So our past week and half here were filled with holiday celebrations! oct 1 marked the 60th anniversary of the country. not too much was happening around here, but the capital was full of parades and celebrations that the rest of the country watched on tv. we watched some that night on bbc, and it was pretty impressive. granted, the military parade containing missile launchers and manless drones being marched through the capital city was a little eerie, but exploding twice as many fireworks in the culminating celebration then the olympic opening ceremony was quite impressive. most impressive, was the govt declaring an 8 day holiday to celebrate this important anniversary. so for us, no classes for a week.
and then 2 days later was mid-autumn festival, where we all eat mooncakes (or are supposed to) and go outside and look at the moon and tell this love story about the girl in the moon, yada yada. we spent the day with some friends at an old folks home (i guess retirement home would be more pc). tradition in this part of the world is that grandparents live with their children (usually their son) when they get older, so for them to be living in this place pretty much denotes that they don't have family. they may never have had kids or something may have happened. anyways, they are basically all alone in the world family-wise.
we spent the afternoon cleaning their rooms, which were really really dirty. we sang songs and some friends did performances. and we gave them fruit and of course mooncakes!
it was an awesome experience and we hope to go back!
