I don’t know how permanent it is, or if a Chinese official hit the wrong button on his computer, but after several weeks of my blog residing on what seemed to be a Forbidden Planet, the days of reading phrases like “The connection has been reset” and “The page cannot be displayed” are NO more. Please sing with me and do a little jig – China ain’t blocking me no more – do da do da!!!

I know this doesn’t really matter for me so much because I was able to access my blog despite China’s attempt to sensor me, but now anyone in China who might stumble upon my blog CAN. I guess the investigation of Blogger has come to an end(for the time being) and they don’t find me or my fellow Bloggers all that troublesome after all. Of course, tomorrow is a new day, and the Chinese might change their minds. And they probably will.

As for Thanksgiving, I haven’t seen a turkey anywhere. There are plenty of chickens and ducks to be had(with their heads and necks still attached) – and we might actually have to buy one if we want to have any sort of American Thanksgiving here in China. Without the simple existence of an oven though, it makes it a bit more difficult to make a variety of foods other than boiled or fried. The one thing I really want and know I won’t find is a Honey Baked Ham. My tongue wants to roll out of my mouth like a cartoon character just thinking about one. Hmm Mmm good. Eat some for me will you? Or better yet – send me one. I’d love you forever and ever! If any part of your soul wishes do such a thing and you really want to make my day – contact me and I will pass on my mailing address. Heh. Hey, it could happen.

So, Happy Thanksgiving to all. And thank you China for taking me off that awful planet. It was a dull and musty place. And if you could avoid sending me there in the future, I would be a very happy expat in your lovely country. And even happier if you could put some Honey Baked Ham in the Da Ran Fa by 5:00pm tonight. Thanks! 😉

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I know I posted our visit to the Ancient Paper Making Village some time ago, but I wanted to share the rest of the pictures that I took that day. Now that we are using this slide show thingy, I can post them a lot easier than before. You can’t see them as up close and personal as before unless you actually click on the slide show and go to Sky Album, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices. I’m sure that I will include single pictures here and there in future postings, but only if I feel they are deserving. Heh.

If you like, you may go here or here to read the original post about the paper making village visit. I don’t see any point for reposting what happened that day. It was pretty much a we went, we saw, and we left. Paper is paper after all. I will try to get back to regular posting soon. After a week long PAID vacation, teaching is taking more out of me than usual. Hopefully, the weather will get better and Phil will get well so that Phil and I can run off and see what the surrounding areas of Fuyang have to offer before we have to leave prematurely. More on that later.

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Place cursor over slide show to see the titles of the pictures. I believe that slide shows are going to be the way of the future for my blog. It seems to be much easier and less time consuming than adding only five pictures at a time to Blogger. This in turn will make me very happy, for I have about a billion pictures that I have taken, but not yet posted because Blogger is slower than dirt in China. These pictures, as the previous post would suggest, are from our trip to the largest cave in Asia, the FuChun TaoYuan. It wasn’t as big as Carlsbad Caverns, in Carlsbad, New Mexico, USA, but there weren’t any bats or their guano, so it’s a winner in my book. 🙂 Like most of China, pictures don’t do this place justice. For those of you with over active imaginations, I suggest that you use them here.

I really enjoyed this trip. It was nice to get out into the country side of China and away from the constant construction of Fuyang. Unlike some people who come to China, Phil and I decided to go here by ourselves. Chinese people are always asking who we are taking with us and are usually surprised when we say no one. Because we are American and don’t really know Chinese, I think they assume that we are going to get lost or ripped off and sometimes that happens, but we get to experience more or the “real” China this way.

For instance, the only thing we knew when we left on Thursday was that we wanted to go to the cave, but we had no idea how to get there. We knew there was a bus that could take us close to it, but then we didn’t know where to get on it. So, we hopped in a taxi and told them we wanted to go to the bus station where we could find the bus we needed. Either he didn’t know or he wanted to make some money because he immediately told us for 110 RMB he would take us there. I really didn’t feel like trying to find the bus, so 110 RMB didn’t seem that much to me. Off we went. The country side of China all sorta looks the same. You see the same run down home over and over again. The same poor woman hanging her clothes out to dry. The same little garden. It’s a bit dismal to see that much poverty in a 30 minute taxi ride.

