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.