This magazine article styled blog will relate the symptoms and sufferings I experienced on Thanksgiving day and after:

The Headache Fever Epidemic has struck again!   The sickness has plagued the small community of TIS students in Tianjin China.  The Headache Fever Epidemic's symptoms are as follows:  First, slight headaches and achy joints will plague the victim.  Guessing it's only a slight passing headache, they might take ibuprofen and go on as usual.  Then, a sudden wave of nausea might sweep over the victim; at this point the patient should sit down and drink water until feeling better.  Soon after, the sickly victim will go into spasms of shivers and shaking, and their body temperature will start to fluctuate.  Then the victim will become sleepy and energy zapped.  Headaches and achy joints, especially the knees, will plague the victim for the rest of the day.  They might experience difficulty sleeping when their body temperature is always changing.  The next day their energy will be zapped and headaches will keep them in bed for at least half of the day or more. 

The Headache Fever Epidemic has been thought to be spread by air and it is expected to be spread to the rest of the world in the next year!  Both adults and children are highly encouraged to stay well sanitized at all times and keep away from anyone with The Headache Fever Epidemic.          

Even though I was sick on Thanksgiving night, I was still thankful that I wasn't always sick.

I woke up this morning to gray skies and a chilly house.  All of my siblings were still asleep underneath their warm covers.  I reluctantly crawled out of bed and brushed my teeth.   Mom and Dad were in the kitchen talking and making coffee.   I asked mom if we could make scones, pancakes, or waffles for breakfast.  At first she was not so enthusiastic on grounds that if we baked we’d have more dishes to take care of and the water, once again, was off.  (We have learned not be too surprised to find the water or the electricity off some mornings when we wake up).  With my ready assurance that I would stack all the dirty dishes nicely under the sink, my mom and I decided on trying a new recipe: Whole Wheat Pumpkin Scones.  We had to settle on white flour because we had no whole wheat flour and made a few other changes to the recipe.  After alteration and 30 minutes, we pulled a tray of Mini Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Scones with pecans on top and one candy corn for presentation out of the oven.  They were delicious!   Check out my mom’s blog for this scrumptious recipe.  http://chocolatechips.apt801.com/

I have lived in China about two and a half years now. 90% of the time I use taxis to get around (not including the bus I take to school on week days). As of late, I have been wanting to save more money and take the inexpensive buses, that cost about 30¢ a trip. So, when Mom and all of us girls went shopping at Bing Jiang Dao I insisted we take the bus home. I was so happy to find that one of the buses that drops us off near our apartment is a double decked bus! I know that it sounds a little childish, but I was ecstatic to be saving money and get to sit in the very front row seats of the second level of the bus! I very much enjoyed the whole ride home and hope to ride more buses instead of taxis.

Me and Rachel on the Double Decker Bus in the front row.

Here’s my view in the front row!

In Tianjin we are just now starting to get more Western stores and food places such as Subways, 7 Elevens, H&M clothe store, and Dairy Queen. My siblings and I were excited when it was finally Friday and we were able to go the Bing Jiang Dao, a popular shopping street in Tianjin, to the newly opened H&M clothing store. Unfortunately, because it had just opened there was a waiting line to get in! So instead we just walked down the shopping street, mainly window shopping. It was getting late and as we started to head home I spotted what I first thought was a Dairy Queen, but actually turned out to be a Mango Queen. The sign was in the same font, colors, and size. Though I didn’t try their food because I hadn’t eaten dinner yet, I’m pretty convinced that the menu was very similar to that of Dairy Queen. The whole experience left me wondering… “Can companies protect their trade’s mark here?” …

If you look at the menu in the background you will see that it is very similar to that of Dairy Queen’s.

On my Spring Trip, this year, I visited two pagodas in the cities of Hong Zhou and Tong Lu.  Until I went on the 8th grade Spring Trip I had not fully appreciated China’s beautiful Pagodas.  I learned some fun facts about Pagoda’s on my trip this year as well.  Firstly, did you know that Pagodas must have an odd number of levels?  Additionally, that all Pagoda’s must be a geometric shape? I never knew how much I liked Pagodas untill I visited them on my Spring Trip. Because we saw so many (well two) Pagodas on our Spring Trip, one of the activities we had in group time was to construct one ourselves! We were put into groups of fives and sixes for construction.  Our “rubric” was that it had to stand without help (of course),  we have to have an odd number of levels, and that it must be a geometric shape.  We had a bunch of plastic cups, chop sticks, cardboard, scissors, and tape.  So I came up with the idea of cutting the top’s of the cups off and then cutting them so that they became one curved “sheet” of plastic then taping a few together, end to end, to make a circle.  Then put cardboard as well as chopsticks taped together, to make the levels.  It was almost as tall as me with four flags symbolizing the nationalities of our group: Dutch flag, American flag, Chinese flag, and the Korean flag.  I thought it was by far the best, but unfortunately we only got 2nd place because it was a bit unstable 🙁 . I definitely learned a lot about Pagodas on my Spring Trip and look forward to seeing more of them in China!

Pagoda #1

View from Pagoda #1, beautiful!

Me at Pagoda #1. Look at those green trees!

My materpiece of a Pagoda! (It really was the BEST!)