It really makes me appreciate what we have.We’ve got a better apartment than most of the people who are native to Fuyang. When we do have guest come over, they are always commenting on how comfortable it is or how big it is. We actually have hot water and windows that close and aren’t just holes in the walls. Our floors are hard wood and not a slab of grey concrete. When we wash clothes, we just throw them in a washing machine and hang them up to dry. In the apartment right next to us – everyone washes their clothes in the same water troff. The same troff that they use to bathe in as well. But for some reason they have cars. I will never understand how the poorest people can live in the crappiest house, but then have one of the nicest cars. Someone needs to do a study on that for me.

But, I digress. We got to the cave just as the cab man promised, although he did make us climb up a hill to the top of the mountain that he said we take us up to the entrance. For a small second, I thought that he had dropped us off in the middle of no where. Up the hill we did find the entrance, thank God. We thought we were the only ones there because it looked deserted, but I liked it better that way. Big crowds turn me off. We ended up having our own private tour with a woman who spoke about 30 words of English – which is better than nothing I guess. She was very nice, and walked us all around the cave trying to think of English words to describe the formations. We humored her and tried to make it look like we understood.

Eventually, we came across a large tour group, and somehow joined them. If we hadn’t have met up with them, I’m not sure we would have seen the rest of the park. After the tour of the cave, we hopped on a little train that took us through another cave. Before I got on though, the Chinese man I was going to sit next to pointed to the seat trying to tell me that it was dirty. I pulled out one of the tissues I carry around with me and tired to clean it. The seat wasn’t dirty. It was just stained. The conductor of the ride didn’t realize I hadn’t made it on yet and started off without me. I had never heard some many people cry out at once that I wasn’t on yet and for him to wait. Of course, whatever they said was all in Chinese, and I don’t really know what they said – but I bet it was something a lot like that. Thankfully, the ride stopped and I was able to get on. I really felt like I was on the cart ride form Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom. If you have seen the movie, you should understand a little of how that ride worked. On the plus side, there was no one chasing us through the tunnel. Heh.

On the other side was a bunch of stairs waiting for us to walk down them. I’m glad it was down and not up because I was in no mood to walk up anymore stairs. China is littered with stairs. It’s amazing. No wonder all of the Chinese are so thin and fit. So we climbed down the stairs and played a little on a playground we came across. It was pretty big and reminded me of a playground I used to play on as I kid. Like Phil said in his post – the adults were playing on it, too and enjoying themselves. I heard lots of the women squealing like little girls and the men were laughing at them. It was a site to see. After that we went down to the lake which looked nothing like the picture on our ticket, but, eh, the view was nice even though it was completely overcast and hazy. We tried to leave at this point, but got chased down by one of the leaders of the tour group. She asked for our tickets and made us follow her down to the boats. I’m glad she found us because we got to enjoy a bamboo boat ride around the lake – which was bigger than I thought. The only down side was all the dead fish we saw floating in the water. Poor fish. After the boat ride it was time to go home, but there was no taxi that we could pay 100 RMB to take us there. We stood at a bus stop for a while, and after two or three went passed without stopping we started to worry.

At this point in time it was about 4:15 in the afternoon and it was getting dark pretty fast. There was a Chinese man standing at the bus stop too, so we tried to find out which bus we needed. After a lot of “bu dongs” we finally understood that the next bus wouldn’t be around until 5:30. That was all fine and dandy except that it was getting cold and the rain was bound start falling eventually. We decided to walk. This is when we realized how far out in the middle of no where we were. I probably should have panicked a little more than I did, but I didn’t. Everyone stared at us as we walked by their houses. We were probably the only white people ever to walk down that road. Finally, I saw an older woman looking at us with a lot of interest and seemed like she wanted to talk. I told her that we wanted to go to Fuyang and Phil asked where the bus was. She said some words that we didn’t quiet understand and before we knew it, she had waved down a white van and we were on it, hopefully going toward home. Not long after we got on the bus it started to rain just like I had feared, but we were in a nice warm van, so I didn’t care. We were afraid for awhile that we were going anywhere but the place we wanted, but about 30 or so minutes later – the van/bus stopped for us and the driver said it was our stop. We made it home AND we knew where we were. It was a flipping miracle. So, I close this post with this . . . Cost of a Taxi to the largest cave is Asia – 110 RMB($13) Two tickets to get into the largest cave in Asia – 196 RMB($29) Two pictures beside some pretty formations – 20 RMB ($3) Getting on a van that you don’t really know where it is taking you – PRICELESS

”

Here’s a nice pano of Fu Chun Tao Yuan. It’s a lake next to a huge cavern. I’ll let Gabe post the cavern pics and what not. Gabe took the pics for this pano. For 120 RMB you get a tour through the cave, get two pictures taken, ride a small train through a cave, play on an old old playground, and go on a bamboo boat ride. I’m gonna make this post short and sweet…

The old old playground is made for adults, too. I’ve found the Chinese adults play just as hard as the kids.

