Mid-Autumn Happy Festival

No school today, Monday Sept. 8.
Here is how the holiday is described on the bulletin board at the back of one of my classes:

Get together with family, sit around the table beneath the star and round bright moon with lots of delicious food, especially moon cakes. Children playing in yard, some sitting beside their grandparents and listening to the old region of change. Every year in this day, the moon will be exceptionally clear and bright. When the people who work far away from home cannot get back look at the moon with their family. They always start to miss each other and see the same moon...

So for dinner tonight the principal has invited a bunch of the newbies over to his flat to have dinner and we will look at the moon together. Unfortunately, it is cloudy and rainy today so I think we'll have to imagine it...

Yesterday I went to the Wild Goose Pagoda with Jake and Sky:

It was built during the Ming Dynasty to house Buddha writings and relics. You may notice it leaning slightly to the side, but not as bad as the leaning tower of Pisa! The grounds around it are well-kept and it has nice gardens - it's the first time I've seen any birds in China other than the little sparrows that are around the city. It is 50 Yuan to get into the park and another 30 to climb to the top (which we did). There are many old documents and relics on display - Sky commented that he could not read the ancient Chinese as the symbols are all different.

Outside of the park area is the Xián fountain. It is supposedly the largest fountain in Asia - I can tell you that it is extremely long - 3 football fields? At 9 every night they do a light show with the fountains to music:

The night scene there was very festive with lots of families. Jake, being a tall westerner, gets requested to have his photo taken with lots of people. He's getting a big head...

I had my first experience with a "squattie". It's the toilet that's basically a hole in the ground. They don't have toilet paper in the bathrooms either so you carry it with you or they'll sell you some. I didn't have any so I bought some and then entered the bathroom from hell. Luckily I finished without falling over or passing out from the smell! If I could have waited I would have!

Returning back from the fountain there were 5 of us looking for a taxi. No one was picking us up but an illegal taxi stopped and offered a ride. Another teacher once got caught in an illegal taxi and the police let him go but the driver gets in serious trouble. Anyways, we made it home, but not before driving through the diciest areas of town I've seen yet! Certainly the legal taxis don't take that route! We were all joking about being abducted and robbed and it made for an entertaining ride home...

Go Ducks!!!