The housewives of Huo Zhou!

Thursday morning here!  I’m drinking my instant coffee and waiting for our breakfast of tofu, hard boiled eggs, steamed buns, warm milk, potatoes and some kind of mystery meat.  We have 2 more days of teaching, then a special parent presentation on Saturday.  We have nearly exhausted our repertoire of kids’ songs so it’s a good thing we’re wrapping up soon.  We’ve had a really fun couple of days with our “housewives of Huo Zhou”.  Tuesday night they took us out on the town.  We first went to a temple, of which religion we really couldn’t figure out.  They bought us incense to light and we systematically walked around and put them in various pots and made wishes to different “gods”.  There was one for children, money, protection, etc etc.  Each little arch had a Buddha type guy in it with food and gifts in front of it.  It was really interesting and really crowded.  Next they took us to the Chinese Opera that was playing on an outdoor stage in one of the town squares.  On the way there one of the girls had to use the WC, so our housewife just knocked on a door and we went into a random house to use their WC, she knows EVERYONE!  The opera was SO interesting!  The music was really loud and they sing extremely high.  Being the spoiled Americans, they wouldn’t be settled with us just watching the opera.  Instead they had to take us backstage to meet the actors and get dressed up in the clothes!  They outfitted us in various Chinese garb and took lots of pictures.  The entire band was watching us and this is all while the opera was going on.  We just might’ve stolen the show for a few minutes.  As we’ve mentioned, every meal here is a feast, and yesterday at lunch was no exception.  One of our hostesses’ bosses took us out for lunch and this guy does not mess around with his lunch!  We had an amazing spread of shrimp, sturgeon, pork, tofu, vegetables, noodles, eggs, chicken, potatoes and more!  We also weren’t hurting for drinks.  He bought endless bottles of red wine, beer and a really strong clear tequila-like liquor to shoot.  We did toast after toast after toast, and shot after shot.  The kicker was that we had to go back and teach for another 3 hours!  That definitely doesn’t happen to teachers in America J  It was a great time and we just might have to go out with that guy again before we leave.  After lunch we went to the mall for a little while and did some shopping.  Our friend Shelly bought a beautiful traditional Chinese dress and Gary bought another t-shirt with some weird English writing that makes no sense.  Our afternoon of teaching was filled with games, songs and movies because that's about all we could handle. 

Well we're off to breakfast, thanks for checking in, we love reading your comments and miss everyone!