March 7-9: Weekend Update From Gavi

Gavi Writes:

Hi Everyone,
Saturday morning the Gaoxin School took my family, the 8 BHS students and me to the Provincial Museum. The Provincial Museum exhibits included artifacts from quite a few of the dynasties. It was really interesting to go through and look at all of it in one place. There were a few displays that had versions of the same artifact from different dynasties that were really interesting to look at. For example, there was a display of the decorated backs of 5 or so mirrors from different dynasties. All of which had very different patterns but elements from the ones that came before it.

After the museum, we all went out for boud zi, which is becoming a Saturday afternoon tradition. After lunch, the BHS students and I, minus Emily who had a ton of homework, went to the Muslim Quarter to do some shopping and work on our bargaining skills. I didn’t really need anything but I found Ayden some jade earrings for her birthday, which I got for 20 yuan from about 50. When we finished our shopping, we all went home for dinner, and then went to Jenna’s for a movie night. Though, it wasn’t really a movie night because Mikey, the keeper of the movies, was two hours late. Subsequently, it was a mahjong/ hide and go seek/ movie night. However, it was fun nevertheless.

Sunday night Ayden and I had our joint birthday party. Ayden’s birthday is March 7th and mine March 11th so March 9th seemed like an appropriate day. For our party my parents treated us, and the BHS students to a hot pot dinner. Hot pot is a type of Chinese meal that can be found all over Xi’an. Basically, everyone gets their own pot of boiling fish broth and all sorts of things, such as fish and meat, are put on the table. Each person chooses what he or she wants to eat and then they put it in their pot to either cook or heat up. Then you dip it in sauce and eat it, it tastes amazing! After dinner we had a cake shaped like a panda’s head, which Ayden picked out last week, then did presents and went home.

Monday was pretty much a normal school day for me. I went to Chinese school, then came to the dorms for lunch. After lunch we played ping pong for a while and then had a discussion about the trip we went on last weekend to the country-side. Then, while everyone else was editing journal entries for the WebLab, I did some schoolwork from back home. For our cultural class, we had Kung Fu. Unlike in the past, we got to use swords. It was really fun and cool though, had the swords been real Ben would have probably lost his head 5 times over. After we learned a routine, our teacher took our measurements for Kung-fu uniforms she is having made for us. When cultural class was over I went back up to the dorms to do more school work.

More later,
Gavi