How China Abolished the Weekend (and other Halloween tales)

"See you tomorrow," the kids said as they filed out of class this Friday afternoon. Hells no, I reminded them, tomorrow is Saturday. (They usually have a half-day of classes on Saturday, but some other unlucky soul has to teach that). "No, tomorrow is Monday," they said, and left while I made a mental note to review the days of the week with them.

Then: "Tomorrow is Monday," sighed my fellow teacher-in-arms as I came into the office to get ready for my evening class, the last thing standing between me and the weekend. (The kids have class from 8 a.m. until 9 p.m. every day, with a break for lunch and dinner.) Turns out, as punishment for the "unrest" we've been having of late, the government has mandated that schools in our area will keep teaching until further notice - no days off, no weekends, no going home.

Awesome.

In other news, I brought Halloween (kinda proud of that) and the Twilight craze (not so proud of that) to T*bet.

Because I hate teaching night classes, I went to the market and bought 50 pumpkins, knives, spoons and candles -- and had the kids carve jack-o-lanterns. (School inspectors were not impressed when they stopped in for their nightly inspection. In retrospect, one can see their point, given that I basically took teenagers who made international headlines for their unruliness, and armed them with knives and flaming pumpkin fireballs.) 

Because the kids begged me without mercy for an entire week, I showed them Twilight. Now Edward's name keeps popping up on the chalkboards all over campus. My bad.