China wedding photos uploaded to flickr photo site, access them on the right! They are to die for, really you will die.
I had drag queen eye lashes and drawn in eye brows, not to mention my huge fushia dress that was clearly 5 sizes too small for me, but we just didnt zip the back.
In china instead of getting a photographer at your wedding ceremony you go to these glamour shots type stores and have them made like this. Then you get a book and large prints made, I havent been in a chinese home where there wasnt one of these monster size over the coach in the living room , and then again over the bed. They are everywhere!! Check them out. We also went with my YueYang friends. They call Joe and I mama and papa gro, so we say there our children. We had a few family portraits. In one we are having a family kung fu fight.

Primary school.

This past weekend Joe and I got the oppertunity to teach at a few primary schools around the county and city. Joe was bused all the way to a rural county school and I was at a city one. It was saturday and these kids were made to go to these extra classes kinda like summer camp. I think basically it gives them something to do. The school I went to was sort of a trade school. all the kids were learning there own little things. In one class they were learning regular dance, in another fan dance and then also music. You could hear the traditional chinese instruments playing in the back ground, too bad i would never know if they were any good or not. The insturments kinda all sound like cats at night. ha ha
Well teaching went well my first class was 9 year olds. They were easy enough to handle and still wanted to learn english enough that they were interested and didnt act up. Its always a good day when you dont have disipline problems. The next class was the same and went well. In each class I taught about the body. I had a huge picture of a man and they labeled him, then we sang head shoulders knees and toes and played simon says. Its crazy when I taught my juniors at my own school this same lesson, this lesson was the whole period. but when I taught it to these smaller kids it went so fast i had to improve new things and games.
My third class was little little kids, like 6 or 7. ( again I must emphasis that in china kids ages are different a 3 year old in america in a chinese 5 year old. small bodies) So the first thing I asked all the kids to do was stand up say there name , where they are from , and what is there favorite fruit. Really simple because these questions are pounded into them in regular school. ask any little chinese kid on the street there name they will tell you and then when you ask them how they are they have the programed answer "fine thanks and you" So these questions should have been easy. Well they were really confused and that when I knew i would have a problem. How could i teach them the body when they barelly can say there names. Before we went on this little adventure the lady that gave us the job said well i think they are in kindergarden. well my students ranged from kindergarden till middle school, my last class was 11-13 years olds. Oh well i made the best of it and with a chinese teachers help we got through all the games and song with no problem. In each class I taught about 15-20 kids, a nice small number since i normally teach 65 in one high school classroom. Its was really funny to see how the students acted. In the older kids class there were little clicks starting. You could tell all the boys were too scared to talk to the girls and the girls being only 1 year older were not interested in even looking at the boys. The girls were at least already 4 inches taller then any one boy in the class. It was kinda funny.
Joe said he mostly taught smaller kids, but in one class he said there was a boy that just ran up every 5 minutes and punched Joe square in the "you know where", He said it happened like 20 times that lesson and he couldnt figure out why this kid thought it was so funny. We have so many chinese teaching bloopers!!

Gao Kao: well our friend billy got his test results back from the entrance exam. He said he didnt do as well as he wanted. He then explained to us that the numbering system on the test figures out what your major will be in college. So if you do well in one area you can be a certain job. He said he didnt have the grades to go into journalism ( his dream was to work for discovery channel) So now he will do international trade. Which we said was defiently good for him, because this kid could talk your ear off.

Gao kao, wedding photos and more!

Well this past week was the college entrance exam for the students all over China. Its serious buisness here and our school was a host site for all the neighboring schools to come to. Joe and I went for a walk and were greeted by hundreds of buses all coming to our school even stopping at the near by hotel just packed with kids.This test is so important that many students will send other kids to take the test for them, or somehow cheat on the test. Thats why all over our school there were police and officials over seeing everything. This test is the only thing that gets you into college here. You work for senior 1 and 2 and then your last high school year senior 3 is a complete review of the last two years. Then the last semester of senior 3 you just take practice tests after practice test. Many students drop out because of the pressure and some even commit suicide. What happens when your parents , grandparents and all your other family members are counting on you to succeed? All these family members put there money together just to send you to school? With the one child policy the pressure is even worse for that one boy or girl that will be the future to the families well fair. There are some students that come from rich families and they say that there not nervous about the test at all because there Dad will just buy them a place in a university. Ahhh it makes me sick.
We had a friend Billy who taking the test, I never saw a boy more stressed out them him. He is the one that was able to travel to America and go to an american high school. Now he is finally taking the gao kao. After the test he ran over to our house and was just so excited he couldnt even speak. When Joe and I went to the grocery store the roads in front of our school had been closed, to save the students from the noise of the cars and big trucks. WHen we went to the back gate to leave right after the test was over there were thousands of parents waiting. We asked the guard if we could squeeze threw but there literally was no where to go. So we waited. The guard then opened the huge gate and in rushed all these parents!! It was just like at the train station well the chinese train station, when you rush to get on your car. It was crazy!!!! So for our school the Gao Kao was a success, even though they had to send most of the other boarding students home, and feed and put up barriers for all the out of town students to come and take the test. Next week we are holding the Jun Kao which is the high school entrance exam, we shall see how that goes.

Well Joe and I took wedding photos yesturday. Its really popular to have these huge wedding photos above your coach and bed and basically in every room of your house here in China. You go to these studios, which happen to be on every corner of every street ( big buisness) and you wear the gowns and change into many outfits for these photo. They have really funny poses like one where you both look into the sky or the man appears to be sniffing the girl. Really hilarious. In these books there are also funny english sentences about love, but they never make any sense, the english is always really bad. We will load some of the photos when we get them next week. You will die, the outfits are hilarious, the lady put fake eyelashes and fake hair on my head, I got to also wear a fushia dress. Joe all I can say looked like a figure skater all afternoon the Yueyang girls and I called him Brian Boitano. You will just die!