Wan Sheng Jie (万圣节), Hallowe'en, Dia de los Muertos

Halloween in China, much to my surprise, was a lot like previous Halloweens of y'or, my costume was wack (i was Jem, from Jem and the Holograms, the '80s cartoon), some people are always resistant to dressing-up, and drinking & dancing are generally involved. We went to Shanghai for the blessed occasion, to a club called Candy and got our dance on! Huzhou had nothing going on and most people have never even heard of the holiday here, in fact they tend to confuse it with Thanksgiving (speaking of which if anyone wants to send me a can of cranberry sauce now would be the time to do it...whole berry is preferred, but at this point i can't be too picky, or can i? it is me we're talking about...) i digress.

As i was saying, most Chinese don't know what Halloween is so i gave a lesson on it to my Junior 1 class and learned a little myself  in the process.  For instance, did you know that it should really be spelled Hallowe'en? Apparently the progression of the word went from the Gaelic Samhain (pronounced like Sau in), to the old English-Catholic influenced three day festival known as All Hallow's Eve Oct. 31, All Hallow's Day Nov. 1 and All Soul's Day Nov. 2 that was created out of thin air to discourage pagan rituals and to bring in converts. Hallow, meaning saint, as in hallowed be thy name... holy, saintly etc. you get the picture. Funny that this holiday kinda represents the opposite of that now. So the Chinese name for Halloween literally translates to 10,000 Saint's Festival. Which means, no one knows why we parade around in scary costumes and ask for candy or we will TP your house! Then again, do we know why we do this? i'm done being teacher for now, suffice it to say i got a few creeped out 14-year-olds when i showed them this:

also i wore a bright pink wig to class and gave them skittles, am i good teacher, or what?

Back to the weekend in Shanghai... it is such a major metropolis i really don't know what to do with myself when i'm there. This trip, my one and only goal was to find a caesar salad and eat it. Ambitious, i know.  Mission accomplished. i also did some chilling, coffee drinking and window shopping.  Shanghai is famous for its impressive, and somewhat other-worldly architecture and the neck-breaking speed with which it has developed into the international hub it is today and it continues to do so, reportedly adding a suburb the size of Houston, Texas every week! (Source unknown, but someone told me this, i'm sure of it) i promise to take pictures of this famousness the next time i go... but what i have taken pictures of and what has caught my eye in all of China, not just Shanghai, is the way this whole country operates on a system in tandem. Old, traditional cultural relics stand amongst sky shattering modern monstorsities, gleaming of glass and metal, or in less developed areas hulking masses of concrete. 

They all work together some how... i don't know how.  This is Jing' An Temple, really close to the hostel we usually stay in and it is an actual temple but it's on one of the wealthiest shopping streets in the city and the sides of it have been turned into storefronts themselves.  Along the temple side you'll find Burberry, Rolex and Pizza Hut hocking their wares among other luxury items... luxury used lightly in regards to the Hut. it's mind boggling.  The golden temple would be really beautiful nestled between the towering office buildings but with the bright lights of Louis Vuitton blinding me i don't really even want to go in... is that wrong?

in other language-related news: 赫伊! this is my Chinese name, or rather the way they pronounce and write Hoy (said he yi). it's a bit difficult to write... why is the alphabet so wonderful? in studying Chinese, even at my basic level i have come to appreciate the roman alphabet like you would not believe... i don't just know my ABC's i love them and miss them dearly. Another interesting thing about my name is that in the local, Huzhouhua, dialect my name, Guen Hoy, loosely translates into "beat you, ok?"

湖州新世纪外国语学校  体育场路  355 号 

湖州  浙江  中国 313000

this is my mailing address in Chinese, pretty cool, right? right? our computer in the office has a program that lets you type in the pinying and then pick the correct character, i'm slowly learning how to use it based on the very minimal number of characters i know. but still i'm impressed and therefore you should be too! So the English/pinying translation of this is:

Ms. Guen Hoy

Huzhou New Century Foreign Language School

Huzhou Xin Shi Ji Wai Guo Yu Xue Xiao

Ti Yu Chang Lu No. 355

Huzhou, Zhejiang, CHINA  313000

in case you wanted to send me a much needed care package...mail takes about three weeks to arrive and i only have 11 weeks left at this address. what? that ish is crazy. so getta sendin' if you're gonna be sendin'. 

also everyone better vote on Tuesday, it'll be Wednesday here, but unfortunately i will not know the outcome of the election just by virtue of being in the future... as my friend Nellie said, say your Obama prayers! eg. keep Obama safe and let him be elected the next president of the US of A...

so pretty...

so this weekend was a holiday, we got monday off for Mid-Autumn Festival (sometimes called moon festival due to these lovely moon cakes filled with anything from red bean paste to meat to ice cream). The red bean one was pretty good.

