This is China...

A few of the things that have recently caused me to smile, shake my head, and think "only in China..."

• We were informed this week that we needed to give our FAO our May holiday plans by this weekend (April 13th). Considering May holiday is always at the beginning of May, this seems like a perfectly reasonable request. However, we have yet to find out when May hoilday is. Well yes, we know the general vicinity of the holiday, sometime around the first of the month. But the actual dates? We were informed in that same memo asking for our plans that the school would make a decision around April 20th when the holiday would take place. The only possible response is to chuckle...
• The team was quite excited with the discovery at the end of last semester of cans of spaghetti sauce at a local store. This is a "western" item that we used to have to travel to Changchun to buy. We were so excited that within the first couple weeks of this semester, we had bought out the whole supply of sauce. And alas, the store does not seem to be restocking the sauce. Changchun here we come...
• The other day I gave a quiz to my junior writing students. It was a pop quiz, but I give a quiz almost every week, so the class wasn't all that surprised. However, later in the class one of the students came up to me with genuine remorse on her face, saying, "Miss Katherine, I'm so sorry I did not do well on the quiz. I promise I will try harder and study more in the future." Now I was quite the brown-noser in school, but I don't think I ever apologized to my teacher for my poor performance!
• It is spring. And spring means new life. Therefore, the school has decided that demolishing sidewalks to make room for wildlife is necessary. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of wildlife. However, the new "life" they are planting only seems to accentuate the barren landscape...examine the photograph below and let me know if you agree with me.

This past weekend was packed full of Easter activities. We had a great time of fellowship on Sunday. In the morning I went to the local fellowship and then met with the team for a time of celebration and reflection. After that we all contributed to a tasty homecooked feast--which left us all groaning that we had eaten too much. Exercise is always the best option after a big meal, so we headed outside to hide eggs and then documented Sarah and Josiah searching through the park. After the egg hunt we met up with brothers and sisters for an Easter dinner...that none of us were hungry for. Check out my photo site for pictures from the day!