Guanggu...joy?

Well, I really wanted that to be an alliterative title, but it's been a long day and I can't think of an appropriate word-starting-with-g to express having a good time shopping with friends.  Gregarious at Guanggu? Nah.  Oh, I guess I could have just said good times at Guanggu...

Anyhow, due to summer vacation, then bedrest, it had amazingly been three months since I had been to Guanggu, the center of the universe or at least the center of our little neighborhood of it. 

After having a 9study in the morning, our group split into two factions based on lunch preference.  One group headed to Subway while Micah, Tammy, Jim, Kaila and I were thinking Papa John's.  Amy tagged along as far as the bus stop, but decided it was too much trouble to drag around her laptop all afternoon and headed back. 

We kept the waitress busy bringing us massive amounts of garlic butter sauce, which we drowned everything in.  It's nice to get a fix of American cheese, butter, and bread now and then. 

Micah wanted to look for some elusive shirt he persists in thinking he will find here, so Tammy and I followed along, ostensibly to shop as well but really not to miss an opportunity of heckling Micah while he tried to shop. (I'm sure he really values our opinions on his clotthing choices...snort. I say helpful things like "Get the neon orange one!")

Micah's shirt remained elusive, and I ended up being the only one to buy anything.  It's rare I find anything in China as I am built very different from the women here, but I found a navy blue sweater with white dots that I am really excited about. 

Outside I expressed my enjoyment of being able to go shopping and traipsing around again by taking pictures (really, that's how I celebrate just about anything).  I was in a silly mood, but I did make an effort to be normal in one, for Tammy's sake. 

Belated Birthday Cake

Micah is one of those people who keeps his birthday quiet; I only found out last year because I just happened to get curious and ask, and it turned out that it was his birthday that very day.  What are the odds?? Well, I guess I can answer that, 1 in 365, I suppose.

This year I intended to annoy him by whispering the secret to all our friends so they could embarrass him in song and also make a cake. Well, the cake part didn't embarrass him, he even specified that he wanted chocolate. 

Unfortunately, I was in the middle of bedrest on his birthday, and couldn't get out to buy butter and sugar.  Besides that, he had a cold. So I told him to take a rain check. 

This past Saturday, though, I was in a cooking mood, and we had friends coming over to watch The Dark Knight (part of the on-going campaign to lessen my ridiculously long list of I-can't-believe-you-haven't-seen-that-have-you-been-under-a-rock movies).  So I took the opportunity to finally bake a chocolate cake.  It's more of a surprise two weeks late, right?

Just a note on the pictures: I was going for taste, not presentation...the candles are supposed to be in the shape of an m but you can't really tell.

Halloween Hijinks

Okay, that title sounds extremely corny. 

Anyhow, it's the week of Halloween, and my busiest week of classes yet.  I have nine classes this week, but eight of them are the same lesson. 

One thing I really enjoy about teaching English in China is teaching about culture, and the most fun lessons are usually about holidays.  And the students are so appreciative of any effort to liven things up with pictures and props...seriously, it'll probably be a bit of a let-down if I teach in the states again...you can't beat walking into a classroom and being greeted with a chorus of OOoohs and having so many camera phones turned towards you that you start to understand how movie stars feel on the red carpet. 

So this week I'm celebrating Halloween and amusing my students by dressing as a witch for class.  This was an easy costume as I already seem to have nearly every article of clothing in black, including a voluminous black jacket with a swirling velvet pattern that reaches nearly to my knees, making quite good witch robes. I think my mom found it at a yard sale. Micah found a witch hat at Wal-mart the other day, which I just remembered in class that I forgot to pay him back for. 

I also found a pumpkin large enough to carve-not an easy feat here where pumpkins are just another vegetable to be eaten.  They don't have much need of huge ones since a small one is plenty to make a side dish for a family meal.  However, it's actually good that I have a very small jack-o-lantern; much easier to carry to class.  The students have never seen one in person before, so jack got his share of paparazzi, too.

I voted for this post-apocalyptic "Radioactive" cover to win Response of...