Fun Fair 2013

Every fall KIA hosts an event called Fun Fair- a carnival like event open to the community. Each high school homeroom runs food and fun booths where the general public can spend their Fun Fair tickets to either play games or eat great food. It is a great opportunity for the school to open its gates to everyone and provide a great service to our both our Chinese and expat neighbors and friends. 

This year Eric's homeroom class (the 10th graders) came up with an awesome booth called Trick or Treat where people, mostly kids, could come and cut a string hanging in the booth and receive whatever prize was on the other end. The trick was to pick the correct string because they were all tangled together so they never knew what they were going to end up with. They also hosted a skee ball booth, a balloon dart booth, and a booth where people were served juice and had to guess the flavors. Sounds weird, but it was actually very successful. 

My homeroom class (the 11th graders) always have a "Soak a Teacher" booth. A poor teacher sits on a stool with a huge water balloon sitting in a basket over their heads, while contestants throw a ball at a target. Hit the target, soak the teacher. I had to sit in that booth last year. Thankfully, this year we had other volunteers! We also hosted cookie decorating, bracelet making, and mini-golf. Our food booths were curry rice bowls, cotton candy and popcorn. Yum. 

Preparing the curry!

11th Graders Cotton Candy booth

10th Graders Trick or Treat booth

Getting ready for a full day of fun!

11th Graders Cookie Decorating booth

Skyping

Skyping with family is our lifeline to "home". This is me skyping with my family last week. Love it! If you ever want to skype us, email us and we will figure out a time. We would love to talk to you!

Sanya!

Over National Day holiday I had the opportunity to go to Sanya, the "Hawaii of China", with three of my friends. Sanya is a city on Hainan Island in the South China Sea (we didn't technically even stay in Sanya, but were actually in a small fishing village about 45 km outside of the city). Having never been to Hawaii, I can't really say if the comparison is accurate, but I suspect the only things that they really have in common are palm trees and lots of tourists.   

We left Kunming early on a Saturday morning and made it to the southernmost point of China by 10am. We were on the beach by noon and spent most of our day either there or wandering around the village. 

Sunday was drizzly and grey, but still so wonderfully warm. We didn't know it until Sunday night but there was actually a typhoon headed for the island! We just thought the weather was bad and the waves were normally rough. We spent our day at a restaurant next to our hostel. It was run by Russians and served western food. We literally sat there ALL day long. It was wonderfully relaxing. The typhoon hit that night and honestly, between the AC going full blast, the fan going full blast, and my ear plugs- I slept right through it!

Monday morning was still drizzly and grey and we decided to bus into the actual city of Sanya. We spent our day exploring and doing nothing in particular. We walked through back alleys seeing everyday normal life in the city and ended up back on the main streets to see floods of tourists- what a contrast.

On Tuesday morning we woke to calm waters and sunshine! We spent our entire day on the beach and in the water. What a difference from the rough water we experienced the first day. We flew out that night and made it back to Kunming a little after midnight. 

It was a wonderful break from everyday Kunming life and a nice chance to hangout with the girls. Eric took advantage of my absence and worked to get ahead in his school planning and AP class prep. 

We flew Lucky Air, arguably the worst airline name on the planet. I felt so lucky to have arrived there safely. 

The view from our hostel deck. Beautiful!

We didn't realize there was a typhoon coming. This is what a normally calm bay looks like before a typhoon!

This is propaganda at its very best. Havana? Really?

Our favorite hangout ever: the Russian place. We have no idea what the actual name of the place was, but it was run by and frequented by many Russians. This was how we spent our Tuesday: sitting under a beach umbrella with frequent swimming breaks.