Dinner #2

This dinner included spaghetti, with roasted tomato sauce. We also had broccoli cream soup. Aaron made stuffing from scratch, including the croutons. We also had egg plant again, a favorite. As an appetizer, we had salted peanuts.

New York Gala

Yale-China celebrates its 100th anniversary this year with its teaching fellowship. Most of us flew out to New York to attend the weekend festivities.

I met up with Mike and Andrew! We ate at Yum Yum Too, a delicious thai restaurant.


The Friday event was a health panel about "China's Contributions to Global Health." Sam J was my date!


Jeff, a former fellow in Changsha, came in from New Jersey to have lunch with me, and we went to the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA). Yale-China has an exhibit right now in celebration of its 100 years. We were very proud.


The grand gala event was Saturday from 5:30-10:30 pm. Skylar, my friend from Concert Band, came down from Yale to attend the celebration as well.


Mayor Bloomberg was invited to the 100th anniversary. Unfortunately, he was unable to attend...

... so he declared that day as Yale-China Association Day!


The evening had a few panels featuring alumni of the teaching fellowship.


These are some of the pictures from Pratt House where the celebration was.








This was my French Connection dress, which I was so excited to wear!


Our flights to and from New York on Continental Airlines featured individual screens with hundreds of movies and tv shows to choose from. A+ Continental!


We flew over Greenland and you could see the edge of the sun's glow in the horizon.


On the flight, we had Haagan Dazs for the mid-flight snack!


That's all for now! Tonight we rest in Shanghai at a friend's house. I will be back with more pictures!

Hongcun

Chris came to visit this week for his Mid-Autumn Festival break. We decided to go to Hongcun, a renowned ancient village in Anhui, not far from Xiuning. This was also a filming site for the Chinese movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."



Hongcun, with its picturesque scenery, is a popular place for art students to practice and study. We asked where these students were from, and they told us that they were from Hefei University. It's a good four-hour bus ride from Hefei to Hongcun, so it says a lot that students would travel so far for this bit of nature.




"Moon Pond"...


Ancient houses were built with open roofs in a courtyard, which seemed to act like a living room.


Ancient love seat?

Mid-Autumn Festival

Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節), a Chinese holiday, is similar to Thanksgiving in that everyone goes home and has a great meal together. For the holiday this year, I went to Mr. Wang's house to have dinner with his family. (Mr. Wang is our school liaison, and he often takes care of us like a father would his children.) We had moon cakes (月餅) as an appetizer!


Mr. Wang


Mr. Wang's three-month-old grandson


Mr. Wang's mother and her kitchen (this is her house, not Mr. Wang's).


The back of the house, which has an open ceiling--typical of older houses in China.


It was a wonderful evening, though I was very hesitant to try the toads and many different meats. On the night of the full moon, Chinese people often gaze at the moon and think of loved ones who live far away. Though distance separates us, we gaze at the same moon.

但願人長久
千里共嬋娟

Dinner #1

I made bread yesterday. It took two hours of waiting for the dough to rise and then 30 minutes cooking in the oven. It turned out pretty well! I also made a roasted garlic olive oil dip with balsamic vinegar.


We also made broccoli cream soup and eggplant (茄子) with peanuts! For a side dish we had cucumbers with sesame oil and vinegar. Everything was delicious and even more wonderful because we made it ourselves.


We also had a dinner with Drake Pike, a Yale-China board member, and his wife, Sally, a lawyer in Hong Kong.

An American Goes to China... again.

After a refreshing summer at home...


...I have returned to Xiuning for another year of teaching.

We had our kick-off orientation in Hong Kong again. Chris, Zoe, and I went to Hong Kong Disneyland. It was fun!!


We welcomed six new fellows to the program. Our last meal in Hong Kong was a seafood dinner at Lamma Island, complete with staff and special guests.


The new fellows are Doug...


and Aaron...


Brendan came to visit only a week later to make sure we were settling in and also to chat with Mr. Wang. Mr. Li, a Gao 3 English teacher, joined us for dinner.


Our school's opening ceremony is tomorrow. Zoe and I will be making a short speech, which we're really excited about to read for the 2,000+ students and administrators... in Chinese!!

Will report back soon!

Annie

The reason there has not been a post recently...