Fire Lantern Festival

The other day in Changzhou it was Fire Lantern Festival, a holiday that takes place during the next full moon after the Chinese New Year, and people were setting of fireworks on mass. At one point I thought it must be wind or thunder since I heard fireworks from my room going off for two solid hours in the middle of the day. What made it even more odd was that it was so foggy that I couldn't see any of the fireworks, I just head the constant barrage of popping sounds coming through my window. I think I wouldn't have even know it was Fire Lantern Festival if I hadn't gone downtown later in the day. Hours of fireworks just are common enough that I didn't immediately think it was some holiday. On my way downtown though I saw the fire lanterns themselves. They are basically just some fabric and a small holder for a little fire whose hot air inflate the fabric and sends the lantern up into the sky, sort of like a do it yourself hot air balloon. They were dotting the sky over all the big parks in the city and even out in front of Wal-Mart people were just setting off there little lantern kits without waiting to get home. People also were setting of firework every five feet downtown at the ends of most of the streets, though again that's not so unusual.

As you might be able to guess form me posting again I made it home safely from India. India is a really intense place to travel having as many people as China but none of the organization. I never thought I'd say anything like this but India makes China looks clean and organized. Still it was quite and adventure to go there and the whole place was really interesting. I got a preliminary class schedule and so far I only have 6 hours, though Steve seems to think that number will go up. I'm teaching a class sort of like my one from last semester on Western Society, though this book focuses more on things like Ancient Greece and Rome. I think that could be interesting to do since the books has a lot of stuff on religion, a topic the kids here know almost nothing about. I've had a hard time in the past trying to explain various wars in European history since the kids don't have a basic grasp of the different types of Christians. Instead of just posting only the stuff from my trips, I still have Thailand to post, I think I'll interrupt it when ever something interesting happens now so that I don't have to save up all the things from this semester for the end. So unless there is a thing in the title of the post that says "Thailand Day - "
or "India Day - " the post will be about things happening now.