Bamboo is great for a lot of things, but boats??? Well, it worked, kinda  . . . My shoes will dry eventually.

Finally, what do you call being able to slightly converse with an older Chinese woman with a thick Fuyang accent, explain that we’re stuck in the country side looking for a bus, her understand, and wave down a strange looking van/bus immediately to take us back home???

A) God
B) Luck

Both answers are correct.

We went walking around Fuyang about a week ago just to see what we could find. We strolled through some open markets and walked around some random shops and we found what one in China comes to expect . . . random, mostly useless and cheaply made stuff – at least for the most part that is. Every once in a while, we’d come across something interesting and make a mental reminder to come back for it.

In certain sections of town, it is just a long line of stores full to the brim of scrap metal, random pieces of computers, random opened TV’s with the parts strewn everywhere and so on. Just think of the most crappy Yard or Garage Sale you have ever been to and that is what many streets in Fuyang are like. Seeing this stuff made me realize why all the things back home marked “Made in China” suck so bad. See, the Chinese don’t make crappy things just for us. They make crappy things in general because they don’t feel like spending the extra money to make it a little nicer. Or maybe it is something else, but regardless, you have to be very careful as to what you buy because it may be used, broken, or on a timer as to when it will become useless. Back home there are only certain “Made in China” things you have to be wary of. Here, you have to worry about everything from shoes to anything electronic – including batteries. I have a friend, and fellow blogger, who wrote a funny segment about it. You can find it here. I thought it was funny, but most of the things I read on his blog make me laugh – and that is a good thing Trey, I promise.

But all those things aside, I finally found some postcards after days of going from one store to another asking if anyone had them. It’s a chore looking for things in China when you don’t speak Chinese. Usually I find the Chinese word for what I want in my dictionary that I carry around with me, and point to the word when I get in their shop. If they have it, they take me right to it. If they don’t, I hear the word “mao” which translates into “sorry, no dice”. So, then I say to them – “Zai nar” which translates into “where the hell can I find it then”. Then the pointing begins followed by a slew of Chinese words I don’t understand. I say thank you and head off to the next store to repeat what I just said again.

The postcards were in the very last place I looked because I didn’t think they would have it after I peered in the window. This place was dusty, old, and full of boxes. It looked nothing like it would have back home. I mean, it did have a counter, and people were standing behind it waiting to do their job – but the place looked like it was 20 years old and had never seen a duster. But I figured, what the hell, I want to find postcards, and that means I have to ask everyone – even if it is the shadiest Post Office I have ever seen. Yes, this place was a post office. A China Post to be exact. I walked in and started my shindig. I pulled out my dictionary and pointed the to the word postcard. She looked at me like my hair had just got fire. I kept pointing to it hoping that something would go CLICK in her post office mind. It didn’t. So I flipped to the word buy and pointed to it. She looked at it and started chittering to the girl at the next register. The girl chittered back, but nothing happened. So I pointed to the word buy, flipped back to the word postcard and did that a few more times hoping that those two simple words would somehow make a light bulb go off in her head. More chittering. Then some more. And then some running. The girl at the other register took off behind closed doors and was gone for some time. I guess she had to ransack the place to find them. A few minutes later she came running back out holding 4 bundles, yes, bundles of postcards. I hoped at that moment that she didn’t think I was going to buy all of them. She plopped them down on the counter and chittered some words that I couldn’t understand. I pointed to the postcards and said four(si). I got that famous blank stare for a second and then the great bright light lit behind her eyes. She counted out four, told me how much they were(which was very cheap), and I finally had my postcards. I was a happy woman. It is amazing how something so simple can totally make your day. I skipped all the way home.

Oh, and by the way, the reason there are pigs on all of the postcards is because 2007 is the year of the pig.

***Please do note that none of pinyin has any of the proper accents over them. Shoot me.

These pictures are also a wee bit old, but I need to post them before I forget why in the world I took a picture in the first place. This is the entrance to a park in Fuyang called Dongwu. It is a rather big park on the outskirts of town. It’s really quiet here. There aren’t as many taxis or cars honking their horns. In fact, there are so few that it is easy to forget that you are still in Fuyang. If you look closely, you can see a building in the distance. It doesn’t look that far away from this picture, but it’s on top of a rather large mountain/hill. Even after 8 months of walking all over Columbia, I had a difficult time walking up what seemed like the never ending stair case.

