School on Friday and Today's Fieldtrip

Yesterday we had another normal day at school. We went to Art class where we learned about paper cutting which is a traditional chinese folk art. When you see a finished paper cutting it looks so perfect and easy but in reality when I tried to do it mine looked horrible. I attempted a rooster with many designs cut out in the middle but it didn't go very well. But it was a fun experience. Other people tried other things like hearts, birds, and the teachers did roosters also.

After that we went to Cicily's English class. Cecily was one of the teachers who came to America this year with the Chinese students. It was fun we learned about Chinese holidays and answered questions about America. An interesting comment I heard Toni get was "You should tell the American Government that Tibet belongs to China". I learned that the CHinese National Holiday is October 1, like our 4th of July. It's a big deal here though, students get 5 days vacation although Lisa only gets 3 days off because her school doesn't like giving vacation.

Then we had lunch and went to a DVD store where they had movies for 6 yuan. I got to give some of my gifts away to some friends. Also we cheered on Mr. Nelson while he had 7 ice cream cones. It was quite a feat. We got them from the school cafeteria and somebody else would get them for him but by the 4th purchase of an Ice Cream cone the cafeteria people had caught on and word spread so we would look up at them and they would be staring back at Mr.Nelson cheering him on. It was really amusing and he'd probabally kill me if he knew I put this on here.

After Chinese class, I got to go to Chemistry class with a girl. She didn't seem to concerned about learning, instead she spent the entire class talking to me. On one piece of paper we had fun translating a paragraph into 4 different languages- french, english, chinese, and spanish. She ended up learning how to introduce herself in french and spanish!

After school we all went to the 7th floor to watch some students practice their music. We saw the orchestra which consisted of girls playing a harplike instrument. It's a traditional Chinese instrument and it was beautiful it made me want to learn. Then we saw the band which was similar to an American band only it was smaller- maybe 20 people.

Today we went on a field trip to do some shopping and see an Art Museum. I had already been to the place where we went shopping before with Lisa but it was still fun. The stores are tiny and cheap and there's lots of them. I ended up buying some new shoes for the winter.

An observation I have to make is that people smoke everywhere- in the taxi, in a restaurant, on the streets, in homes, and in stores sometimes. Don't think you can escape, cause you can't.

We ate lunch at a chinese restaurant and had the chinese version of a pizza it was pretty much the same and delicious since I was so hungry. And we had these egg quiche things too that were good too.

After lunch we went to the Art Museum. It was pretty much a cylinder and you went around a circle to see the art, and there were exhibition halls too. The art was pretty, and different from Western art in that it's more ink and prints and less bulky paint. Also, not all the paintings are framed, and the style is different. Overall the art was pretty.

Then we came home. It was raining all day so the traffic was pretty bad. But then Lisa and I went to Starbucks and the Grocery Store. I got a chinese CD that I'm listening to. It's a mix of popular Chinese artists. It's pretty good I like it.

Tomorrow we're going to Moslem street again and the city wall.