sam's tricks

we tried to capture a few of sam's tricks tonight, here's some of them.

track and field day

last week the school hosted the annual track and field day for all the freshman students. it's a pretty big deal, usually the students get 2 days off from class to run around and mainly sit in the stands and cheer. last year they started letting the teachers compete in the competitions as well. last year the foreign teachers only competed in one relay event and this year they piled the events on us. which is ironic because last year we had super speedy seth and sarah on the team. we could have used them this year. i was entered in the 100 m, 200m, 4x100m, a really weird relay race (i ran the 200m), and finally the long jump. needless to say it was a long two days and i'm still trying to recover from it. i'm not sure how i got roped into all of those events, but it was fun. the best part was that we got gifts for placing in each event. so for every event that i got 7th place or higher, i got gifts. i think i got something for everything but the 100m dash (apparently i've gotten slow, or because the teachers i raced against all took off before the gun went off, but i'm not bitter). so i got a few sets of hangers, a blanket, and something else.

our 4x100m team (i think we got 3rd or 4th)


the craziest was the long jump, the last time i did the long jump was in the 8th grade (19 years ago). i came in 5th place for the prelims and then 7th in the finals. not sure how that happened but apparently the other people got better. i jumped 5.07m (16.6 ft), not bad for a little guy. but hopefully i'll never have to do that again.

congrats marguerite!

today we went to our first chinese wedding (not including ours, but i'm not sure that really counts). it was for a student who was a senior our first year in china. the wedding was held in between services at the local 3-self in changchun. the 8 o'clock got out and in went the couple. they exchanged some vows, the choir sang, and then they were out the door. as soon as they were gone the 9 o'clock started up. talk about efficiency!

the only bummer was having to get up at 4:45am, to catch the 5 o'clock train in the morning. i was not a fan of that, either was sam. here's the proof:


here's some pics from today :)

happy birthday jilin normal university!!!

this week we celebrated the 50th anniversary of our school (jilin normal university). it was a rocking good time. there were performances, speeches (all in chinese), parties, and fireworks! our president tim davis came for the festivities, but he was being catered to by the school, so we didn't see him much. happy birthday jnlu!

nothing says happy birthday like a good bunch of performances by students :)


or a lit up teaching building


and certainly nothing says happy birthday, like a big old firework show!

we're back

so the olympics were awesome and everything went smoothly. now we are chillin' in siping. i figured that my blog would be shut down, but apparently we're still up and running, so i guess i should throw down a little post.

sunday was the mid-autumn day festival. so happy mid-autumn day to everyone. traditionally you are supposed to eat moon cakes (china's version of the fruit cake) and watch the full moon. i got a box of moon cakes and on the cover of it said: "shane the delicacies mith goun family! he full hnight moonnises in the, all of us dalued ann bequiuafliu-Autumn Bift!" no joke, that's what it says. i'm not sure what that really means, but i was glad to get that autumn bift.

this week the school is having a big 50th year celebration thing. so TD our elic presidente and other big wigs are coming for the party. should be a rocking good time.

we also went to beijing this last weekend to meet up with our dentist and family friend. it was fun :) beijing is still hosting the paralympics so the skies are blue and the traffic is awesome. they should have the olympics year round there.

peace from siping!

my olympic debut :)

look for us at the olympics! we leave tomorrow morning at 6:00am :) then when i arrive i have to get on a train to go to siping and pick up my tickets and then go back the next day to beijing. long story, but the olympic committee is crazy!

here's our events if you want to look for us (these are the china times):
8/21 - women's beach volleyball finals (gold and bronze metal games)
8/21 - women's handball semifinals (the tickets were really cheap)
8/22 - men's beach volleyball finals (gold and bronze metals)
8/23 - track and field (bunch of events, including 4x400 relay)
8/24 - men's marathon
8/24 - closing ceremonies

that's the skinny. look for us on tv :)

i'm out to china!

poor nini

the coverage of the olympics has been awesome, except there has been no mention of the fuwa (formerly the friendlies). but i did see this picture of the fuwa in the china daily. poor nini, someone knocked her down and she couldn't get up.