That was okay though. It gave me an excuse to stop and take pictures on our way up. The Fuchun River is hiding in the distant haze. When I took this picture, it had been hazy in Fuyang for days. I was beginning to think that I would never see blue skies or the sun again. I wish that we had climbed these stairs on a better day for the view would have been better than it was without so many clouds. I wish that because I don’t think I can make myself climb up those stairs again. I’m such a lazy butt.

A little bit further up and on the other side of the mountain is the grand ole city of Fuyang. If you look really closely you might actually be able to see it through the haze. Hehe. 🙂 I must note that it’s not always like this in Fuyang. We’ve actually had some nice days recently. The one thing that I have become aware of since I’ve been here is that I never notice the sun. I guess that has something to do with the blanket of grey that drapes itself over Fuyang and most of China. Pollution just plain sucks here. I’ll be eager to take a big breath of air when I get home.

Under construction. We climbed all the way up to this building to find nothing but a building. The view was nice, but whatever used to be inside the building was gone. The only thing it had to offer was dust bunnies. We sat up here and rested until it started to get dark. Right before we headed back down the lights for the building came on. It made it very beautiful. At night, even from where we live, we can sometimes see the lights shimmering on the mountain top.

What a place to live, huh? I’m sure some of the people living in those apartments get pretty nice views. Most of Fuyang is flat, but we are pretty much surrounded on all sides by mountains. I don’t know why, but it’s not until I actually get up on a mountain and look down that I realize that that they are there. Phil and I are thinking about buying a motor scooter – sorta like a moped. It would make exploring Fuyang a lot easier. Then I could drive up most of the hilly sections of Fuyang without losing my breath or my energy. But we have to make sure we have the money for that.

I still have to post the zoo pictures. I promise to get to them soon. I found out tonight that I don’t have school all week. That means I will have all sorts of time to fiddle with blogger. Until the, later.

These are a wee bit old, but I figured that I should post them anyway. I have a lot of pictures like these. Sometimes I bring my camera with me when I walk around Fuyang and take random pictures until my batteries die. Often I don’t find them blog worthy, but I thought since these were part of my daily life that they needed to be here. On occasion, we venture out to restaurants with the other foreign English teachers. They usually give you a snack food before your main meal. On this particular day it was peanuts. They had some kind of oil dribbled on them. They were pretty good.

From Left to right we have a cut off Tim(American), Mayia(Aussie), Jaya(lives in Australia, but is from South Africa I think), and then Vanessa(also Aussie). There are a nice bunch of people and we enjoy experiencing China with them. It is quiet a sight when we all get together and go out to eat. Ordering food is a mad house. The wait staff hardly understands us(we are getting better at that now) but in the beginning, 9 times out of ten we wouldn’t get what we thought we ordered. But that just meant new experiences. 🙂

Fried noodles. I know that it doesn’t look all that appetizing, but I swear it is quiet tasty. Sometimes I get some that is a little spicy, but other than that I rather enjoy it. In America, you may not be able to live on Beer or Bread alone, but in China you can and many do live on noodles. Noodle shops are every where. Many of the shops are little wholes in the walls, but the food still tastes the same. It can be difficult eating in some of the shops because of how shady they look, but sometimes they serve the cheapest and best food. Isn’t that how it always works?

Fried dumplings. We survived on these for the first couple of days. They are super cheap, hot, and filling if you order enough. 10 of them costs between 3.5 and 6.5 RMB. That is not even a whole dollar for 10 dumplings. They are filled with pork, veggies, and other random things. To me they all taste the same, but the others can tell the difference. This shop is right down the street from where we live and we go there when we have a strong hankerin for dumplings. They are open really late too, so that is a bonus as well.

Just a random picture of Phil and our wet clothes. This is where we hang them after we give them a nice washing. The process is a real pain in the butt, but at least we don’t have to wash our clothes by hand. That would just suck. It gives me a real appreciation of what I have back home and I am not just saying that. Even here I feel that we have a lot. I look out our window and see people washing themselves in the same water bin that they wash their clothes. We have hard wood floors. They just have cold, grey slab of concrete. It makes me sorta sad.

