Family Fun, Soccer Fun, and Just Fun

Through the 2007-08 school year, KIA annually hosted an autumn Harvest Festival. It was held at a local hotel and consisted of games of skill and chance (much like a carnival) geared mostly toward young children. While it had always been open to anyone, because of limited advertising, it mostly attracted the children and parents associated with our school. However, starting last Spring, KIA decided to sponsor a Family Fun Day, much like the Harvest Festival, and generally during the same time of year, and it is held on campus to be visual to the surrounding community. Each secondary homeroom creates a number of booths that can include games, crafts, and food items.

This year's senior class sponsored five booths--a ping pong ball toss, a rubber band, sharp-shooting booth, a booth for temporary tattoos and fingernail stickers, a jellybean guessing booth, and a cotton candy booth. The one pictured below had contestants trying to toss a ping pong ball into some cups. Placing the ball into one of the shorter, white cups won some stickers or candy, while depositing the ball into one of three taller cups (in this picture they are red, pink and light green) garnered a small toy. Below, Miss Suli tries her skill at the tossing game while seniors Kyanne (U.S.) and Kyle (Korea) look on.

I purchased one special item for the family fun day--a cotton candy machine. It was small and caused just about as many hassles during the day as it caused interest from onlookers. All day long, people lined up to watch the sugar being spun into cotton, and each time things were going well, the machine found a way to confound our fun. We ultimately did sell a lot of the sugary treat. However, the machine had the last laugh. About thirty minutes before the end of the Fun Fair it decided to die all together--it would not heat and would not spin. However, because it was such a big hit, I am looking into a better quality machine for use during fundraisers in the future. Pictured below are Grace (Idaho) and Tim (Southern California) spinning out some sugary bliss.

The Family Fun Fair actually interrupted one of the school's other fun, weekend events--intramural soccer. With the continued development of boys' and girls' basketball, fewer athletes signed up for this year's version of the intramural league. However, we still have enough students from 6th through 12th grade to support four teams: Black, Gray, Red, and Mer-Fail. In the picture below, Hafiy (Malaysia) attacks the defence of Jamie (left, Italy/England), Rachel (center, U.S.), and Merwin (right, Malaysia). Hafiy actually played for his state team in Malaysia and is quite skilled. This match actually ended in a 7-7 tie, keeping Team Mer-Fail as the only undefeated team in our league.

In the second game of that same day, Team Black, behind thirteen goals by Russell (center in black, U.S.), trounced Team Red 15-7. The other athletes pictured below are from the left, Chung Min (Korea), Elizabeth (U.S.), Ki Bin (in red, Korea), Maurice (behind Ki Bin, Malaysia) and Stephen (England). Poor Team Red, the team with which I am associated: we have yet to win a game and sit entrenched in last place in the league. My team does change from week to week, which makes it difficult to create any continuity. Even so, we hope to at least have one hashmark in the win column by the end of the season.
Lastly, on the weekend, I need to find time to just go out and have fun with Miss Suli. In the picture below, Suli catches me with my mouth full, as we enjoy dessert at Mazagran, a Western restaurant in the YunDa area of Kunming. YunDa is short for Yunnan (our province) DaXue (university). This area has many different types of restaurants (Chinese, Indian, Korean, Thai, Western, etc.) to cater to the different nationalities of students who attend the university. It also has a number of shops on Wen Lin Jie (affectionately known as "sweater lane" by some KIA staff members). A theater shows movies from all over the world. It is one of our favorite places to visit, along with downtown and Green Lake, both of which are not too far away. In any case, weekends are fun times, even with all of the paper grading that must be accomplished.