New Year‘s Fireworks

When I thought about Chinese New Year, I thought parades, fireworks, dancing dragons, lanterns, and a gigantic, country wide celebration.  A party that surely rivals that in the west.  In fact, I have found that for the most part, the Chinese New Year is instead very traditional. I think of it like Thanksgiving for the west. Mostly families spend time together, and there weren't any lavish parties or dragons dancing! (Can you tell it was something I was begging to find?) I was hoping for a huge festival but it seems as though its very very traditional.

However, the bar I went to bought some ridiculously big fireworks and set them off in the street. Everywhere you looked, people were lighting off fireworks, so it was really cool to see the night sky lit up in all directions.  The video I made doesn't do the show justice, as the fireworks were SO loud. I was getting hit by shrapnel when trying to film the video - because these Chinese fireworks are the big mortar shells that most ordinary citizens in the US cant buy, but apparently its a good idea to allow everyone in China to have access to these mini sticks of dynomite! And the mighty mights?  More like thousands of miniature m80s... my ears were ringing for 2 days after.

Happy Chinese New Year! 新年快乐！

Tonight is Chinese New Year and for the Chinese people, that means loads of fireworks, dumplings, and family celebrations.  For me it means a ridiculous cab fare, a deserted city, and operation hibernation  (AKA Preperation for all restaurants and businesses to be closed for the next 3 days... and I'm conveniently out of food and clean water).  Tonight I raced down to the supermarket an hour before they closed to stock up on water, ground beef, veggies, Chicken flavored Cheetos (dont laugh - they are AMAZING) and beer.  You know, just the essentials to replenish my survival stockpile.  I sit here now with both my wallet and stamina dramatically emptier than before; a 200% cab fare hike affecting my wallet and my physical wellbeing drained after the 200 yard (felt like 200 thousand) walk carrying my weight in groceries.  Note to self - bring a suitcase to the market next time.

Tonight I am going to try my hand at making traditional dumplings.  I have made them once before with a friend, however, this will be my first attempt without a culinary guide.  I can't think of a better way to spend New Years then with a bottle of painfully strong rice alcohol (Baijiu - look it up, its killer), a plate full of dumplings, the ambience of bajiillions of fireworks brightening the evening skies and bombarding my eardrums, and oh yes, 4 bags of Chicken Cheetos.   Happy New Year (again) everyone.

And check out my Photo gallery.  I have updated some pics from the Christmas Season and also my trip to Hengshui, a city near Beijing, to join a traditional Chinese wedding.  I'm currently collecting my thoughts to blog that experience.. its a dooooozy :P

Scavenger Hunt Final Exams

** EDIT ** I have uploaded 200 of my favorite pictures to my gallery.  Check it out!  Leave a comment, what do YOU think?  

I just recently finished with the finals week from the 1st semester!  It was incredibly time-consuming and difficult, however, very interesting to experience this 'week-from-hell' from the teachers point of view.  I now know that the university is INCREDIBLY particular in how they want their final exams formatted - To the extent that the ink MUST be red, the left side of the paper must show the point awarded (+2)  , while the right side shows the points deducted (-2)  But since I didn't ask prior to giving the exam, they are stuck with my version until next semester.  I figure its better to give an interesting, useful, and unique final exam and apologize after the fact, than to ask for permission and be told no.  

For the final speaking exam, I divided each of my classes in to teams of 5 students.  Each team had at least 1 digital camera.  (Some of you know where this is going!)  I then gave them a list of vocabulary terms, slang phrases, idioms, proverbs, and other points of interest... things I had taught over the course of the semester.   They were to take a creative picture of each... the picture needed to portray the vocabulary term or phrase.  Then I assigned each team to create a PPT and present their pictures to the class.  In this way, I would be testing their speaking ability as well as their understanding of the vocabulary terms.  

I gave them complete freedom in creating their presentation.  They could act, create videos, use photoshop, use props, anything they wanted!  The most important thing to me was that they proved they understood the vocabulary.  This result, understanding of the material, is the same result as their boring, standardized tests.  The difference (I hope) is that with this format, the experience helps the students retain some of their knowledge.  In China where most university courses are lecture based, (and the final exam is worth 70% of the grade) the typical student crams a lot of information into their short-term memory, regurgitates it on the test,  and promptly forgets it the very next day.

The results were AMAZING!  It completely validated all the hard work I have done here, all of the long long hours preparing curriculum, lectures, teaching, correcting, reviewing....  I am so proud of my students.  

Most of the vocabulary terms on the test will seem random for the uninformed reader.  However, we had many classroom discussions, movies, and lectures that connected all of these seemingly random vocabulary topics into a coherent semester.  

Here is the scavenger hunt list.