I’ll post more later. But for now – it’s off to Hangzhou. McDonald’s, Dairy Queen, Papa John’s, TCBY, and Pizza Hut – here I come!! Heh

If I could read this sign, I’d have no problem at all getting around Fuyang on a beggar’s income. It only costs 1 yuan to ride the bus here. That is about 12 cents if you are trying to do the math. Since I don’t understand a lick of written Chinese, I have to jump on a bus and hope that the woman who takes my money can understand enough of my broken Chinese to let me know when I’ve reached my stop. If she doesn’t understand me and no one else happens to be getting on or off when I need to, the bus will just keep on going. I then have to get on another bus to take me back the way I’d come. And that is the very reason I’ve become comfortable riding only 3 of the 9 bus routes in Fuyang. (Huge city, I know . . . hehe.) Every morning I take the number one bus to the other side of town and then get on the number 8 bus that drops me off right in front of school. The bus isn’t very clean and it can be cramped, but it beats paying 7-10 Yuan for a taxi twice a day.

Here is a picture of me trying to teach my students the beautiful sport of baseball. It didn’t go over too well like most of what I teach them. The only thing I think they understood was bat, ball, and run and even those three words vanished from their memory banks once they walked out of my room.  Everything else went in one ear and out the other. So, it made it really difficult to play baseball with them the following week. The one thing they did like was me singing “Take Me Out To The Ball Game.” I never thought I’d sing in front of more than just my shower curtain, but I think it may be the only real way to reach them. Guess I better start voice lessons. Doe a dear . . .

Every fall, the schools in Fuyang have a Sport’s Meeting. That means that the students get a few days off to compete in something that resembles the Olympics on a much smaller scale. Some of the students take it quiet seriously. And some of them are pretty darn good. Ask Phil and he’ll tell you all about it. Heh. But anyways, if you enlarge the picture to the left you’ll find some interesting errors. The first being that Atlanta is the capital of George and that it’s also known as “The City of Tress.” They tried to describe Izzy, the Olympic mascot, but messed up in that department as well. Take a look and you might laugh as hard as I did. Sometimes I worry about the students and who in the world is teaching them English. Their Chinese teacher’s only know so much and some of what they do know is wrong. And so the cycle keeps repeating itself. Foreign teachers are the only real cure. And look who they sent – me. God help them. God help them all.

My school had an English Competition on my birthday and they asked me to be one of the judges. There were about 25 students in it from grades 2 and 3. If they were in middle school back home they would probably be in 7th and 8th grade. A few days before the competition, I had some students read their speeches out to me. They wanted help and advice and I gave them what I could without rewriting their entire speech. There were more errors than there are thorns on a rose bush. And I’m not kidding. The sad part is that a lot of the errors were advice that the their Chinese English teachers gave them. That is the evil cycle I am talking about.

I took a picture of this girl as she preformed her speech. I don’t know who she is. She may be one of my students, but I can’t keep track of them. If you had 700 students, you wouldn’t be able to either! I think I can pick out maybe 4 or 5 students that I know are mine if I see them walking around. The cool thing is that every single one of the students memorized their speech. They didn’t have a single card with them. And some of their speeches were pretty long. A couple had some problems, but for the most part they all did pretty well. One of my students, Grey, got first place, but so did about 5 others. Guess they tied or something. I marked all the students a lot lower than the Chinese teachers did, but that’s because I actually knew what the mistakes were. Alright, gotta go. Have to see what kind of trouble I can get myself into. Fuyang and all of it’s glory awaits!

Sorry for the delay. I know that I suck as a Blogger, but I’ve been sorta busy and tired. Teaching does that to you. I technically work less than four hours a day, but I sit in my office staring at my Dell computer screen when I’m not standing in front of 30 devils and screaming at them. I only have 4 classes a day, but I still have to be at school from about 8 to 5 because of the way my schedule is set up. Next term I am going to ask for later classes so that I don’t have to wait around all day for my next class to start. The following pictures are of things my students have done over the last few weeks. Some are cute, others strange, one is just mean, and well, the last one is just plain nasty. Enjoy.

The first picture is of a gift from one of my best students. Her English name is Tiffany, and I wish that all of my students could be just like her. I was teaching about Halloween and threw in the fact that November 2nd was my birthday. As soon as she heard those words come out of my mouth, she ripped out a piece of paper from her notebook and started to make me a card in class. This of course kept her from writing down any of the new vocabulary words that I was teaching, but that’s okay. I can forgive a Teacher’s Pet any day of the week. Hehe. : ) I think if she had known about my birthday earlier she would have bought me one, but I think I like this one better. It’s much more creative than one she could have purchased in a store. The little stickers are so cute. I might just have to have it framed. It is one of the nicest things a student has done for me.

