New Years

On my trip back from Shanghai I had to take a series of buses back from the airport to get to my town. At the last bus station, I had to wait 2 hours before my bus came so I wandered around the area of the east Changsha bus station. It's classic China, no doubt. 

Yeah, this is in the bus station. Yeah, he's peeing into the trashcan.

On December 30th, our school had a huge New Year celebration- a series of performances by students in the auditorium of our school. It started around 6 30pm and lasted a little more than 2 hours. The kids had been so excited for the celebration all week and everyone was in a great mood! The entire school was there, and it was one of the best nights I've had in a long time. Since my students are the youngest in the school, they got the gym floor while the older grades sat in the stands. I was lucky enough to have one of my students give me his "VIP" seat since he was in one of the performances of the night, so I got to be on the gym floor with all of my wonderful adorable students. Each row of seated students is one class- around 50-55 students. 

Kiki was a dancer that night and all dolled up for her performance. Look at those lashes!

Girl in the red sweater standing named herself "Hungry". Genius. Also, she's really sweet.

Gosh I love these kids.

The girl in the pink named herself "Sheep" and all she ever says to me is "Ms. Saskia do you remember me? My name is Sheep! PLEASE REMEMBER ME! I AM SHEEP"

These kids are so good at formations...

Favorite jacket. "Aeroplane of idiots"

The boys I sat next to were kind of like an acapella group. The boy nearest me is one of  my students, but the rest were older students.

And so the show began! 4 older students were the presenters and between each performance they came back on stage to introduce the next group. There was dancing, singing, and acting. All absolutely amazing. These kids are so talented it's crazy.

Throughout the night students kept sneaking to the back to give me glowsticks, snacks and drink. It was great- by the end of the 2 hours I was glowing in the dark.

This is one of my students, who named herself Greasy (hehe). She sang a solo- "you raise me up" and her voice was absolutely amazing. Props to her. Also, she's wearing a wedding dress because this is China.

 After all was said and done, class 1516 had formally invited me to their afterparty (they wrote me a letter in class) so I made sure to go to their classroom first. It was adorable. All on their own, they'd decorated the whole room, gotten a ton of food and set up KTV (karaoke). I stayed with them most of the night and even sang a few songs for them.

My girl Sydney Rain.

And my other fave in this class- Warrior. 

They made these baskets for me out of notebook paper! And they kept on pushing food on me. So much food.

I ran around to a few other classes after 1516 just to say hi and everyone was very happy. This is Lancer- another favourite. When I ask a difficult question and nobody volunteers an answer and everyone just stares blankly at me and the room is dead silent and I'm about to give up, Lancer always comes to the rescue.

All in all, a great night.

 The next morning I met up with Suzerraine for breakfast (at 7:15- why do these students just refuse to sleep even when they have vacation) and we got the most delicious dumplings I've had in Huarong and yummy soup and noodles.

Chinese New Year is just around the corner (early February) and EVERYWHERE you look, food is being prepared for the big holiday. EVERYWHERE. 

For some reason, when I came upon this building on the other side of town, I laughed out loud to myself for a while...  

So glad this new intersection was just built under the bridge. Yeah, just the intersection. There are no paved roads that lead to it. Just the intersection. That's all that matters anyway.