万圣节！ (Happy Halloween!)

南瓜灯(jack-o-lantern)！ The kids get really excited about these

I felt like a good 外教 (foreign teacher) for inserting some Halloween festivities into school. First, there was the above jack-o-lantern which mysteriously disappeared the weekend after it was made. Then I decided the classroom needed decorating, so some of these construction paper jack-o-lanterns appeared on the walls.

paper jack-o-lanterns around the room! No time to add spiders and cobwebs 😦

I also made a Halloween vocabulary handout that included cartoons depicting the difference between ‘trick’ and ‘treat’.

When Ms. Xu, one of the other English teachers, found out I was making jack-o-lanterns, she brought two pumpkins from her aunt (阿姨). Well, one was a pumpkin and one was more of a neat squash-gourd thing. I’m not really sure what the category of 南瓜 (pumpkin) includes here in China.

I like that it looks like the orange one is laughing at the worried one.

I gave the insides to the kitchen staff since I didn’t have time to do anything with them. Carving the pumpkins made me think of how delicious they are … I’m going to have to buy some to eat sometime.

Ha ha

Some of the kids had made masks for today – although most of their masks were more masquerade style :). I visited the 1st and 3rd grade classes as a ghost today and had the kids knock on the classroom door so I could open it and they could say “trickortreat!” I didn’t go myself, but the other teachers assured me that the 2nd grade class was also given Halloween candy. Somewhere, there is a picture of the kids with their masks that I will try to obtain from the other teachers and post.

Halloween also gave me a good reason to leave candies on the other teachers’ desks. The teachers here often bring food for everyone, and I think I am behind in the amount of food I have brought for others. More about food and gifts in a different post though.

These kids are about to knock on the classroom door and demand candy from me. (photo by Ms. Xu)

Happy Halloween!

Kid and amazing horse-vehicle

I went to see a Chinese wedding (post coming soon!) and while the wedding party was taking pictures in a park, I saw this kid and his awesome toy.

Kid keeps going and going and going ….

Nothin gonna stop him.

Today in China

a typical western-style doughnut. In China.

Today in China, Tracy went to the popular pastry shop Bread Talk and bought a doughnut. It looked like a doughnut and tasted like a (fresh) doughnut. She bought the doughnut on her way through a shopping mall. She was going through the shopping mall in order to get to Walmart (沃尔玛). While she stopped on the second floor of the mall, took a picture of the doughnut, and reflected on what a cultural experience this was, she noticed that “Speak Now,” a song from Taylor Swift’s 2010 album of the same name, was playing loudly from the nearby fashion clothing shop. Yep. Today in China.

Brilliant English

The Brilliant English Program is a specialty of Wujiang Pearl School. I know, because I am creating it.

Just before the recent National Holiday, 王老师 asked if I would design a cover for the special program binders that Brilliant English students would get. I don’t think I have a copy of my original design, since I gave it to 王老师. She needed a design fairly quickly, and I am a little slow at computer-generating art (and I thought my Inkscape was broken). So, I sketched a design inspired by the sort of chest-swelling accomplishment that I imagined a ‘Brilliant’ English program ought to achieve, on the understanding that the concept would be turned over to someone else who would use it to make the actual final cover design. My concept design included a title hastily written in Italic calligraphy, credit to the school, and an earth with a gloriously beaming sun rising up out of the east. Lacing the bottom edge were a banner made of flags of English-speaking countries, to symbolize international connections.

Things to bring: Sticky Tack or Painters Tape

The kids go nuts over this

If you come to China, especially to teach English, bring some kind of Sticky Tack. I actually bought this here, but I forgot where. It may have been at the Wallmart or some other large, Western-ish department store. The kids seem fascinated by it. 王老师 recently asked me where I got it in a way that sounded like it was a foreign item. I said if I found more, I’d get her some. I’m thinking of giving some to the kids as prizes.

In general, if you think you might want to hang something on a wall – be it a classroom or your own wall, bring some kind of sticky tack or painters’ tape or other non-harmful-to-walls kind of tape. China has loads and loads of double-sided tape that they seem to use on walls, but … it gets all over your fingers after a while.

Getting to know you

Yes, like the song from The King and I

Yesterday, instead of hurrying off to whatever task or errand or document-checking or lesson preparations I usually tended to after lunch, I wandered through the sunny courtyard area between buildings where the kids play during post-lunch recess. Chinese kids have to get pretty serious pretty fast in school, so they don’t have much free play time. The time they do have is probably precious.

I just finished a post about the one-month school assembly that happened on Sept 30th. The post is located there, chronologically. Or, click here to view it.

Surprise Day

So, today was Saturday. The previous week was off of school for the National Holiday. I was told previously that we would have work this weekend to make up for the holiday time off. I sort of assumed this would take the form of some kind of teacher in-service day.

So, I was a little unprepared to hear the sounds of small children in the morning when I walked over to the office. I didn’t even bother to get breakfast because I assumed the cafeterias would be closed since there were not masses of children to feed. Oops.

Cute things store: how I came to own an octopurse

So, I’ve been trying to work on some posts including the recent National Holiday for the 62nd anniversary of the founding of the PRC, as well as a post about the recent School Assembly for the one-month-of-school celebration. There will also have to be posts about going to visit TongLi (同里), Suzhou (苏州), and Shanghai (上海). However, none of those are happening tonight, because tonight I was fighting with internet things, aided by Kraytul’s valiant remote tech support (you can check his homemade blog for brief summaries of things I haven’t gotten to yet).


Therefore, to make us all feel better (especially me), tonight’s post is pictures of CUTE THINGS that we bought at a store filled with ADORABLE soft objects in Suzhou!