2 down, 1 more to go

i've officially completed 2 classes so far :) i finished a paper and turned it in today. so only 1 more week of class and i'm done for this summer :)

hooray :)

in other news, i learned today that i've been lied to about tootsie roll pops (my childhood is ruined). yesterday i had a tootsie roll pop and on the wrapper i saw that there was the indian shooting the star and my classmates and i discussed how it was good for collecting so that you could get more free candy (i love candy). everyone had heard the "rumor" before (except the girl that grew up in another country-that doesn't count). so i looked it up on the internet (because the internet never lies) and found that it was never true, or at least endorsed by the tootsie pop peeps. some store owners, at their own costs, used to redeem the wrappers and give kids free candy, but the people at tootsie don't give away free candy if you mail in the wrappers (which is about 30% of the wrappers with the indian shooting the star). the tootsie people got so many requests for free candy from the wrappers, they made up a story about the indian and the star.

here's the story (sorry it's small print, but you can click on the pic):


on another random note, my flickr page gives me stats (like no one likes samantha, thanks naomi for helping), and it said that a picture had been linked. so i clicked and sure enough i found a picture of sam on her birthday on someone's blog. check it out "www.alexiablogs.com" - interesting. i'm not endorsing this girl, but i think it's funny that she has a picture of samantha.

my mean flickr page

today i was going through my flickr photo page and i was looking up some pictures. next to the pictures there were some notes from the not-so-kind flickr people telling me some statistics about each picture. next to a picture of samantha, was this nice statistic:

"71 views / Nobody counts Samantha Grace as a favorite / 4 comments"

don't worry sam, i'll count you as a favorite.

here's my salute to you sam (don't worry about it, the flickr page has no feelings):

the latest happenings

so i'm in wheaton taking classes again this summer. right now i'm in the middle of a class called "theological foundations"; i'm still not sure what it's all about, but i still go everyday.

rachel and samantha left this afternoon to head towards minnesota and michigan. so i'm left with an empty apartment in wheaton. that means that i will be taking lots of naps, when i should be working on homework. napping is my hobby :)

in case your not up to date on the flickr photos, last week in north carolina, samantha and i went wakeboarding together. i hope it didn't turn her off to wakeboarding, because like all good fathers, i'm going to live out my dreams through her. so i figured that i should start her off early so she can go "pro" and get sponsorships and lots of free stuff - hopefully stickers are involved, and maybe a boat.



so that's what's been going on, not very exciting.

rach may be the funny one

we went out on the boat and i told rach i would give her 5 dollars if she would wear her life vest for the rest of the night (as in she wasn't allowed to take it off, even on the boat). for some odd reason she agreed. when we got home, my mom offered to give her 10 dollars to take it off. my aunt lisa was in town and she offered the same. so really rach made 20 bucks for wearing that silly life vest. i think if it were me wearing it, my mom and aunt would have taken money away from me and still made me wear it the rest of the night.


here's a picture of samantha and java.

back in the USA

we're finally home :) and finally able to access the blog. even though most of the faithful fans of the screaming squirrel have stopped checking on the blog, i'll still drop a little post.

we got home a few days ago after having a flight canceled in DC, which stinks because at that point we'd been traveling for 20 hours and sitting in the DC airport for 5 hours when we could have driven home in that amount of time. we did get to spend 3 hours in a really nice hotel and take a nap at 2:30 am. good thing we were all jacked up on the time, because it didn't matter that is was so early in the morning to us. we had to take a taxi to the hotel, but when finally got to the taxi, the driver said, "i can't take you without a car seat". we were like "what's a car seat?". after standing in the taxi line at 2:30 am for 20 minutes, it never occurred to us that we even needed a car seat, we were just going to hold samantha like we always do. i'd blame it on the 2:30am thing, but it wasn't because we were tired, it's because we've been living in a land of non safety standards for so long, that we forgot that there is a thing called "safety".

on another note, yesterday we went to target, wow! i forgot about how much stuff there is in america. i especially like the clean floors and air conditioning, that was fantastic!

my new video

everywhere we go, samantha gets a lot of attention. so i decided to do a little experiment.

shafted!

yesterday ended up being the day when the station resumed power and we could get on tv. when we arrived to the station, we realized that we would not be on a stage, but only sit as audience members on an "oprah-like" tv show. clearly the foreign teachers were only there for their faces. somehow the wu's were placed in a dark corner as part of the studio audience. clearly we were not going to see any air time.

there was a time when i was in college that i was asked to be in every photo ad for the school. you know to promote the school as a diverse student body, even though there was only 10 asians on campus. i didn't mind, i like the attention :) but yesterday, i seem to have been shafted from the camera due to my similar appearance to the rest of the audience. nuts! i did get some air time when we all had to say: "ma ma wo ai ni" (mom, i love you) and look into the camera, but i'll probably end up being cut out.

the studio and studio audience - notice you can't see any wu's. the tv camera didn't see any either.




rach and sam in their dark spot in the audience.

no power?

yesterday we were supposed to go to the local tv station to sing a chinese song about mothers for mother's day. we got to the meeting place and the bus was ready to take us to the station, when the tv station called and said, "don't come, there is no power". interesting, a tv station with no power? i hope they were still able to broadcast cartoons.

unbelievable

why unbelievable? well a few things ...

