Spelling Bee: S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G B-E-E

A few weekends ago our school, plus the three other Stanford schools, had a big Saturday morning event.  There were different stations for the students to go to, but for the older students there was a spelling bee, of which I got to be a judge at.

But it wasn't done quite the same way we do it in America.

They set up stairs on the stage for students to sit on and they wrote the words down instead of verbally spelling the words one-by-one.

But in one of the more confusing executive decisions I've witnessed, they had parents...of students NOT in the spelling bee...read the words in an effort to not seem like the English-speaking teachers were favoring his/her own students (or something like that).  So what resulted was Chinese--speaking parents giving their best efforts to read English words with thick accents.  While their attempts were great, it sometimes didn't phonetically sound right (and students had been studying for weeks)...which made some of the students misspell or even completely misunderstand words.  It was a big scandal as some parents complained their child lost because of this.  And in Asia, you don't mess with educational competitions...kinda like high school football in Texas.

Anyway, I talked to them about it and they said they'd change it for next year.  I'll be gone, but hopefully they do!

 The parents.

After each round we each graded the papers and eliminated it and it got narrower and narrower until there were 3 winners in each of the 3 different age groups.

Two of my students got first and second in the middle age group!...

Which is much farther than I got in my sixth grade spelling bee when I misspelled the word "fatigue."

Who put that "u" in there anyway!?

Pink Bridge

I found a bridge online that I wanted to go see.  It was about a half hour train ride south and then two miles from that train station.  I could either take a taxi or walk to see the bridge from the train station.  I decided to walk because it was a nice day and the weather was great.

However, I got a little lost on my walk for a good hour.

But it was ok because the scenery was great.

I finally found the right way and the bubble-gum pink bridge finally came into sight.  It was a walking bridge and not meant for cars and such.  Pretty small, very cool.  Very photogenic.

As the sun was setting the bridge started turning on lights and brightening up.

It even had a bunch of photographers there to capture it with the sunset.

The glass bottom of the bridge started lighting up as well and changed colors.

Fun day activity.

On the walk home I stopped by a restaurant where you literally pick a fish out of an aquarium and they cook it right there for you.

Oddly, I forgot to take any pictures of this...(Me!?)

Fireworks

At 11:30 pm on New Year's Eve I went down to the beach and had a front row view of a firework show I didn't know was going to happen!

Disgusting Jelly Beans

The Sunday before the new year the Breinholts from church had everyone over for a Christmas and New Year potluck.

We played Christmas songs with chimes.

We played a "white elephant" game.

 At first I opened stationery designed for mom.
 

 I ended up with a measuring glass.

 Afterwards we played some games.

Spoons!

Then we played a game called "Slammers-Creepers."  I could explain it, but I won't.  But whichever team lost had to randomly choose from a pile of jelly beans that about half were disgustingly flavored.  I can't remember any of the flavors except for the one that I got: canned dog food. (I remember now that some of them were things like: dirt, boogers, baby wipes, vomit, etc...).

It was nasty...but fun.
 

 Eating a canned dog food jelly bean.  Yikes. 

 The other team after eating a "rotten egg" jelly bean.

Leave it to the Mormons to have enough crazy fun sober.

I'm so thankful for friends here, nasty jelly beans and all.