When I was rearranging my desks for what seemed like the 1,000th time(the student’s love to wreck my room and they don’t ever fix it), I saw this phrase on one of them. The first thing that I thought of was Conan the Barbarian and then pictured him playing really great tennis, but then I knew that couldn’t possibly be the case. Turns out, my student was just insanely bored and was doodling about two cartoon character’s named Detective Conan and another who happens to be the Prince of Tennis. I found this out only after Phil had over 3 of his students for dinner. That’s another story all together.

I don’t play many games with my student’s, mainly because I don’t think they deserve them and also because they can never stay quiet enough, but occasionally I will try to make them happy and play a game of Hangman. This is how I try to teach them new words. Well, I had been playing Hangman for a few weeks and then stopped because I figured it was just not working the way I wanted. Boys just want to hang the man and the girls can never guess the word before the boys have hung the man. So when I stopped, there was one class that made it very obvious that they still wanted to play. They gave me the piece of paper during class one day. It says:  Y O U with the hanged man to the right of it and then AGAIN. It means You Play Hangman Again. I humored them on that day, but not since. I’m such a rotten teacher. Hehe.

This one actually made me mad – for two reasons . . . 1) they think I’m boring(only because I don’t play games and music all day) and 2) they can’t even spell their insults right.

What my students don’t know is that when I get angry it only makes their lives more of a living hell. They should really learn to keep their evil thoughts to themselves.

Soon my students will understand the definition of god by the word Gabe. Mu ah ha ha!!

This is the kicker, the icing on the cake, if you will. For those of you who don’t believe me when I say that my room is a freaking pigsty, I now provide you with the proof! I think that I am really in charge of 700 rotten little pigs. I don’t know where this trash comes from. I never see them eating, but without fail there is litter all over the classroom floor at the end of each day. It doesn’t matter if I sweep it, the trash just reappears. Oh, and this is just one corner of my room. There is another pile just like it on the other side.

I will post pictures of our trip to the Zoo soon. And I still have many other pictures I need to post as well. I’ll try to be a better blogger. Promise.

I did a search for a Halloween cat in Yahoo and this is one of the pictures that turned up. I thought it was pretty cute. It’s great when people manipulate animals and make them do outrageous things like this.(Horray Photoshop) For some reason, it totally brightens my day.

Well, if you didn’t know, Halloween doesn’t exist here in China. Sad face. I am slowly trying to bring it over though. This week I am teaching my little devils about Halloween and the whole art of Trick or Treating. Like normal, some think that it is cool, and the rest of the 700 brats think it is boring, stupid and as uninteresting as me. I actually had a student tell me to my face that he didn’t think I was interesting. How wonderful is it to hear that?

For the good students, I bought some Milk Candy. It’s pretty cheap and good if I must say so myself. I find myself sticking my hand in the bag to nick a piece a bit to often. It’s all going to my hips. I can feel it.

The fun part about teaching Halloween is that I get to scare the living heebie jeebies out of my students and feel justified doing it. When I tell them about haunted houses, I tell them that they are scary and then pick a random bored student who looks like he or she is sleeping and then scream SCARY in the ear while slamming my hands on their desk. Even the boys look like they are about to faint sometimes. The girls look like they might cry. And that really, really, makes my day a good day. I’m evil. I know. But you’d be evil too if you had to put up with their crap.

I do have a few good students, but not enough. I actually had a few of them call me Miss Cook last week and today one called me by my Chinese name – Zi Wei. I rarely hear Gabe. Mostly it is just Teacher! Teacher! I should start screaming Student! Student! and see how they like it.

But anyway, Happy Halloween. Hope some of you got my share of candy because I will be waiting patiently to get it when I finally come home in about 8 or so months – if China will let me leave that is . . .

Oh, and will someone eat a piece of Pumpkin Pie for me. I have been thinking about it all week. Nangua is Chinese for pumpkin, by-the-way. Some of Phil students gave him one. He needs to carve it soon before it starts to rot and we have to throw it out. Anyone have a funny suggestion on what to carve into it?

Post you ideas in the comment section, and if Phil likes your suggestion – I will post a picture of it after he is done.