It's Halloween in China today, but only the foreign teachers here know to celebrate this wacky holiday. I personally LOVE Halloween, and I wrote a whole blog post on it on my Becoming Coco blog which you can read if you are so inclined.

     Other than updating my blog and attending class dressed as a cheetah this I am spending this Halloween attending our school's Culture Week. Every year the faculty put on this week long event to celebrate the various cultures across every continent, except Antarctica because really who lives there? Yesterday I performed in a Bollywood dance and a Korean Pop dance to the song Gangam Style for Asia day. It was marvelously fun, however I literally could see nothing on stage due to the bright lights shining right in our faces. If I didn't know the dance very well I would have been out of luck because I couldn't even seen my arms waving in front of me. 

   Today for culture week is Africa day, so my cheetah costume fits right in. There will be food and other little African style activities in our Italian Square, which is basically a square shaped section of shops on our campus and later tonight at our Roman Amphitheater the teachers for tonight will perform some African cultured dances and a play continuing our week-long story of Mario and Princess Peach as they travel around the world trying to find adventure and each other

    

Almost There... Beijing Airport August 26th

I made it! I'm in Beijing airport at an Internet Cafe alone drinking
Cappuccino and listening to C-POP. I think that officially makes me a
World Traveler. I even took artsy pictures of my coffee with the
background blurred to upgrade me to Eccentric World Traveler with a
blog, because everyone knows once you start taking pictures of
mundane objects in your travels you naturally start a blog about
them. I could have an entire blog full of pictures of Failed English.
I think I will include those here. On the plane I really wanted to
photograph the in-flight television show "Spongebox Squarepants."
Unfortunately you are not permitted to use your phone during the
flight and a camera would just be rude to others around me. You will
just have to imagine the fit of girlish giggles I had to repress at
the sight of the intentional typo made by mis-translation. If you ask
me the Chinese translation makes more sense, he is rather box-y.

Traveling to another country is not as glamorous as it sounds. I have
had a total of 7 hours spent talking with flight attendants to try to
get my plane tickets switched to the proper flight after my company

booked my flight a day late due to miscommunication. It has been a crazy past
two days and I will be glad to finally reach my destination tomorrow
morning to Zhengzhou. Once I am there the fun part of the trip can
begin. I used to love flying and having hours to do nothing but read
and watch tv, but now I am just plain tired. However, the cool part of
flying is the people you meet next to you. I had a lovely time
chatting with two Chinese citizens who were coming home from the U.S.
One was a girl who was studying abroad in Boston and the other was a
boy who had gone to America for the company he works
for, a cell phone company called "Cool Pad." They were very friendly and
even obliged to help me write some Chinese when I had to fill out my
customs paperwork. Apparently I could have just wrote Los Angeles in English,
 but I didn't realize that at the time.

Anyway I now have a new appreciation for those who come to America and
do not know English because I realize how scary it can be in a new
place where no one understands what you are saying. I'm determined now
to learn more of this crazy difficult language of Mandarin.

The only affordable and edible Beijing airport food I could find.

My travels have just began...