December in China

December has been really busy here in Weifang.  I've been designing my final exams for my college classes.  I was informed very recently that I'm having an additional 19 students sit in on my exams who failed last semester.  Of course, I have no problem with this but I am unsure how they expect to pass my exam if they did not come to any of my classes this semester, especially if they did not pass last time around.  But we will see how they do.  I am mostly worried that I will have to take papers away from students if I see them cheating, which does not seem to be as big of a deal in China as it is back in the west.  My colleagues have been giving me dire warnings all semester that they have such headaches with cheating students, as well as the fact that the administration pushes them to pass students who should be failing.  I am really not sure how all of this will play out in the next few weeks but this is what things are building up to around here.  The weather here has been crisp and cold this month, a stark contrast to the rather mild weather we had earlier in November which saw temperatures sitting at around +3 degrees in the day time and around 0 at night.  Now temperatures are usually around -10 during the day and even colder at night so we really have to be careful when crossing the street and moving around.  It snowed here only once, really, and it didn't really stick.  Apparently it doesn't really snow here very much at all but it is still visible in some places which makes the holiday season feel a bit more festive.  I don't know why, but some of the photos did not attach properly to this post and I really wanted to show you a comedic, ginormous inflated Santa balloon that is seen hanging in one of the malls in our neighbourhood.  I don't think you would ever see something like this in the west but it is just HUGE.  I also wanted to post pictures from a little outing two nights ago, when myself and a few others went for dim sum and then saw a movie, Life of Pi, at a different mall.  That movie was AMAZING everyone should go see it!  It's magical.  Too bad social more around making noise in movie theaters are radically different in China than they are in the west.  We had to use our "teacher voices" to get a really disrespectful and obnoxious man to stop talking so loudly on his cell phone half the time.  I think most people were thankful those white folk were telling him to keep quiet.  I would go see that movie again, mostly because it is in 3D, but also because the ending of the story is so touching.  Internet in our apartment has not been working for the past several days which has really been a nuisance.  I really wanted to post some more articles to this blog but of course that hasn't happened because of it.  One of the other UBC co-op students is leaving in two days to go home back to Canada since her co-op term is finished, so we are all sad to see her go.  We will all be doing something together tonight and I think some holiday parties are in order (I am hearing of an "end-of-the-world" party on December 21st!  How creative!)  There's also a big dinner planned tomorrow for all the foreign teachers at Weifang University and everyone's going.  So everyone's really excited to be seeing the end of term coming up and the holidays approaching.  Of course, it has me feeling a tad homesick, knowing that all of my family is together in Whistler and skiing on fresh snow (fresh snow is not always so abundant in Whistler every December) from Facebook.  But we have also booked flights for our big February trip to Guilin so we are really excited about that.  I have posted some of the photos below so you can see what life is like for me in December in China.

The trees in our neighbourhood certainly look the part, don't they?  I remember all the leaves dropped in a span of about two days.

I got a haircut two days ago.  Wanted you all to see it!  I've been getting a few complements on it! 

Way before I got my haircut. I usually wear a toque in this cold weather.

This is at the Korean restaurant, Beautiful Ground, near the university, which is probably the most popular place for foreigners to meet for lunch.  Funny how it's only open for about 3 hours every day during lunch.  It's packed in there at noon so sometimes we can't get a table.  The tables and chairs are really cute and covered in painted images of flowers and hearts and they are so small for us tall foreigners but we love it there.  The food is delicious.  You'll see some of it in a second.

Ilya and I sometimes take crazy photos of ourselves. 

Ilya.

And Ilya again.

OK so this is a pretty dramatic image I came across in the downtown area of the city.  This abandoned structure has been an eyesore in the Tai Hua area of the city ever since I've been here 3, no about 4 months ago (I CAN'T BELIEVE IT HAS ALREADY BEEN THIS LONG!) Anyway, it's really nice to see them tearing it down.  That day it was really foggy in the city and everything looked really pretty and dramatic in the fog.  I think this was around the time it snowed.

Looking in the direction of that construction site, you can see downtown buildings emerging through the fog and a ginormous purple Christmas tree in the foreground.

In front of the construction there are large red blown up tube shaped balloons bent in a semicircle fashion to mark the entrance of the mall (which is to the left).

A foggy look into the university grounds.

This is one of my favourite meals in the cold winter months.  A bowl of boiling hot water with egg, tomato, and cilantro is perfect, along with those sandwichy looking things you may be wondering about.  Well those are actually a kind of savoury pastry or dough that is flaky and stuffed inside with Donkey meat, a hot kind of pepper, and a paste made with the fat and gravy of the meat and some other spices.  It is truly a delicious delicacy in China and I know I will miss it when I come home.

Ah here it is, the picture of the food I wanted to show you from the Korean place.  On the left is a bowl of spicy soup of some kind.  Hard to describe the taste, but it is truly a burning addiction in the winter.  It comes with some noodles, seeds, an egg, and veggies.  Since it's not enough for me for lunch, I also usually order the dish you see on the right, maybe it's a bit hard to see, but it's a Korean authentic dish made with rice, vegetables (carrots, cabbage, a kind of vegetable that's not bok choy but reminds of it, and a long kind of fungus.  There's also some sort of tasty really crunchy veg in there that has a head and is long and spindly and thick but I have no idea what it is and I have never seen it before).  There's a hot sauce poured over the whole thing, with nuts and seeds sprinkled on top, and then a raw egg cracked on top.  It's heated in an oven so that when it arrives at the table it's sizzling and piping hot.  You mix it all in so that the egg cooks on the hot steel dish it's cooked in and you get a really tasty meal.  Probably my favourite meal here.

About a week ago I was enjoying myself at home watching TV on my laptop (before the internet cut out) and I had a snack consisting of that imported cheese you probably heard me raving about on Facebook, Ritz crackers (also imported) and apple slices.  BAHAHA the funniest thing just happened, I am currently sitting in Starbucks, writing this (because, no internet at home) and there is a window next to me with a hallway on the other side leading to the mall.  A man was walking into the mall and just completely did a double-take and leaned down to get a good luck at me through the window (there's a poster in the way right at my eye level).  I've had looks but none quite as shocked as this man's face when I instinctively looked back at him.

This mesmerizing pattern caught my eye as I was walking home one day from one of my classes on the university grounds.

I'll post more of those photos I was telling you about later.  Bye for now!