School

One of the Chinese holiday's is Children's Day.  Kids 12 and under get the day off and kids 12-18 get half a day off.  Parents also get half a day off  to hang out with their kids.  Usually kids get toys and get to go out to eat and lots of businesses do special things for families who are out spending time with their kids.  It is a big deal here in China.  Each year we have been here one of Kyle's co workers who is single comes over and brings gifts for the girls.  This year he bought them all harmonica's and took us out to eat at Pizza Hut.  The girls love it.  Some of the schools also celebrate by putting on productions for the parents.  

A few weeks ago I uploaded a video of Kenz practicing her Chinese to introduce her class.  I thought it was for the Dragon Boat festival, which was on the same weekend as Children's day, but it was actually a production for Children's day.  So Kyle and I got to go watch her show along with her sisters.  It was super hot and crowded but the kids all did a great job!  

 

 Part of Kenz class performing to 'We Will Rock You'.  It was hilarious!

 Kindergarten version of 'Gangnam Style'

 A few of the moms put on a dance.  It was interesting...

 Traditional Chinese dance

 Kenz introducing her class.  She did a great job and remembered all her words.  I asked her later if she was nervous and she said 'no, it was so fun!'  Weird child!

 She is in the back, she and most of the class sang a song with the 'butterflies' danced in front

Finally the finale was the teachers dance.

All the kids here love to dance.  Everyday at 9:40am everyone goes outside and they dance for about 20-30 minutes.  The girls and I have been walking down to watch through the back fence and on most days there is between 50-75 people gathered outside the school fence watching all the kids dance. 

Sister's watching the show.

Twice a year the school invites the parents in for the morning so we can all see what our kids are working on and learning and what their day is like.  Earlier this week I went to the second parents morning with Kenz. 

 Kenz sang 'Twinkle Little Star' during the morning activities

 Then they played games

 These are her two teachers, Coco and Summer

 Classroom

 Snack time. 

 They learned about spaceships then had to draw them in their books

 Dance time.

 Unfortunately they decided to make all the moms dance too!

 Then we got to check out the kids garden.  They are growing cucumbers, tomatoes and eggplant.

 This is Kenzie's friend Tara.

 This is Cece, she is one of the English teachers.  She is tons of fun and all the kids love her.  Kenz has one on one Chinese lessons with her 3 times per week.

 Kenzie's teacher, Coco

This is Kenzie's best friend Spring.  Beside her is Kenzie's daily irritation, Loogony (obviously the pinyin is wrong but that is how I would phonetically spell it).  This boy bothers everyone, is high drama and totally crazy.  I think he is hilarious but he is a serious challenge for the teachers!  Kenz is always irritated about something he does to her during the day!

It was a great morning, it was fun to see how she interacts with everyone.  She has lots of friends there and she learns something new everyday.  The teachers all love her and everyone is always trying to interact with her.  There were many times that I questioned whether we were doing the right thing or not by sending her to school when she didn't know the language and there is no English.  It was very very difficult for her in the beginning.  But now she loves it!  She has matured a lot, she has adapted to her surroundings well, and she will be very sad to say goodbye to all her friends in the next few weeks.

Calligraphy Brushes

Huzhou is known for it's textiles.  Specifically children's clothing.  But it is famous for its handmade calligraphy brushes.  They are famous throughout China and used by many famous artists and leaders around China.  We watched a British documentary about the Huzhou Brush Factory here in Huzhou one day and decided that we needed to go check this place out.  Kyle wanted his picture taken with the 'Master' :)

So one weekend we finally arranged everything and took a tour of the factory.  It is about an hour from our house and it was a Sunday so most of the people were not working but we still go to see most of the process.

The Factory

 The girls checking out the goats.  They use goat hair, rabbit hair and weasel hair.  Their are also specialty brushes made from all kinds of other hair.

 The Master, he started working in this factory when he was 14 years old.

 His work area

Kyle got his picture!  He sold us a set of brushes that he had handmade from start to finish.  We found out later that they are not supposed to sell their own brushes because it takes away from the profit of the store that is outside the factory.  Kyle evidently can be very persuasive :)

 They carved the bamboo handles in this room.  Some are made with bamboo, some with flower bamboo, some with the horns of different animals, and some with different kinds of hard wood.

 The Master explaining to our friend Sean how they do the process of selecting the hairs.

 Workstations

 Ladies putting glue into the brushes to make the stiff.

Making the brushes.

 The girls got a little bored, but they found some birds in a cage which proved to be super entertaining!

 More workstations

This lady adds some wax at the bottom of the hair so each clump stays together

 This guy puts each hair clump into the bamboo handles

 This guy is separating the hair and pulling out the individual unacceptable hairs

 They opened up the museum for us and this brush is made with horse hair, it was amazing!

 They teach people how to do calligraphy here, or let them try different brushes to see which one they want to buy.

This is a display in the gift shop showing some of the different size brushes that they make.  They had all kinds, from the everyday brush to very special and expensive brushes.  It was a cool experience.  Totally fascinating to watch them put the brushes together.