Easter and More Random Things About China

My home group with their Easter eggs. So cute! 

Hey everyone! It's been a couple of weeks since we got back from vacation. Not much has happened, other than Easter, so I decided to talk about some interesting/random things I've noticed about China and my city.

Okay, let's talk about Easter. We celebrated Easter on Thursday with the kids. They colored pictures and got to decorate hard-boiled eggs. Then we played Easter games with them and had an Easter egg hunt. It was fun to see the kids go crazy over the eggs.

Food
It's true that the Chinese eat rice for pretty much every meal. My coordinator even said that she didn't feel full unless she ate some rice with her meal, which I think is kind of funny. I think it's like how some people are with bread. Believe it or not, I'm not sick of rice yet. The Chinese also like to cook all of their vegetables, including lettuce and cucumbers. They basically consider uncooked vegetables to be goat food. It was weird to eat lettuce that way, but I've gotten used to it.

The whole chicken, including the head

As far as weird foods go, I've eaten pig skin, some weird organ thing that I think belonged to a pig or a chicken, squid, various mushrooms, lotus root, octopus, cow ears, corn juice, various forms of tofu, and meat cakes. So they're not incredibly strange things to eat (besides the pigskin and organs) but it's definitely different. I know that some girls in my group got to try duck blood, which is probably the weirdest thing we've come across so far. We do have to deal with a lot of bones, since most of the time when we eat chicken or fish we get the bones as well. I've also eaten sugar cane which is really good.


Crazy Stuff
So here are some crazy things I've seen: dead rats in the street, be they drowned, squashed, or a
week-old flattened roadkill. I've seen children peeing on the side of the road, and people driving what look like tractors down the middle of a busy highway. I've seen said tractors pulling huge loads of anything from bamboo to water jugs, piled so high that I thought they would fall over for sure. I've also seen cockroaches on the street and in my house (just one in the house thankfully). It's at the point now that if I see anything weird, I just shrug my shoulders and say "China."

Me with my adorable students! 

But hey, despite the strange quirks and differences, I don't mind living in China. It's definitely a different experience that took some getting used to, and I still have moments that throw me off. But now I generally go through my day with the same normalcy I'd have if I were back in the U.S. It's kind of cool to reach that point. I'm having an awesome experience and part of the experience is to be a part of the strangeness that is China. It's also worth it when the kids come up to you and give you big hugs, just saying. Well that's it for now. Until later, folks!