中秋节快乐!

Note: We wrote this post together last night, which was the actual festival day. Now it is Wednesday morning and we are in a net bar. Read on...

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival from Harbin! A few words of explanation: Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival, is a time when families gather together to gaze at the round moon and eat the round mooncakes to signify their eternal unity. Despite the happy sentiment of this tradition, moon cakes are, in fact, utterly disgusting. Of all the Chinese people we asked, literally everyone responded that they do not actually like to eat mooncakes. However, everybody also told us that they eat mooncakes every year to celebrate the festival. We suggested that perhaps they eat other round foods, such as eggs or even peaches, to celebrate the eternal unity of their family, but they seemed perplexed by the suggestion. Oh well, we tried.

In keeping with tradition, we bought two mooncakes filled with egg yolks - actually the variety closest to edible, surprisingly enough. (There are many other varieties, filled with such delicacies as flower petals and bean paste.) We hurriedly ate them with a little help from what Tom likes to call "good ol' Mr. Coffee," although I suppose that is not very Chinese of us. Nonetheless, we stared at the moon through the hazy sky (and the warped glass of our porch) and thus celebrated the holiday along with a billion other people.

In other news, I had a very nice birthday. Rather, I had a nice birthday week, as the celebration was dragged out for several days (I didn't complain). I cooked a birthday dinner for Tom and me - pasta, tomato sauce, and a bottle of red wine which was actually decent. On my actual birthday, some of my classmates decorated the room, which was very fun because the teachers didn't want to erase the drawings on the blackboard but were subsequently left with a tiny square in which to write. That night, our class - and even two of our teachers - went out to eat together at a nice restaurant. I also received many nice gifts, the highlights including a Chinese Bible and a stuffed Fuwa - one of the Beijing 2008 Olympic mascots.

Here, I intended to post some pictures, but the computer that I'm using will not read my thumb drive, no matter what I try (which isn't much because everything is in Chinese). So, next time!

Next week we have a whole week off of school for National Day. We don't have much planned (except a potential visitor: our friend and fellow Calvin student Tabitha), so hopefully we can catch up on many of the posts - and all those pictures - we've promised over the past month!