In this long weekend i did a whole lot of nothing but chilling out.  I went to get my nails done with Gino's and my assistant, Penny.  She is adorable. She's teaching us Chinese in hour sessions, twice a week.  Her Chinese name is Xie Bing Qing, loosely translated to "thanks, ice clear".  Her command of English is far from fluent but without her life would be hell. Whenever we have a problem or a question she takes care of it.  She may look like she's fifteen but she's actually a year older than me!

i tried to ask her where i could buy nail polish remover because my nails were looking pretty haggard but she didn't really understand so we just ended up going to her friend's girlfriend's nail salon in a big mall near the center of town.  i've never had my nails done in the states so i thought, what the hell, it's probably less than $5... and it was, to be exact it cost $1.50! i decided to go all out: purple with white flowers and glitter, when in China...

they turned out so pretty, i think i'll go get them done on

 the regular just for fun.

watch out when i come back to the states i'm going to be totally asian-ified, i already have plans to get a haircut next month. you'd better believe it's going to be Chinese mullet-esque or some form of it. 

So after getting our nails did, Penny went home and i met up with John.  Gino was ill for thursday and friday and i had to teach one of his classes on thursday, it was no problem.  But i really, really hope he doesn't get me sick... that reminds me i have to buy halls vitamin C drops at the corner store as a preventative measure. 

Anyway so John and i wandered around, i made him try bubble tea, which he had never had! Unfortunately i wasn't sure how to order it and we ended up with plain tea flavored ones instead of fruit flavored. It was still good, but he was not big on the tapioca pearls... later we met up with this girl, Nellie.  We all met her about a week ago, she is a god-send.  She's lived in Huzhou for two years and she's from Iowa.  She speaks Chinese pretty well and knows where everything is.  (It's actually her birthday tomorrow and we're going out to dinner in a few hours to celebrate, but i'm getting ahead of myself).  We went with Nellie to an outdoor eating spot where people just set up tables near outdoor street meat carts and buy anything from fried rice to squid on a stick.  We had some beers and some fried potatoes and peanuts (eaten with chopsticks).  We met Nellie's Chinese friend, Yang, he is cool.  

i caught a taxi home around 1:30am and thought i was going to pee myself before i could get the gate open to our building.  i think my late night rabble rousing has started the rumor mill a churning.  A teacher mentioned to Gino that she heard we were staying out quite late and that most teachers are back before 9pm!  Of course we don't have to be back by then, but maybe a little earlier, this is what she said.  Now my suspicion is that they really could care less what time Gino comes back but because i'm a woman i think i'm going to get some shit talked about me.  We'll see how that all turns out.

We went to Nellie's apt for dinner Saturday night and had salad and pasta, amazing! Her apartment is a little far away from the center but it's so cute and she has an actual kitchen and it's clean!  She gave me a coffee pot and a hot plate.  So 

now i will love her forever and owe her my first born child... she also let me borrow some bootlegged movies which miraculously work on my laptop so i don't have to buy a DVD player!

Sunday was super chill: i did laundry, worked out, read some, watched Sex and the City (finally) and then had dinner with Gino while we

watched another movie and in the evening i even studied some Chinese.  Today i actually have to prepare some lesson plans for the week...boo.  it has gotten easier to plan for now though.  i borrowed a bike from this australian guy and rode it to the giant supermarket Da ren fa, this morning. Riding in Chinese traffic, even for a ten 

minute bike ride is stressful, but all my eggs made it back unscathed!

Last thing, we had some typhoon-type weather on saturday so when Gino and i went into town to meet John and didn't bring umbrellas we ended up being stuck under an awning for an hour and a half while it rained to rival biblical tales.  We watched as the Chinese went about on their bicycles and scooters undeterred, if not for making funny squinting faces as the rain beat them up. i mean it was raining hard, the picture doesn't due it justice!