I got thrown into the fire today, in a manner of speaking.

After an exceptionally rough morning, I stumbled down to get some food from the cafeteria, or "canteen" as they're called here. I'm sure that has some fancy Chinese spelling, but that's what the others here call it. So, when in Rome.

As part of my continued training before starting actual work, I got to observe two classes today. One was older kids like I'll be teaching. The other was essentially a kindergarten class. I have to admit, I'm quite jealous of the kindergarten class. I think I may actually try and take one of those instead of my regular, since you basically color and throw balls for an hour. I'm like, really good at that. I hardly ever go outside of the lines, and can throw balls a lot better than some weak little Asian kid. U-S-A, U-S-A!

Yllen and I walked home together today, and she took me to this Muslim noodle shop not far from my place. I'm glad she did, because this shop is amazing. It's run by this family who has a toddler who is just thrilled to see anyone not Chinese. The guy also makes the noodles, in front of you, from scratch. "They're really good since they use fresh garlic.", Yllen says. As many of you know aside from mushrooms, garlic is the fastest way to get on my good side. I just got done eating it, which was so massive I had to leave some. The entire cost for this amazing meal? A dollar and some change.

Something you have to get used to when in China is that they really like fireworks. They don't shoot them off in the middle of the night mind you, but don't be alarmed when you're just going on with your day and you hear several loud booms in the distance. So the video for today is the tail end of what I saw on my break, just randomly wandering around outside of work - which is in a pretty urban part of town. Effectively, this is doing the WEBN fireworks on 6th street.