--boy would they have had fun growing up here!  (I noticed this morning there were many extra street sweepers on hand to clean up all the firecracker/works leavings!)

Chinese Calligraphy

We have great Chinese teachers.  They do their best to make the lessons as engaging as possible.  So, for fun, we got to try some calligraphy.  You start with a felt pad to catch excess ink and practice on rice paper.  When you get good enough (in your own opinion) you do it on the red paper.  It was difficult for me to hold the brush correctly, but I'd love to give it another try!!

Matt and Chris giving it a go at the main campus. 

Chun Jie part 2

After making our dinner, we headed over to try our hand at paper cutting.  We didn't get to try the calligraphy.  Ana, our scissor master, (from age 2 when she cut off all her bangs) did suprisingly well on a rather complex butterfly.  I think it's great that these traditional activities can keep the kids busy too!

Chun Jie part 1

The school had a fun afternoon/evening planned in place of our regular staff meeting. The reason?Chun Jie (Chinese New Year)!  We arrived and were put right to work making jiaoxi--a meat filled dumpling that can be fried or boiled.  Here it is usually boiled.  Local people will eat thirty to forty in one sitting! This was just ONE of the racks loaded up.

We gave it our best shot--I don't think ours would pass their quality control!  Ana especially had her own technique!!