Catching up!

I was trying to delay a blog post until I could include some of the touristy destinations we have been trying to get to, but I finally faced the fact that these may be a bit more in the future than I had originally thought. Instead, here are a few snapshots from the past few weeks:

Beijing finally got precipitated upon! I was later informed that the government makes it rain/snow, it is not naturally occurring. Apparently if clouds are in the area there is some sort of rocket they send up, containing precipitation-invoking chemicals... or something like that. It sounds suspicious to me, but I've been told from a variety of sources that it is, in fact, true.
Valentine's Day happened. It was on a Monday, so we celebrated a day early with a super swanky brunch. I tried many new things, among them were prawns, oysters, caviar, and some strange fruit. I have yet to try any animal that truly makes me regret being a nominal vegetarian, so I think I'll carry on for now.
I got a new job! I'll be teaching English classes at the Korean International School in Beijing, probably in the secondary school, but maybe primary. To celebrate, we went to the "Blind Masseuse" to get massages, and we got a package that we later found out included two traditional Chinese medicine techniques (scraping and cupping), in addition to the usual body and foot massage. They were running short on masseuses, (none of the ones we had were blind), so the Chinese traditional medicine doctor man started my massage until a regular masseuse came to his rescue.

The doctor man informed me that I was not "hot" enough to do the scraping/cupping routine, so I stuck with just extra massage time. John was not so lucky, and below you will see the evidence thereof. The vertical long red marks one either side of the spine are the result of the scraping, and the circles are from the cupping. I was frustrated I didn't have my camera during the procedure, because he looked quite comical. Maybe next time...Finally, for the less extreme: I had been telling my mom about the very annoying clothes washing process that the machinery in our apartment necessitates. Although I don't think I captured it that well, here are pictures of filling up the washer (must be done with the shower head, unless only cold water is desired), and the transfer of clothes from the "wash" to the "spin" cycle. Our dryer is the balcony.

Happy Year of the Hare!

A week-long ferocious celebration of the Chinese new year has finally ended. We spent the new years eve celebration at a small lake in the city. Around midnight, there were the requisite fireworks (they say it is to scare off evil spirits, I suspect its partially due to the fun factor as well), but these were better than any I have ever seen before. Instead of having one group of people set off fireworks, the whole lake was surrounded by individuals setting off their own private stash of fireworks, so it was probably more than an hour's worth of avid fireworking around the entire lake. It was beautiful.

After 24 hours though, the non-stop fireworks had gotten a little wearing - and that was just the beginning. They finally stopped a week later (yesterday), and a shell-shocked me was very grateful.

During the week, there were several "temple festivals" around the city, and these pictures are from the one we went to.

It appears to be ice skating, but on chairs. We didn't attempt.
Some performers.
A wide variety of meat on a stick.
Writing with water (a song about teeth brushing, we were told)
Some people from China's paramilitary that were roaming around the festival, trying to herd people out at closing time. Apparently they are responsible for some not so nice business, which seemed to clash for some reason with the one guy carrying the stuffed bunny and the briefcase.
We got a coconut.
Other news:

-Today I start my night teaching class. They just called to inform me that I will have to teach until 9:30 instead of 9p, so these students may end up with a class on The Western Art of Napping.

- I have two interviews tomorrow for other teaching jobs, lets see if anything more suitable shakes out.

- A nice young Irish lad moved into our spare room. His second person singular usage results in referring to me as "ye," which makes me feel kind of regal. I like it.