2007 Happy New Year Wishes

So, its been a while.

I think it was around the same time that I was infected by this ridiculous cold that has STILL not gone away! Like I mentioned earlier, there is definitely some sort of Christmas spirit here. There are Santa Claus' and Christmas decorations all over the place. The foreign teachers were invited by the president of the university to go to lunch on Christmas day. Once again, it was more of a last-minute invitation which seems to be the common method of "planning" ahead. So we had lunch with the Dean of the English Department, the Vice president of the university, the director of the English Department/foreign teacher affairs and the teacher who is in charge of managing the coursework for the foreign teachers. Then us four foreign teachers went out to Christmas dinner with our students. I had fun destroying little Santa Claus'. There must have been something really strange in the water! Hehe. Ironically enough, the English department teachers were once again invited to the SAME restaurant (where we had our Christmas dinner)to celebrate the New Year's (Yes, they celebrate New Year's here and even have a 3-day holiday!) and we occupied at least 6 tables!! I guess it really helps to know what you're ordering when you go to a restaurant---it really changes your dining experience! Matthew invited the foreign teachers and some students to his place on New Year's eve. He made hamburgers (I had a veggie burger--just bread and other veggies), and kneaded jiaozi (dumplings) and I made some potato salad. It was fun! Unfortunately, I had a cough-attack during the end of the evening so I went back home earlier (which is just 2 flights of stairs--hehe).

So most of my 3-day New Year holiday was spent at home sleeping, taking medicine and coughing! ;( I went to the antique market (Panjiayuan) with Matthew not too long ago and was really impressed by the antique goodies such as snuff bottles, ethnic embroidery and figurines. I was also quite enthralled by the amount of jewelry beads and pearls! I have yet to create them! ;) I wish I could find toggle clasps and more selection of findings and seed beads (or "rice" beads). I'm sure they're around here somewhere. There seems to be this trend of everything made in China doesn't STAY in China!

I'll update my pictures soon. They're mostly in my Flickr account.

Happy New Year's 2007!

The internet has been incredibly slow lately...so it makes me not want to update my journal.

That reminds me--I went to my first movie at a Chinese movie theatre! ;) I saw "Huang Jin Jia (The Curse of the Golden Flower)." It has Chow Yun Fat, Gong Li and Jay Chou in it. It was really touching but, aye, what a scandalous family! And it was worth the 70 Yuan to see it (Although that's like 12 rip-off DVDs)!