China - Day 4

We spent all day today at the school with the Chinese teachers. Part of the time we worked on a STEAM project but for a couple of hours we sit and talk to them about whatever so they can practice their English.  Today we talked about heroes. Almost everyone chose a family member - Mom or Dad.  I am writing this at 4:30 AM on Tuesday morning but it is MLK day in the US. He was one of my heroes. Who is your hero? How would you answer that question? I told them although I admire many, especially my family, that my youngest son, Baylen, and my niece are mine. Their courage was amazing in making changes in their lives  - even though they are both goof balls.  Very hard to translate goof ball.

This was really the first day that the smog was bad. When you looked at the sun it looked like the moon.  You could look right at it. The picture below was it through the buildings.  They are getting ready for their Spring Festival - decorating sort of like we do for Christmas - lights everywhere. They asked me if I had real live trees in my house at Christmas.  Very surprised when I said I had two.

Dinner tonight was traditional hot pot.  In the middle of the table we're two pots of boiling broth. One was mushroom the other was spicy!  Very spicy!  You put whatever you wanted to eat into the broth and it cooked it.  They had a sauce station where you could mix whatever you wanted to dip everything in with about 25 choices like garlic, chives, sesame oil, Thai hot chiles, ..... you could cook vegetables, tofu, lamb, beef, lots of mushrooms, even melon.

 A traditional dancer came by and a boy who twirled noodles.

Hard to explain that one.  I have videos of those!

Oh, in continuing saga of my shower, I flooded my room this morning.  The drain backed up and water was everywhere. Ms. Taber said it was too bad it wasn't still really cold in my room because I could have had an ice rink!