Hi again guys!
I'm sure some of you were beginning to wonder what happened to us, sorry about that. I'd also like to say a big thanks to my darling older sister for nagging us to get back at it! So here we are with a brief update of the past several months.
Christine came to visit us for Chinese New Year. It was a really awesome trip & she really seemed to enjoy Shantou. Especially, big surprise, KTV. We took her around & showed her some of the local parks & sights & just generally took things pretty easy. Especially since Alex & I were so exhausted from working so long with no break.
Chinese New Year (or Spring Festival) remains my favorite time of year here in China. The decorations are fantastic, the people seem happier & there tends to be less trash everywhere. Though I suspect the latter has more to do with hiring more people to sweep the streets than anything to do with the holiday.
Christine also helped us play with my fancy new camera tripod! We may have had a little too much fun with it!
Everyone who walked past us while we were taking these light painting photos had the same extremely perplexed look on their faces, that was pretty great. Of course, the didn't ever bother not walking through my frame, so I've got a couple with ghost people in the edges. It only added to the fun though!
After Christine left, Alex and I went to a Super Bowl party. Yup, you read that right. Super Bowl party in Shantou, China. The owners of the restaurant, Il Santo, where said party was are Austrian. Really good guys. Both are good friends with Jimmy, who just happens to be from Eden, NC. I find this particularly funny because when we first met Jimmy he insisted we wouldn't know where he was from & left it at a very general "I'm from North Carolina". For any of you who don't know, Eden is maybe 20 miles from my parents house, so Jimmy was pretty amused to discover we did know where he was from.
Jimmy is apparently a huge football fan & he somehow managed to talk two guys who know nothing about American football into buying a "black market" tv box to get live tv from other countries & hosting a big breakfast bash in honor of the Super Bowl, which started at about 7:30 in the morning our time. It was great. Of course the poor tv box kept cutting out & Jimmy kept screaming at the wall where the game was being projected, but the breakfast was worth it! We met some other foreigners & our friend Brandice picked up a stalker. Basically just another day, especially for her.
Since then, we've been working, lots. But our contracts, and time here in China, are soon going to be drawing to a close! We have less than 3 months left! In our last 3 months, we plan to travel to both Shanghai (for 4 days) and Beijing (for about a week), which is really exciting for us since we haven't been able to travel as much as we had hoped to. I'm also working on finishing up a handmade quilt that I started on last year and Alex is hoping to get in time to make one last batch of beer.
We hope we'll see you all stateside real soon!
Cheers,
Elise
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