Hallelujah!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Missing you and wishing you uncomfortable waistbands. :o)

We haven't posted the past few nights because we were at dress rehearsal and performance of Handel's Messiah. This explains the "Hallelujah": that we were singing that piece as well as being finished with that. It made for a tiring few days, but well worth it.

To begin the story, I started going to this choir with Tracey, Mark's teaching partner, at the end of September. It's with the Shanghai International Choral League, and it seemed like a good way to interact with locals and join a choir for once.

It's been so much fun!  Especially since we convinced Mark to join as well...

Can you see him right in the middle of the picture?

He has a lovely voice, as you well know. :o)  There are a handful of expats, mostly music teachers at the various international schools. The majority of the choir consisted of local Chinese: the general population as well as some students. I never quite got the whole story, but I think the students are from a local seminary. I could be mistaken however.

I didn't actually make any friends until the last few weeks. After we received seat assignments, I socialized a bit with the gals sitting next to me. One gal was studying for her final exams to receive her bachelors degree in Spanish. It was fun (and depressing) to practice my dwindling skills. Also funny to communicate with someone when both parties are using secondary languages. I also met one of the students, Wang Kang Yuen, who's a 22 year old going to that seminary (possibly).

If I remember the names... It's Bing Bing, Xiao Yue, me, and Kang Yuen

Kang Yuen and I became good friends despite the fact that I can only list colors at her and tell her I want two eggs on my breakfast burrito; she, on the other side of the conversation, doesn't have a lick of English. No worries! You don't need to understand each other's words to race down the stairs. :o)

This was in our final four rehearsals... We finally had our guest conductor from the US in the country, as you can see. He had some amazing credentials... it was ok. 

The obnoxious part started when we had rehearsals with the orchestra and the soloists; reason being that the choir just sat there while the soloists practiced.

The baritone in black.

We aren't sure if it's a culture thing, but the soloists didn't have the best rehearsal etiquette at the first rehearsal: not showing up on time (or at all!), leaving the room for extended periods, didn't actually know their parts...  

Selfies!!  Baritone and Soprano.

During that particular rehearsal, we sat for so long!  One just has to amuse oneself...

Taking our own silly pictures...

Sleepy Steve sleeping for the upteenth time!

Practicing English reading comprehension from exercises in the newspaper...

Sleepy Steve texting on the original Nokia brick phone consistently...

Taking loopy pictures with Tracey...

Saying hi to Didi, a classmate from Desert Vista High School

in Phoenix, AZ!

All of this fun putzing led us to this gigantic concert at the SHOAC (Shang Hai Oriental Arts Center) last night: 

Trying to find the entrance...

The time before the performance is always exciting. This especially so... we got to play with red scarves!  

After the show...

We're so glad that we participated in the choir! It was definitely an amazing experience, and I'm hoping to get to hang with those gals some more. 

I actually have another set of pictures, but I'm not posting them yet. 1) It's after midnight, and I have school in the morning (darn you, "Catching Fire")   2) They aren't loading. Booooo.

I'll tell you more, hopefully in 7 hours. :o)

Happy Thanksgiving again!

Bye for now

xoxo

Turkeys and 'Taters and Stuffing, Oh my!

As you are gearing up for your Thanksgiving celebrations, here's what went down during ours on Saturday!

I actually got the party started the night before. No, not exactly partying. More that I was making those potato buns. The only problem was that we also had rehearsal on Friday night from 7 to 9:30 in Puxi (the other side of town). After singing Messiah, we got home around 10:30 and finally started making a double batch of buns (since I was the only one signed up to bring bread).  This is what that process looked like at 1:30 AM...

It was a gigantic lump of dough, and I was getting a bit loopy. Mark, of course, felt the need to document. I'm actually surprised that you can't see all the flour smudges... They don't call me "Messy Jessi" for nuthin'!

The next morning was a flurry of bun rolling and rising and an even bigger mess. I got to take a break to go to a tailor appointment as well as a trip to the fake market.

Here's what our Lower School Commons turned into for our dinner:

Please note the girls table....

And the boys table above....

I'm not sure why it turned into a middle school dance, but there you go.

We had a million different types of mashed sweet potatoes. Well, close to a million. We had two kinds of purple mashed sweet potatoes and then four kinds of normal mashed sweet potatoes. Only one kind of stuffing, one dish of green beans, one dish of carrots, three regular potatoes, and then my buns. No squarsh! (That's for you, Miller family!!)  :o)  If you see the gigantic basket with the handle sticking up, that's the basket that was holding the 100+ buns. I felt a little filled up with the potatoes, but really, one can't help but gorge on any Thanksgiving feast. 

On with the recovery process!

Good luck with your own preparations! Can't wait for us to get together once again, and do it right! ;o)

Buns Away!

