Kid's Home

The Saturday before Christmas, I went with some friends to a home for kids whose parents have been sent to prison. Because the parents are still (maybe) living, they are not able to receive the funds that a normal orphanage receives. We put together some gifts for the kids, as well as some staple foods (rice, flour, oil) and headed out to throw them a Christmas party!

putting together the gifts at my apartment

Stacy frosting sugar cookies

We filled the trunk of this taxi and the trunk of a minivan full of things for them

playing duck-duck-goose!

trying to balance the ornament on the spoon blindfolded

onlooker

a cute little girl

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Making Gingerbread Houses

During Christmas week, my roommates and I made gingerbread houses with our friends. We had them bring little candies without telling them what they were going to be doing, and then got the basic necessary supplies using Chinese snacks and candies. For never having made gingerbread houses before, they did a great job! Several asked if this was something that Americans did every year, and where the tradition came from. I didn't know, so I looked it up while they were still here. Apparently the tradition of making gingerbread houses began in Germany, after Brothers Grimm published the story of Hansel and Gretel in the early 1800's.

JunZhi and YangChen

Linda and Andrew

Stacy and Angela

Victor and PengYan

Krista and me, with the remains of our not-so-sturdy house.the mess we got to clean up afterwords!

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Picture of the Day 12/18

Notice the woman using a little scraper to remove the gum from the sidewalk... with an authentic Gucci store in the background.

Tea and Snacks

These snacks and tea are from a wedding that I went to this fall. After the ceremony and before the family celebration, we waited for the bride and groom to come. While waiting, these snacks were set out.

Picture of the Day 12/13

Bookstore

Every single bookstore that I've been in has lots of this- lots of people sitting, squatting, or standing in any place they can find in order to read.

China Post

Since a friend wasn't home when the mailman tried to deliver mail to her, I took her to the post office today to show her where to get mail. Well, where to try to get mail, anyway. I haven't had a hard time getting mail, except for one note from a friend. Packages have been delivered to my door before, or I've had a note delivered telling me to go to my apartment complex's main office. Once a note was put on the inside of the elevator, and I kept riding the other elevator, so that package took a couple extra days to get! Yet another time, I had to come to the post office to pick up a package.

After arriving at the post office, in order to pick up a package or letter, we had to walk around to the back, and there are three doors, none of which are labeled. We walked in the first one, were sent to the second door, only to be sent back to the first. Last time I had to go to the third door first. When we first walked in the door, we were greeted by this:
When we finally figured out which room to go into, we had to wait for our district's mail carrier to come back from her route, because apparently she's the only one who can give us our mail. While we were waiting, we watched the sorters shuffle through the day's mail. I'm sure there's some sort of method to the madness...

Once the mail is sorted and put in the little boxes, I guess it goes here:
After 45 minutes, our mail carrier came back and dug through her bag, which had a letter that had arrived with an attempted delivery on 11/19. I'm not quite sure why she's been carrying ti around every day since then, but I didn't ask questions! When she found out where we lived, she proceeded to look through all her mail for any mail belonging foreigners that lived in the same or neighboring apartment complexes. With a copy of my friend's passport, we were given all their mail, as long as we knew them!

I love getting packages and notes in the mail, and today reminded me that it's amazing that it makes it at all!

A Wednesday Afternoon

One of my favorite things to do - get away to a coffee shop with a book (on my palm) and/or a journal to process thoughts and life in China.

Picture of the Day 12/11

I'm not really sure why I started posting pictures, but I think it's fun to show you some of what I see here, even if there's not story behind it. Hope you are enjoying them!

Picture of the Day 12/9

Picture of the Day 12/8

The view from my apartment window

12/5 Picture

12/4 Picture

Hui (Chinese muslim minority group) women

Compound Words

I'm don't want to give a grammar lesson, but I appreciate the way that Mandarin uses compound words, because it helps me remember the words. If I can take the word apart or already know a part of the whole word, it means less to remember. Compound words, by the way, are words that are formed by putting two (or more) words together. (So for example, in English, the word "sandpaper" is a compound word, because it's made up of "sand" and "paper.") Chinese is the same way, only it happens more often.

Today as I was studying, I thought some of the new vocab words made more sense if I pulled them apart. Here are some examples - see if you can guess what they mean!

• 呼吸 (hūxī) 呼=inhale, 吸=exhale

• 急诊室 (jízhěnshì) 急=urgent, 诊=diagnose, 室=room

• 开刀 (kāidāo) 开=open, 刀=knife

• 大腿 (dàtuǐ) 大=big, 腿=leg

I'll post the answers in another post :)

Picture of the Day

Xi'an's city wall at night