Today is Dragon Boat Festival, one of the few official holidays’ here in China. Curious at what that means? Well read this post that I wrote last year about the history and culture behind it. We are right in the thick of finishing up our final exams (Thursday will be my last one) so we don’t have time to do anything special this holiday, but the holiday magic still found it’s way to us.
On Friday the foreign teachers got a call from the International Office that there were gift packages waiting for us at the school store. “And bring Ryan with you,” the woman warned. “All the bottles will be heavy!”
Bottles? Heavy?
Turns out we each got two 2-liter bottles of Coke, a box of milk cartons (containing 16 cartons in each) and a bag of zongzi. Â (So together Ryan and I have 4 bottles of soda and 32 boxes of milk. We don’t even use milk that often so it should last awhile.)Â Zongzi is a traditional food of the holiday, but we are still scratching our heads over the rest of it. It was very nice of the International Office to arrange for all of us, but we are unsure of the meaning behind it. Are they just being friendly? Or do they have something terrible they have to tell us so they are trying to butter us up first?
Regardless we picked it up late last night and put it in the corner of our apartment until we could decide what to do with it. When we woke and went into the living room Ryan said “Look! The Dragon Boat Fairy found us.” So thank you Dragon Boat Fairy for your very kind, yet slightly strange, gifts. And a Happy Dragon Boat Festival to one and all!
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