1. we can still get to blogspot, i can't believe it ... except now that i mentioned it, tomorrow it will be blocked again.

2. the last 2 weeks we've had awesome weather (60s and low 70s), the flip flops have been busted out, and the winter coats put away. till today ... it snowed last night :( and it's 30 degrees out now ... nuts!! oh yeah, did i mention the heat was turned off a few weeks ago. i guess i have to get the long underwear out.

before today...(ahh spring)



after last night...(crap!)



3. i unleashed the beast last night, i gave a lecture on american slang, so now there is going to be a bunch of students trying to practice their new use of slang on me. i'm not sure why i did it, but maybe because i love to hear students call me on the phone (in their chinese accents) and say, "mr. wu, what's up? what's the skinny?" it makes me laugh everytime!

as promised here are some pictures from my surprise birthday party. really, how could i not participate, class could definitely wait another week.

my weapons of mass destruction

a little while ago there were some students on campus that were robbed by some dudes who are working on the construction site here building the new cafeteria. after this happened the school leaders told all the students to be careful when walking back to their dorms at night. if you know anything about chinese students, this means don't go outside at night for some of them. many of them were pretty scared to walk around at night. after the big robbery some of my students, who regularly come to my house every week, called me to inform me that they could no longer come to our house. i told them to not worry and that i would walk them home so they could keep coming. so the first night that i walked them home they told me i should bring a weapon, "something sharp" was their exact words. i told them "no worries", i have my own weapons that i bring everywhere. they said, "oh really, what?", i quickly pulled my fists out, put up my best rocky pose, and said, "these weapons". they were not amused, with a straight face they said, "no really mr. wu, you need something sharp." i was very disappointed that they didn't think i could take on a bunch of construction guys, i proceeded informed them that i was also a really fast runner (they seemed to think that was going to be my best way to avoid harm). so for the last 3 weeks, i've been walking these girls home and every time i get home i have to "text message" one of them to tell them that i got home okay, or else they will be worried. funny girls.

it's up :)

for a short time the firewall on blogger is not on, so i can put a little ditty in.

here's the skinny:
our little mac got a bad cold and the hard drive is no longer :( this is the second time in the last 6 months that this happened, so i'm pretty sad. i think the good people that fix apples in china are not so good at fixing the problem. so now we are without our little mac for a few days. bummer.

on another note:
i always knew that the elementary education majors knew how to have fun (they never had homework in college), and it was validated even here in china. i started teaching freshman education majors this semester. i haven't taught freshmen in a year and a half, so it has been fun to teach them again (they still think having a foreign teacher is cool). the first day of class i mentioned to them when my birthday was and apparently they remembered. on monday i walked into a classroom completely decorated and filled with 41 students (all girls) ready to party. they had streamers and balloons all over the room and the desks were all pushed to the side. the girls had purchased two ginormous cakes and enough sunflower seed to feed an army, along with tons of soda. they were ready to party! i realized that there was no way that my family tree lesson was going to take place. so we partied it up! the girls had even organized singers and dancers to perform for the birthday bash. we were so loud that the teacher in the room next store had to come over and tell us to be quiet. so i now know that el. ed. majors are the ones that know how to party all across the world.

i'll try to put pictures up when the computer comes back.

guess who's walking?

samantha started walking this week, so i put the first few steps into a little video.

enjoy :)



if it doesn't work, sorry :( i still can't see my blog, thanks china firewall!

in case you were worried . . .

in our pursuit (samantha and i) of the stray dogs, no one got injured. not even the dogs.

thailand :)

so we're hanging in thailand now. it's nice to be out of the cold. all our china friends think that samantha has lost weight because she's not in her snow suit.

rachel has been in classes for the last week, so i've been on baby duty. there are a bunch of other moms here watching their kids for the week, so they keep inviting me to their mom activities. i ain't hanging out with a bunch of moms, that's too much for me. so samantha and i have just been cruising about eating donuts and chasing stray dogs around chiangmai.

next week i've got class so no more dog chasing.