It was a pretty calm week, but a wild weekend! Here's the update:

Halloween?!

I've been getting a lot of questions from friends and family about Halloween in China. From what I observed, it is not celebrated here in China. I saw a couple western style cafes/bars/restaurants advertising Halloween functions, but you definitely did not see a bunch of Chinese children trick-or-treating in costumes. And no stores carried any special candy.

Despite the lack of celebration, I had a unique opportunity get into a costume. In honor of the elections this week, our school spent Friday afternoon (Oct. 31st) discussing elections and holding a fake election. Since the students would read the book "Duck For President," the candidates for the election were our principal, Mr. Brinegar, and a duck. For some reason, my staff thought I would enjoy being the duck (I've only been here 3 months and they already got me figured out!). The principal and I gave speeches. My speech was delivered in "duck," so I would quack and then my fellow teacher would translate. And the results: DUCK WINS by 8!! Unfortunately the children were upset to hear Mr. Duck had migrated South by Monday...

The other Halloween related event took place Friday night. Several of the teachers and I got together Friday night to watch "Arsenic and Old Lace." I was pleasantly surprised by this edgy, dark and very humorous film adapted stage-play from over 60 years ago! Check it out if you haven't! Got to love those crazy aunts...

To the Mountains!

I know I've made mention of it in the past, but Xi'an often has some poor weather conditions caused by the large amounts of pollution. There will be days went visibility may be less than 50 yards. On top of that, the weather has been getting cold. When you age several cold days that you can't see farther than 50 yards, it begins to weigh on you.

Thankfully, this city has so much to offer that the remedy for SAD is an adventure waiting just around the corner! This weekend, we took one such adventure. About an hour south of Xi'an is a large mountain range that separates North China from South China. Our entire staff took a trip to go hike the mountains! It was the PERFECT day! So beautiful and the air was so clear! I took a ton of pictures, because I knew my words would be inadequate. On returning, I found the pictures were also inadequate. In an effort to better share the beauty of the trip, I will provide the following descriptive narrative accompanied by pictures:

The sun reaches closer to the bottom of the valleys that cut deep into the mountains, brightly coloring the tree tops of green and orange. A warm gust of wind pushes through the narrow separation of rock, bringing with it hundreds of beautiful yellow leaves that shine in the sun's light and dance through the sky as if nature itself was creating a ticker-tape parade for our walk. The rushing river provides an ever constant rhythm that urges you forward. As you watch the dark but clear water racing pass and wonder what it would feel like to wade in the icy liquid, a chill runs through your body...

OK, that's about as poetic as my mind will allow me to be right now. I hope you enjoyed. It truly was the most beautiful thing I've seen here in China (that's right, better than the Summer Palace and Tang Paradise!).

As if Paintball wasn't cool enough...

On our way back from the mountains, we stopped at a place that offered Laser Tag. My previous experience with Laser Tag has been Laser Quest, or something like that: running around inside a dark room with black lights, shooting like a mad-man and screaming like a 6-year-old. This was far from that! Much like paintball, this laser tag was outdoors and performed in full camouflage. Also, like paintball, our guns were made to look like replicas of real weapons: the AK 47 and M4 (and you had to pull the chambers to reload... so cool!). You wore a vest that had sensors on it to for your opponents to shoot at and you had a small speaker that would tell you when you shot someone and when you had been hit (accompanied by vibrating).

It was so fun!!! For all of you concerned that I have joined the military from the pictures that I've had in my last couple blogs, fear not. China just knows how to make things a little more crazy!

Thanks for reading!