The Week of Four Thanksgivings!

Monday, November 21st—I wanted to give myself a "sick day" so badly today when I woke up, but I resisted somehow. The students in my "big class" (about 5 years old) were quite amusing before their lesson...there were a few hectic minutes when half of the kids were ready while the others were still using the bathroom, and no Chinese teacher was around to make them behave, so they swarmed me with hugs and questions and goofiness (this happens from time to time). I could understand some of the basic Mandarin they were using, we talked about my clothes and whether each item was brought in America or China...the funniest thing I could understand was this little morsel: "Julie, you're not Chinese, are you?" That's basically how it translates, and I laughed so hard before telling the confused little chap that no, I definitely am NOT Chinese :D During my long lunch break today, 3 former students of mine called me to say hello. I talked with Share, Kelsee and Beryl (from class 10B) for about ten minutes...it was sweet that they called to say hi :) Before study tonight, we had dinner with Grace and "John Wayne" (yup, that's his English name). Our friend Peter brought along "Mary," one of his friends, for her second time ever, and Grace brought one of her young students along for her first time...a 15-year-old girl. Pretty cool :) We discussed b*ptism tonight, got difficult questions as usual, and as usual, answered them with HIS help!

Here we are: Team Wuhan! From left to right: Baby Dave, Jess, Andrea, Aaron, Brian (back row), Kelsey, Sarah, Jonathan, Sherry and Adam (our shepherd and wife), Peter, Darin, Andy, myself, Nicole, Beth, and Tony (non-FoC, but he's pretty tight with our group)

Tuesday, November 22nd—Today instead of most of my classes, I had to "help" escort the kiddies on their 5-minute walk to the nearby park, where they'd be performing for "Sports Day." I think I was more of a distraction than an assistance...I held one child's hand on the walk, and stood next to the herd I was supervising while they impatiently waited for THEIR turn to perform. And when kids come up to me, wanting to try talking, play a game, or goof around, I usually won't resist, especially when A) I can't really talk to them much and B) I'm a bit resentful about being dragged along to Sports Day practice anyways ;) On our walk back, the kids asked me once again whether or not I was Chinese, and we took turns showing how much English/Chinese we could use. We had lots of "conversations" about trees, the park, houses, and airplanes, whether or not things were beautiful, and whether or not I liked each student :p Wendy, the girl holding my hand, asked "Julie, ni xihuan bu xihuan wo?" (Do you like me or not?) I responded yes, of course, and then she went down the line of students, asking whether I liked them (again, of course they all were "yes"s). As cute and fun as those little convos are, they can't compare to the relationships with students I had last year...my old student Jennifer called tonight to talk about her classes and life, and ask how I was doing. Aww!

Wednesday, November 23rd-- Today at school, most of my classes were cancelled due to silly Sports Day *shudder* In the afternoon I went shopping with Andrea for some Chr*stmas decorations. I came over to help her bake some pies for her students, and we'd originally planned to get dinner with our friend Shirly, but my stomach started acting up, so we cancelled. Andrea made me some toast, and I watched "Dirty Dancing." Some days are just like that, in America or China ;)

Lovely decorations outside a shopping mall near our place.

Thursday, November 24th— In this week of Four Thanksgivings, the first one that took place was on Sunday, with our pie and bucket of KFC. This second one, on actual Thanksgiving, was pretty subdued. I got a few nice texts from friends, including my usually sarcastic friend Mike, who sincerely thanked me for my friendship and help to him. It brightened my day, when I'd been feeling a bit homesick. In the evening, Kelsey, Brian and I had Thanksgiving dinner at...McDonald's! A first (and hopefully a last, though the burgers were good of course) :) I'm thankful for two easygoing and cool friends close by, among many other things!

The merry-go-round/ magenta Christmas tree reminds me a lot of the fake trees on the Charlie Brown special :)

Friday, November 25th—I'll try to keep this as toned-down as possible...the air in Wuhan is not clean. Andrea told me that every day here does the equivalent of 11 cigarettes' worth of damage to your lungs. So, it's not unusual that I wake up in the morning with...things in my throat that need to be...expelled. This was one of those mornings that actually made me physically sick (it doesn't happen every day, but has happened several times since I've been here). Really not wanting to supervise Sports Day when I knew I'd be doing nothing, and thinking that throwing up (sorry) was a valid excuse, I called my boss, who was surprisingly quite understanding! After a morning of relaxing, I got some beef noodle soup, ran an oven-moving errand with Kelsey (Andrea'd borrowed ours...ovens are usually quite tiny here, but still a hassle to carry, hehe), and shopped for pie-baking ingredients and supplies.