Close up on the flags, amazing 🙂

Pagoda #2

My artistic pictures 🙂

Me at Pagoda #2

Finally, after several weeks we have Spring Break off of school!  On Tuesday we took a little vacation to Qing Dao, China, a city next to the beach.  The hotel we stayed at was nice and I definitely enjoyed the three day get-away.  At the hotel their breakfast area was named Cafe Yum.  It was appropriately named pertaining to the food selection.  They had a small variety of pastries, bread and cheese, cereal, Japaneses, Chinese, and Korean breakfast selections, as well as the given egg stations etc.  The presentation of the food was also very interesting.  The food was not the only exception aspect of Cafe Yum; the decoration and over all ambiance was excellent!  Several of the dividing walls were decorated with a certain object.  For example one of the walls (if you call it a wall) that separated two dining areas was simply shelves of water bottles without their tags.  In the main entrance area the whole wall was covered in green and blue glass bottles attached to the walls.  I was extremely impressed with Cafe Yum and enjoyed eating there.  I look forward to the next time I will have the chance to visit the hotel again 🙂 .

Yum….

Here is a picture of the yogurt “station”

Here is a picture of the wall of the main entrance that I mentioned earlier

Megan is standing next to the wall of water bottles

Eating breakfast with Amelia and Josie! (There family also came to Qing Dao on vacation!)

This Saturday at 7:30 I had to be at the school to catch the basketball bus to Beijing.  Our team was heading to Beijing to compete in a basketball tournament against 3 different schools. The bus there was fine, but a little long.  Once we got there we warmed up and then watched the other two schools play a game.  This was my second game I have had since basketball season began, so I was pretty excited.  Unfortunately we lost, but I would give us some credit (I mean those girls DID NOT look like Middle Schoolers).  Our first and second games were back to back.  Maybe that’s why we lost our second game as well.  We had sub sandwiches for lunch; they tasted so good after two games in a row!  I had to finish up quickly before our third game.  At the beginning of our first game we were doing very well and winning, until the team realized they were losing and switched in their “A” team.  Unfortunately I had to play them.  There was one girl on the “A” team that we dubbed “Chopsticks” because her legs were SO skinny, skinnier than you can imagine, and additionally her outfit number was 11, hence the name “Chopsticks”.  Well Chopsticks happened to be the best player on there team and stole the ball from me at least three times!  Thanks the Chopsticks and her team we lost the third game as well.  At least I can truthfully say that we learned a lot!

Today was the Middle School’s Service Day.  Split into 5 groups, each one went to a different place to give service.  My group went to an Autistic Preschool.  When we arrived we were divided into 2 groups there; my group went to the Preschool’s exercise room.  In the room they had balls, a small plastic slide, and a few other toys to play on.  First off the kids had their singing and dancing time.  They danced to three songs for us; they looked so cute!  Then we played balls with them.  Later another class of kids came and did the same thing with us, sing and play, mostly with the balls.   Then we went to another of the rooms to draw pictures with them.  I helped one little boy, his name was Wang Qing Chong.  I drew the outlines of animals and foods and he colored them.  At first he seemed really shy, but at the end he was showing me that you can’t color a dog orange, it has to be brown.  I had a good time and was glad to have the opportunity to share God’s love with these children!

Sing and dance time for the children.

Somebody doesn’t have time for pictures!

This is a picture of our group and the children we did activities with!

Today my friend Amelia, and I decided that because the weather today was so nice that we would spend some time outside at an exercise park.  For those of you who do not know what an exercise park is, it is an outside area with different activities to stretch your muscles or your legs/arms.  So we just sat on the equipment eating the snacks we brought from my house.  While we were talking a group of Chinese kids that were playing there came up several times to stare at us and talk about us in Chinese; for example: “They are foreigners!”.  We ignored them, but then when the most brave of them stepped out and asked Amelia if we would play with them, she agreed (without asking me).  At first I was hesitant to play with them.  We were playing Hide-and-Go-Seek-Tag with them, a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors to determined me as “it”.   Playing with them was so much fun!  there was one small girl, probably 5 years old, who would not let go of Amelia’s hand, and another boy that was the youngest of the group that was constantly following me and by the end of the games was holding my hand.   All of them wanted to be on our team when we played a different Chinese game after Hide-and-Go-Seek.  They were all adorable and were very fun.  I was surprised that between Amelia and I, could understand most of what they were saying.  After we had been playing a game that, Amelia and I only later discovered was the Chinese version of Sharks-and-Minnows, there were two boys about the other kids ages that started throwing little nuts they found on the ground, at the girls.  The girls all came to Amelia and I saying that the boys hit them with the nuts, expecting us to deal with it,  So Amelia and I gave them a stern look and told them to stop.  The thing that I notice, now looking back on the experience, was how much the Chinese kids remind me of myself a few years ago; playing with my friends when I was younger at the park.  I thank God that He gave the opportunity to play with those children.  I believe He was trying to show me that while I’m identifying the differences between myself and the Chinese, I often miss how we are the same.

For this weekend my Chinese teacher assigned us the project of writing our entire weekly schedule in Mandarin characters.  When I look at the schedule I made,  I realize that I can actually read, from memory, almost every character I wrote.  I made a weekly schedule including all my classes, then below it there is a paragraph describing my favorite and least favorite classes.

It’s hard for me to believe I have lived here in China for almost 2 years and looking back I feel I’ve come a long way in my language learning, thanks to Wen Lao Shi (Mrs. Wen), my Chinese teacher!