Holidays, weather

Hokay, so.
Mid-Autumn Festival was last Tuesday, and we had the day off from school (no one knew that we were getting the day off until Monday morning, though, which seems like awfully short notice, but it was definitely a happy surprise for everyone). We didn't do anything super exciting, but Mr. Ren invited us to his house to make more dumplings (carrot and mutton filled) for lunch, and he had us over again that night to sit with his family and eat fruit and watch the traditional Mid-Autumn Festival tv program. People kept telling us about how the festival was a day for being with family, so we sat on the couch with Mr. Ren and his family and missed home a bit (well, I did, anyway), but it was a nice evening and it was very sweet of Mr. Ren to invite us over.
Monday was National Day, China's 58th birthday, so everyone except us had the Monday and Tuesday off (we had to teach elementary school in the morning both days, but we have four days off starting today to make up for it), and one of Katrina's students, Marilyn, invited us to go see the world famous Fen Chiew (Fen Jiu) distillery. Fen Jiu is the local hard liquor (when we had lunch at Haihua's house, she gave us each a little shot to try, but it was not delicious, so at the end of lunch when her brother was cleaning up, most of our fenjiu was still in our glasses. He looked at them for a second and then poured them out to use to clean and disinfect the table), and the distillery has really beautiful green gardens as well as rooms full of liquor. Apparently our tour was a little short, though, 'cause they've closed some areas to prepare for the upcoming Alcohol Festival.
Elementary school classes are a little nutso. I have it easy - my classes are a middle school class and one of the older elementary classes. The middle school kids are so easy to deal with, and even though the elementary kids are pretty rambunctious, at least they can already speak some English. Katrina and Julie both have younger kids, who I think must be even harder.
The kids don't have much of a sense of personal space or property; they're curious about us and they dig into our bags pretty much whenever our backs are turned (if they take things during break, though, they always give it back at the end). Some of them got my camera out of my backpack on Monday, so.... here's a few of the kids in my elementary class. The classes are hard, mostly because they're a pack of energetic kids who don't really speak English and we are inexperienced teachers who don't really speak Chinese (we each have a Chinese person helping us, too; if we didn't, Sunday classes would be impossible). On top of that, we teach in some unused rooms in another school, and the classrooms are pretty minimal. There's chalk, and a chalkboard, and desks. My classroom doesn't seem to have electric lights I fiddled with the light switches for a while before noticing that there weren't even lightbulbs in most of the lights. Some of the kids need glasses; very few have them. There's a pair of twin boys in one of my classes who share one pair of glasses. There weren't classes last year for the really young kids, so Katrina and Julie have to figure everything out as they go along.
The weather here has been fantastic (I am the only person who thinks this). It's been damp and cool and just like home; I was talking to one of my students and she said that there has never been weather like this in Fenyang before. It's been drizzling for about a week. The roads really aren't designed to handle water, so there's standing water on all the streets and the back roads are in really awful condition (they're in pretty awful condition even when it's dry).
Today is the start of a four-day weekend for us, so we think we're going to go to Pingyao, which is supposed to be lovely, and also probably Taiyuan (where we can buy cheese!) and maybe Taigu (where some folks from Oberlin are teaching). Anyway, I'm off to start my day. Bai bai.