Despite not being particularly enthusiastic about American holidays or liking candy, a couple weeks ago, I helped write a proposal in Chinese to have a Halloween party to share American culture with all the other international students. It was approved! So this Tuesday, I went with a few classmates to the nearby grocery store (Tesco) to buy lots of chocolate. Thursday during night study, we had a Halloween pizza party! Pizza is a little funny in China (there was a ma po dou fu Chinese dish flavored one for example), but it was cool. I ate lots of snickers and we played some scary games (sort of like "murder in the dark" but where you have to guess who was "killed"/tagged) and watched Despicable Me 2. All of the international students (especially from Italy, Korea, and Japan) were really into dressing up and had some wild costumes. We didn't really have access to much, so a lot of us ended up using our bed sheets to make togas. All the Chinese students thought it was so weird when we walked from our dorms to the party! It was nice to share some of our funny American traditions.
This week they put up a board beside our school walkway with pictures and stories from our military training camp last month! I thought I'd share some of the photos here, since I wasn't able to take many of my own:
This weekend, I went with my host family to their house across the river in Pudong. Usually we only go there on longer vacations, but it was a special occasion because my host sister's cousin had given birth to a baby and the celebration was this weekend!
On Friday afternoon, I visited the fancy water company that my host dad manages. His assistant gave my host sister and me a light, warm and clear pudding-like snack. My host dad wouldn't tell me what it was or how it was made until I finished it, but when I was done, I found out it was 燕窝 (yan wo) made from a swallow's nest...I'm still not really sure what that means, but apparently it is a specialty "beauty food" for women from Indonesia. Regardless, it was surprisingly tasty!
Saturday, we went to the celebration banquet! It was a lot like the weddings I've been to (bustling happy relatives eating, talking, and toasting with delicious coconut milk for hours on end). I was able to conduct some interviews for my semester research project though, which was rather productive, and I felt so honored that the father of the new baby asked me for suggestions for his daughter's English name!
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