Last week was April Fool’s day (愚人节）, or for me rather, April Fool’s week. Unfortunately I didn’t actually have class on April 1, but that didn’t stop me from playing a trick on each one of my classes. The trick went simply like this; I told them that the school leaders wanted me to give more quizzes, these quizzes would be pop-quizzes so they didn’t know there were coming. Our first one is today. This sent them into a panic. They were so worried about doing well on this quiz that they would do whatever it said. Lucky me. Knowing that students don’t always read directions so well I gave them each a quiz like the one below. As you can see, the instructions say to read the entire quiz first before doing anythere. Well, students often don’t read directions, so this leads them to do every question on the quiz before they get to the bottom and realize they’ve been tricked. All the while I was taking a video of them doing some pretty silly things. Check out the videos after the jump.

I, however, have had to make my own sacrifice, apparently begging my students to keep quiet so the following classes wouldn’t find out resulted in me making a small promise. They always want me to sing songs, so I said I would, then they insisted it be a song in Chinese. I choked at this a bit, but have since found a song that I can sing. I’ll try to sing it next week and let you know how it goes.

April Fool’s Exam

Class Exam Videos (in order 1, 2, 3)

Sunday, April 4th, was Easter. After missing out on going to a church service for Christmas Eve I decided that I should try to go on Easter morning. Fortunately I found a church pretty close to my typical bus stop. It was listed as a catholic church, but I figured it didn’t matter as it would all be in Chinese anyway. I arrived shortly before the end of the previous service and I was pretty suprised at the number of people inside, as well as outside in the courtyard area listening to the service. It was packed, but noone seemed to mind standing for an hour for the service. Fortuantely at the end of the service I was able to grab a seat inside the chapel for the next service. Despite being listed as a catholic church, the service seemed rather non-denomenational to me. Though I honestly didn’t really know what they were talking about most of the time. I only caught snippets of info, like the names of Jesus, Judas, and the disciples calling him Jesus “Lord”. I recognized the tunes of the hymns that were sang, though not well enough that I could sing them in English.

Church courtyard

It seemed that the Chinese that came to church were actually pretty serious about it, they all brought their own bible and hymn book and used them during the sermon. They served communion similar to what I see done at my own church, though ladies in something that looked like a nurse’s gown came around with a huge tray filled with cups of wine. Amazingly the communion wine actually tasted better than some of the drinking wine I’ve had here. There was no offering, which I was surprised at, but there was an offering box just outside the door so I stuck a few RMB in there. After about 1 hour and 15 minutes the church slowly filtered out, outside the main courtyard were a handful of beggars, I guess they figured that the generous Christian people would be feeling so good after church that they’d love to help a beggar out. I didn’t.

Crappy phone photo of the inside of the church

Following church Marina and I decided to have brunch at the Sofitel hotel, which coincidentally was very nearby. A few expat friends I had gone running with the day before informed me of the great brunch buffet on Sundays, and I decided I should check it out since it was a holiday. They weren’t lying. It was pretty awesome. There was so many foods that I hadn’t seen in months! Bacon, cheese, chocolate rabbits, gummi rootbeer bottles, ham, and roast beef (prepared in a western style). We enjoyed lunch for almost two hours, just chatting and munching on the wonderful food. So, all in all, Easter was a success, though I still have a yearning for some peeps or Cadbury cream eggs.

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