Group trip to Beijing...then Halloween

Da jia hao!! Hello everyone!! Hope you all are getting ready for Halloween. We are reading about Hurricane Sandy coming up the east coast of the US. Hope you all are safe and dry. To all our friends and family in the northeast, we are praying that the storm isn't as bad as expected.

Our boss, Emily (Shi Wanyun) took us all to Beijing for the weekend. She wanted to show us some of her favorite places in Beijing. We went to Fragrant Mountain, the National Symphony, and Ti'anamin Square. The National Symphony is a very beautiful building. It looked like a big bubble. The music was very good. It was a good night.

In Ti'anamin Square there were many people taking photos. Yes, Marianne was the subject of much attention. Our boss, Emily and one of our colleagues, Mickelle are standing in front of the big flower pot. As you can see, the air quality was not very good that day.

We wanted to up in the building with Mao's picture, but there was over an hour wait to up there. We decided the view wouldn't be that great because the air was so bad that day.  So we went to lunch at TGI Fridays, heaven on earth...western food. It was great. The restaurant was in a fashionable part of Beijing. Here was a nice coffee shop with a great slogan.

Here was some great statues. Look at the size of their feet...amazing.

Our last stop before going back to Baoding was at Jenny Lou's. The store is located near the embassy section of Beijing. This store carries many imported foods. Here we are ready to go in. We brought extra shopping bags to haul back our goodies. I finally got some hot sauce for my next batch of hot wings. We filled our bags and then headed back to catch our train to Baoding.

Halloween Party

We had a Halloween Party for the students. We had explained Halloween to our students over the past week. So when we had the party we had a great turnout. I dressed as a pirate, my true calling. Actually it was the only hat I could find that would fit me. Marianne had a great mask that was very girly. Once some of the girls saw it, they all took turns wearing her mask. Here are some photos of the party.

The girl to my left is wearing Marianne's mask.

I had class today with some of these students and some of them still had paint on their faces. Yes, they were the boys.

We have been following the news about Sandy. We have been concerned that our family and friends were ok. We are praying that NJ, NY, PA, and other states affected by the storm recover quickly. Good to see people helping each other, working together.