Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

We have 3 days of not teaching - Wed, Thur, and Fri. We decided to visit the town since we haven't done much of that at all since we came here, especially not by ourselves. We walked 5 km to Central Street (which is the pedestrian walking street) to go look for winter boots and warm winter Russian hats (ushanka). As we were double checking that we were walking in the correct direction, we asked a man walking past. He asked us in English, where are you going? We told him we were going to Central street. He said that he was going there too. We find out that he is an air force pilot and is in Harbin for ten more days learning how to instruct new pilots. We end up spending a great afternoon with him walking and sightseeing.




Zheng Chen Gong. Zheng is from where Hui gets her maiden name. This bust is sitting on campus outside the Student Center.



Entrance to Walking Street - Zhong Yang Da Jie (Central Street)



Underground pass on Central Street (instead of crossing a bridge to go over traffic, we walk under the road)



We watched a few guys write beautiful Chinese calligraphy near the river. We actually bought one of the brushes from the guy for 10 yuan.



End of Central Street. Just jump in the river and swim to the other side! - Sun Island



Notice: there's a train (with about 50 cars) crossing the suspension Bridge (the Bridge reminds us of the bridge in Charleston)



A mall selling all kinds of items (bathroom break)



St. Sophia's Cathedral (it was smaller than we imagined, a wonderful sized building indeed!)



Gordon and Jim



Look at how much cargo this truck is carrying



At the Mid-Autumn Festival Party for International Students. We were invited to watch singing and dancing all organized by international students. These guys were rapping in Chinese to the instrumental soundtrack of "Beautiful" sung by Akon.



What a big bunch of grapes! cornbread, swissroll, sweetpotato chips, bubble tea, mooncake




Thursday - Jodi made her a little nook in our study on the floor with the coffee table and we worked on our self-observation forms for teaching together.



Look at the loot we got! Hui bought a new pair of winter boots! We also walked to a street that sold Russian goods and bought some Russian chocolate. We might not buy Russian hats because some shed, and a quality one costs way too much.

Random

I'm getting my first haircut in China by our very own teammate - Jodi. Yee!



Look at the freshness of the Chinese chives! We had eggs and chives stirfry as one of the dishes that evening.



This second elevator only works during the traffic hours of 7:30-8:30am and 12:30 and 1:30pm.



During our visit at Harbin Institute of Technology - where else are you able to see people playing basketball alongside people in military training?



At the end of our picnic, Shelley showed us her instrument - Guzheng (Chinese zither).

First few days

It has been a great 2 days of teaching. What a blessing! Hui taught three classes on Monday and had today off. Gordon taught two classes for both Monday and Tuesday. We're feeling good, by His grace. Before class started on Monday, because Jodi and Hui had classrooms directly across from each other, we were able to talk to the Father before class. We were very encouraged.

Hui is teaching 6 sections of post-grad non-English majors in listening-speaking and one sophomore English major video class. Gordon's teaching 2 post-grad speaking sections and 6 sections for teachers at HEU.

We had a (girls day out) GDO this afternoon. Walked to the McDonald's and picked up four cookies n cream McFlurries then hung out at some benches along the brick canal (which by the way is dry).

I'm starting to stock up on food, now that we're settled in. Bought some flour, dried noodles, some bread and cakes for breakfast. Yesterday I went to Carrefour with Jodi - it's like a big super store with appliances as well as grocery items for sale.



Gordon met me for lunch and after lunch our first day, we went to the second floor of the student center and bought some really expensive coffee beverages. They were very tasty!



Harbin sunset from our apartment window.



We pass by these chickens on the first level of some other apartments on our way to class.







flour, bread, and noodles!



partner desks in the study



view out our apt. window (9:30pm)

Settled

http://picasaweb.google.com/111109148587648793693

We are settled in! The apartment is extremely nice. Some photos are on the picasa website - The video is not wanting to load. We will keep working on that. Like we probably mentioned in the states, it is true: all the furniture, appliances, utensils we need are already supplied in the apartment. We are truly thankful. Other than settling into the apartment, we've been spending some very quality and fulfilling time with our new teammates. We love them so much.

Here's a short list of what's been going on:

Arrived Aug. 29

Dumped our bags into the apartment

Met the Foreign Affairs Officer, who by the way is extremely sweet, friendly, and helpful.

Team building has happened for the past 5 days which consists of talking about the team dynamics in communication, conflict management, stress tolerance, being support for each other, and other specifics to strengthen and develop a team identity.

Between moving furniture around, dusting/cleaning our apartment, and unpacking, Hui's met her co-teachers for her Listening-Speaking class and Gordon's met the school supervisor, where we've both gotten questions answered about the class.

We've also gone to the health department to get another physical exam and to the Foreign Bureau office to obtain our residence visa for Harbin.

Now we are finishing up lesson planning because class starts early Monday morning at 8am for Hui and at 2pm for Gordon.

The weather is extremely nice right now - we really can't imagine it getting cold and below freezing. We'll see what that's like later October. Since it's been cool, our morning runs with another teammate have been very pleasant.

We haven't been cooking much recently, we just go to a nearby restaurant and eat. However, we've been enjoying sweet fruit and tasty rich yogurt in our apartment.

We had a great time of Singing tonight. The children joined us for Singing and a Story for them, then we heard a podcast together as a team after an intermission (when the children were put to bed).





On our way to Hamamas Coffee House where they serve Western food. We ate a beef steak sandwich with onions and a chicken sub. Delicious!


Hamamas Coffee House! This is near Harbin Institute of Technology, so we took a bus from our school over there (it took us about an hour to ride the bus because there were many cars.)


We met some friends that were introduced to us while we were in the states and enjoyed a delicious Nigerian/Chinese meal with them. Great fellowship and encouragement. They have been at HEU 3 years studying for their pHDs.


We went to this tea house for one of our teambuilding sessions. It's interesting: notice the English name "Bar for team." In Beijing, we went to the same establishment and it was called in English, "Be for Time"


Tea house! For just 18yuan a person we could get unlimited amount of drinks (eg. iced coffee, milk tea, fruit juices) and plenty of nuts and seeds.