Happy belated Dragon Boat Festival!

The Dragon Boat Festival takes place on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Lunar Year. This year, it fell on June 16th.   I have been told the festival commemorates the death of Qu Wuan, a poet from Warring States Period (Around 300 B.C). Qu Wuan was accused of some no-good stuff and eventually committed suicide by jumping in a river. Many admirers were worried fish would eat Qu Wuan, so they made zongzi to feed the fish.   (Chinese friends are welcome to correct me.)  The holiday was re-instated in the last decade.  Chinese people celebrate by eating zongzi and racing dragon boats.  Zongzi typically are filled with meat or beans. I had a particularly delicious one filled with egg and meat.

Days off for holidays works a bit differently in China.  If we have a midweek holiday in America, we generally have a day or two off and the days are added to end of the school year.  Here, they pull some crazy shenanigans and rearrange the work week.  We worked from Monday to Sunday and had our holiday + weekend on the following Monday to Wednesday. I can just imagine trying to get American students to go to school seven days in a row.

I spent most of the holiday relaxing as best I could. I was exhausted from being sick and working.   The Expo had something like 1.4 million visitors during the holiday.

I recently read an article about noise thresholds for people and the idea of loud in different cultures. (Conveniently, I read this as a jackhammer or some power tool was blasting in the apartment next to mine at 7:00 PM.)  Generally, I have found Shanghai to be a very loud city.  I often feel like people are yelling at me when they are actually speaking in normal voices. Once in a while, I can't figure out if they are angry or just loud.  I know plenty of loud Americans but being unable to understand the majority of what is being said to me makes it feel a little more like yelling.  Maybe.  I'm not too sure.

Most of the time, Shanghai doesn't seem so exotic to me because I see it everyday.  Despite being unable to understand nearly everything around me, I still forget I'm in China.  A couple weeks ago when a friend was visiting, I took a picture of a man attaching a bicycle to a giant load of chairs.  Though I saw more of this in other cities, Shanghai still has its fair share of giant bike loads. 

Sorry it has been so long!  First the flooding, then the roaches, then being sick and generally just being very busy.  I'm actually home today due to a fever, a nasty headache, and a deep cough.  Fortunately, somewhere between 10:00 and 11:00, my fever finally broke and my symptoms starting fading a bit.  Around 11:30, my waiban showed up to take me to the hospital, upset that I hadn't called her earlier in the weekend to tell me I had been sick. 

The doctor told me what I already knew I had to do--take it easy, drink lots of fluids, don't over-exert myself, get some rest and take better care of myself. My fever had caused all the cruddy symptoms that made me want to curl up in a small ball all weekend. Probably just a flu bug. Thanks kids!

Anyway, last Monday was Children's Day here in China!  All my classes prepared 2 English songs to sing.  I wish I could share some of the videos- they were adorable.  However, I neglected to bring my bigger memory card and missed the last performances of the morning (which were by far the best)