Xingtai (Shing-tie)

Well our foreign affairs office took a bunch of us foreign teachers out for a day at a canyon It was beautiful but you could tell it had some human touches to it. It was a great escape though since it had been raining in the Shiz for about 3 weeks (thank goodness in the middle of that 3 weeks I was in Shanghai for 5 days) but at the canyon it was absolutely gorgeous. It took 2.5 hours to get there and we took our lunches so that was nice having some quality outdoors time, but for some reason it took 3 hours to get back...and it was still raining in the Shiz. But don't worry all that rain meant that we would have a blue sky for almost a whole week! My school also had a "sports meeting" (They have races and shot put, and yes they were impressed with how far I could throw it, but they also have high jump, long jump, tug-o-war, monkey in the middle, jump rope and an obstacle course) that Thurs and Fri so I didn't have to teach but I couldn't use my 4 day weekend for traveling b/c I wanted to stick around for the canyon. However, the weather has been absolutely wonderful and I spent yesterday at a park yesterday with a student, so I'm slowly starting to make friends with some of the more mature ones. Which brings me to the news I heard today. Evidently chinese children sleep with their parents till they are 7-8...crazy... but follow the links to my picasa album and enjoy!

http://picasaweb.google.com/cccapper/XingtaiCanyons