Sophia and her students making apple pies for their first time ever! They did well!

My former co-teacher, Sophia arrived to our part of the city around 5:00 tonight. I met her two sweet students (they had great English and were so polite), and we had dinner (a sweet soup, beef and veggies, and some spicy shellfish that Andrea and I looooove) before walking over to my place and experiencing a bit of Americana together :D The girls' foreign teacher had just told them about apple pie, but that was the first time for any of them to have the fun of getting your hands a little dirty and baking one from scratch. I walked everyone through it, and we chatted and turned out some delicious treats!

The finished product--which turned out more like apple crisp than apple pie--was quite tasty!

I was worried that the girls might get bored while the pie was baking, so I'd gotten out some drawing stuff just in case...but they saw Kelsey's collection of Harry Potter DVDs and were immediately occupied until it was time to chow down! All three said they loved it, but one girl left most of it in her plate, so it must not have been her thing-- lots of Chinese people find American food (especially desserts) too sweet! After they left, I met up with Brian, Kelsey, and their friends Shawn & Allie (two fellow Chr*stians from Texas). They had us over at their festively decorated apartment for Chr*stmas music, games, wine, and laughter. And there you have Thanksgiving number three!!!

I don't believe the carousel was available for rides, sadly.

Saturday, November 26th—After sleeping in nice and late today, I got a text from Sharon (the daughter of my friendly black taxi driver, a girl who I've had a couple r*lgious talks with, but have never met) asking about why Chr*stians pr@y, and what she should pr@y about. A cool way to start the morning! After chatting with my sister Maria and doing some cleaning around the apartment, Kelsey and I jammed out to Chr*stmas music and decorated our place with tons of stuff left behind by Brian and Aaron (thanks guys!), as well as decorations we'd gotten from a couple stores. With an artificial tree, tinsel, and lots of snowflakes and such, we made a nice winter wonderland here (stay tuned for pictures)! Andrea and I grabbed dinner together, and then shopped for ingredients to use in preparing our part of Sunday's Thanksgiving feast! Stuff for my stuffing (haha) was easy to come by, but it took awhile to talk with the butcher at the store to get the right cuts of chicken Andrea needed for her dish. We pointed at chicken thighs behind the display, used Chinese and sign language to communicate which ones we wanted, and then confusedly waited as butchers from the back brought up giant, frozen chunks of meat that looked NOTHING like what we wanted, and hacked them into pieces, bones and all. Eventually we figured out that they didn't have enough thighs for what we wanted, and so they got some from the back...and rather than unrolling them and giving us them piece by piece, they thought it would be better to cut them length-wise? It was confusing, and funny, and we had some chuckles with the butchers and each other...but it worked out :) Back at our apartment, we cooked up stuffing and BBQ chicken!

Our FoC potluck--barbecued chicken, hot dogs and bacon, rolls,  scalloped corn, stuffing, tons of fruit and veggies, mashed potatoes, candied yams, and pies (not pictured) :)

Sunday, November 27th—Brian, Kelsey and I DASHED to catch the 703 bus to ch*rch this morning, and were delighted to be the first three on it! I don't think that's ever happened to me in Wuhan before...for one whole trek between stops, it was just we 3 foreigners on the bus. I think it gave mild shocks to those who entered the bus later though :) Jess and I left right after the first ch*rch service to get mashed potatoes ready for our potluck. We headed to a local vegetable market, where the usual stares were compounded by one of our bags (containing 10ish potatoes) breaking, and the large quantity that we purchased! Of course this must mean that those two foreigners also want 40 ears of corn, let's harass them!!! It's interesting at marketplaces like this, because there's a good chance you will hear "Wuhan hua," the local dialect, instead of Mandarin Chinese. It's also frustrating because I cannot understand ANY of it. Jess has been taught a little bit though and could pick up bits and pieces of conversations...most people in Wuhan can speak both the local language and the national, but some older or uneducated people might only know Wuhan hua, and groups of friends all from Wuhan will probably speak only in the local dialect also. After tons of preparations, smells, sneaking tastes, and whatnot, our FoC group sat down to a huge, quite American, Thanksgiving feast! True to form, we started by singing a hymn, pigged out and then napped/watched a movie/played games. And that was Thanksgiving number four!!! Praise be to HIM who has given us more than we could ever comprehend!

Keepin' it classy, as always!