Mid-Autumn Festival

Happy Mid-Autumn to you!  On Mid-Autumn night the moon is supposed to be the brightest and fullest of the year, and to the Chinese the moon is a symbol of peace, prosperity, and family reunion.  Traditionally, the Chinese express their thanks to the moon and celebrate the harvest with family.  At MapleBear, we celebrated the festival with student and staff performances for the families, followed up by games, activities, music, and food.

MapleBear showed their appreciation to the staff by providing us all with apples, pomegranates, milk, and moon cakes.  Since all of my friends are teachers, we have an excess of fruit and will be having an apple baking and drying party this week.  I have the best kitchen set up so I have an extra box here for us to work with. 

We were each given a case of 24 pomegranates, so if anyone knows any recipes or ideas on how to use pomegranates, please let me know!

Milk is not refrigerated here and I am a little skeptical about it.  I have two cases of milk so I'm going to throw a couple containers in my fridge until I figure out a use for them.  They don't have cereal here and that's my main use for milk back in the States.  It's still in the 80's here so it's a little early for hot chocolate.

I've only ever heard of moon cakes before and now I have a box full of them.  They can come in different flavors and the fillings vary depending on the region.  We were given a variety box of them.  So far I have tried one with a nut filling and another with some kind of fruit paste in it.  Both were pretty good.

The fruit moon cake.

Even Starbucks does moon cakes.

The Chinese staff have been in charge of our Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations with teaching the students the history, songs, activities, and baking moon cakes.  The students have been practicing their performances for the families and it was definitely worth the work.  They sang songs, played instruments, and performed dances and skits.

Nursery 1 singing.

Nursery 2 performing.

 The students were not the only ones involved in performing for the families.  There are two female foreign teachers at my school and we got asked if we wanted to do a dance and we naively accepted.  The Chinese take their performances seriously.  Eight of us performed a ballet sort of routine in Chinese costumes while flanked by the rest of the staff who sang a song to accompany us.

For those of you who know anything about my dancing then you are probably terrified as you read this.  Luckily after the first dance practice they realized what a mistake it was involving me in the dance.  I was placed in the back row so I could hide/follow their lead.  But since they needed to showcase the foreigners, I was placed in the center for a short section.  I survived and did not injure anyone else, so I consider it a success.  Plus, everyone was loving that we got involved in the dance so hopefully they ignored my lack of grace.

After the performances students, family, and staff was able to mill around and enjoy all the activities and food.  It was super hot out and I had just finished my stressful dance routine so I'm not looking my best in these photos.  I almost didn't include them because I look blah but my kiddos look super cute so just ignore me.

Even my apartment complex celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival.  This morning they were blasting music, and had tents and tables set up with food and games.

View from below my balcony.

Stray thoughts:

• As of last weekend, I have a Chinese SIM card, which means my old 630 American number will be inactive until I put my SIM back in my phone when I come back in August.  I am still using an iPhone so iMessages still work but my number is now different.  If you want to add my Chinese number to my contact name in your iPhone then we can iMessage like before.  My number is +86 136-4386-5512
• Some people have been asking about a postal address.  You can print this image and attach it to your package or letter because you will need the Chinese characters.  This is my school address where we have 24 hour security who can pick up anything sent to me.  That way it isn't just sitting out at my apartment.  I am by no means expecting people to send me anything, I'm just attaching the image here for those who were asking.

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