The kids have been busy this week, wrapping up their classes and projects for the year. Semester exams start tomorrow for Grant and Luke, so they have been somewhat busy studying for them.
In Mallory's class, they recently had an "Hour of Code" day where they learned about computer programming.
At work we've had several events out of the office recently -- so many, in fact, that Heidi has accused me of rarely working. This week my team went to a hot pot restaurant for lunch (they've been talking with me a lot about going to this type of place since I arrived). This is the Beijing-style hot pot, though, and not the more popular Szechuan hot pot. We'll do that some time soon, I'm sure.
Photo of (most of) my team at the restaurant.
On Friday we went to the year end lunch for the larger department (of which my group is a part). We went to a Japanese restaurant, with lots of raw fish -- not exactly my favorite, but we did find some hot / cooked food on the menu.
More food than anyone should eat in one sitting...
Saturday morning was our church's Christmas party. The kids wore their pajamas, we had breakfast,
....and even Santa Claus came to visit the kids.
They had envelopes out for people to write to the missionaries from our branch who are serving in various places around the world. (Luke provided this drawing of Nash -- and not the asterisk with the disclaimer in the fine print at the bottom: "* not accurate").
They also had us finish off making about a million scarves, to be given to some kids in need of scarves.
On Saturday afternoon, most of us went to the nearby underground market (aka "fake market"), to buy some gifts, including this chicken hat).
We've done a fair bit of Christmas cookie baking this week.
Luke made this motorcycle sugar cookie, to be given as a "Secret Santa" gift. I believe each of the kids have had multiple Secret Santa and white elephant parties this week.
Demonstration shots for the peeling process for one of our favorite fruits here: the pomelo.
The rind is about an inch thick.
And the skin on each of the segments is really tough, so you just peel it all off.
Grant and Luke got a hold of some large boxes wrapped as Christmas presents that were used as decorations at the church Christmas party. They dropped it off anonymously at the house of some friends. The box ended up back at our house about 30 minutes later. So they took it back, and Luke climbed inside the box as Grant rang the doorbell.
This was the white elephant gift Mallory received at a party last night -- a piggy bank decorated as a turkey. Why?
On a scooter ride on Saturday afternoon, Luke and Grant saw this guy in a construction hat walking through an intersection. He was carrying a turtle. Apparently he can be seen quite often around here, trying to sell a turtle.
A student at the school asked Luke to be in a film she is making, so Luke spent Thursday evening and Saturday afternoon with a small group of people, doing some filming. Saturday afternoon they spent riding on the subway, where Luke's character gets lost.
We saw this sign in the underground market. Apparently this is where the tourists are distributed -- you know, where people go to receive their tourists.