Saturday is the Thanksgiving celebration at school. (You might remember me fishing for good recipes.)

I decided to try out an old standby: potato buns.

Ok, ok. It's a standby for my mom. First experimentation for me!

Behold!

Tada!

They turned out!

The process wasn't so pretty... Looking up every measurement in milliliters because that's what measuring implements are here... Measuring out 118 (ish) ml for a 1/2 cup of butter... Not to mention mashing sweet potatoes is never clean. My ipad definitely needed a wipe down!

Flour was/is everywhere, needless to say. I didn't exactly want to document the experiment!

It was a lovely taste of home and holidays for us. The only problem is that with half the batch gone, I have to make more for Saturday's gathering!!

Nuts.

Smoke on the Water

Cue the classic rock!

I'm sure that you've heard that pollution is pretty crazy around here... We can be behind the stinkiest cars in your life. Add that to the normal grime that is China, and you get the best reason to wash at night. :o)

I promise that it's worse in Beijing. Shanghai is lucky in that there's a lot of wind to blow things around, but it's unlucky in that there's a good amount of fog that can happen to make it look worse. Have you ever seen your weather app just say "Haze?" Not in Denver.

And really, our part of town is usually better since we're not in the center of the city.

For the most part, the sky is a dusty blue here. Clear days are gorgeous.

And then you get this:

Just looks like a dreary day, right?

The fun part is turning this into a game of stats. How high is it today? How high was it an hour ago?

This is what it is currently. 

Not that I know what the difference is between PM 2.5 and PM10, but I think that red is bad, right?

Wait, hold up! There's a convenient chart for you to learn your colors!

We've mostly been in orange, with yellow and a few greens. Lately, it's been getting worse, so we have gone to the Morbid Maroon shade on two days.

Relax, Mom. There's no need for a gas mask.

All that happens is that we make sure to run our A/C units (at a comfortable temperature), since they filter the air. The kids stay inside for recess. We avoid being outside or elevating our heard rates. The  doors and windows stay closed, and we try not to sit in traffic.

At home and at school, we've overloaded on air-purifying plants, and I am having fun trying to keep them all alive. I still have 14; 2 plants have gone on to greener pastures.  :o)

Hmm, since today isn't so good, maybe I can convince Mark in a trip to the plant market again???

Hoping to live in a jungle...

It's a...nice day for a...white wedding!

Now that song will be playing in my head at midnight!

You know what you wanted to see, but you didn't know it?

A wedding fashion show at Wanda Plaza.

Lovely fashion choices, ladies!

More street food

We were exiting the back side of Wanda Plaza the other dark evening and noticed dust and bright lights rising from behind this large brick wall. Finding the entrance, we find that it's actually an organized selection of street food. I wouldn't be too nervous about trying it! (We only had a little because we had just eaten dinner.)

Nice green peppers...

I had grilled orange, rice gluten balls. I weirdly liked them. A little crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside, slightly sweet, and easy to eat many.

These were grilled green somethings. Not onions, kinda bean-like. Not asparagus-y... Tasty!

We would definitely take you here to eat.

Mystery lump, anyone?

Hahaha! Running. Psh.

You know I don't do such things. It's because "I still don't have sneakers here yet." (That's true, but I'm not exactly running out to buy any either.)

I bring this up because Mark and I signed up for the Kangqiao 5/10 k.

...

This sounds impressive, but it was really just the middle school principal organizing a run through our part of town.

It's not an entirely accurate depiction of our neighborhood...

There are a lot of runners in our staff apparently, so we thought we'd get in on the excursion with our excellent one-speed cruisers. :o)

I only got squirted with a water-bottle once.
For being sassy.
Dang Canadian. ;)

Here are a couple pictures of the journey.

(Apparently, I hit a funny button on my camera and didn't realize it. I had to re-color the pictures so some of them are "off." You live, you learn, right?)

The one in blue. That's the Canadian that got me with the waterbottle. 

Booo.

How do they look so happy running?!

Let's just look at the pretty grass.

The yellow to the left is rice. 

The way was mostly paved and ending up going by a few neighborhoods and under the highway. 

Of course there were chickens. 

Look! A forrest!  And the runners again. 

Someone's backyard garden.

Mark and a very confused man. 

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, off to work we go!

Random ponds with a few fisherman. 

I'm sure that sign says something like, "No Fishing."

More cutie gardens.

This is when we got a bit lost... but someone looks good doing it!

We made it to the middle turn around!!

Says so, right there.

Yes, weirdly, the two people on bikes fell behind the runners. We ended up dashing through it (it was the same thing in reverse) and made if for the BBQ at Ty, the principal's house. Real grass! Real barbecued chicken!

Now if only I remembered the way back through the trails...