moon cakes and mandarin

found a cockroach last night.

welcome to lanehouse life.

oh well.

had a shower and the entire shower head suddenly broke on me! the joys of renting!

but i have a gorgeous landlady who is fixing it today, they took me out for dinner the night before with the family. No one spoke a work of english and my mandarin is appalling, but we had a great time, me acting like a clown using my hands an awful lot to gesture how i was feeling, and making a HUGE mess on the table and laughing about it. I ate what I thought was a green capsicum, turned out to be a massive chilli pepper...eyes watering severly, face red and sweaty, least i made them laugh....They wanted to buy me goose liver and jelly fish soup but i declined...hopefully I haven't offended them....



It's mid autumn festival at the moment too, one of the two most important festivals in China (the other is New Year). This is when the moon is at its fullest. All the teachers were given moon cakes yesterday in a big red box that weighs a tonne.

Moon cakes are small cakey things (wow, what a description) with squishy sweet bean paste inside, and the occasional egg, sometimes jewellary! random, and apparently you can buy some for thousands of dollars to show your wealth when you give it as a gift.
Well, I bought one like this from the corner store for 1.50RMB so if that's saying anything .....



but the beany taste is growing on me. In fact I am eating food i would NEVER eat back in NZ. Like those bubble drinks. They grossed me out, floaties in your tea...now I cant have enough!! Funny how you adapt...but I still can't face the pigs trotters...



It was Teachers Day yesterday in China. We were all given red roses by the principal at assembly! hehe. Very sweet. I still can't believe I am a teacher, and I have a lot of learning to do but its great cos I feel like thats the best place to be, an equal to my students! I am responsible for the 'values of the month' showings at assembly which is basically a three to five minute play from the kids about compassion, or fairness, truthfulness...etc.. so its gonna be a fun year of virtue filled drama. just gotta find interesting ways to make it come alive and not naf and cliched. My mind is running wild with my obsession with shadow puppetry, mask work, short films, you name it...but we have limited resources and budgets...

oh well...where there's a will, there's a way....