Spring is coming to China! (Strawberry Picking and Painting)

It's April! Finally, the bitter central-heating-less winter is over. Now just moody weather, pollution, H7N9 (bird flu), and H1N1 (swine flu). I guess, coming from Oregon, I should be used to moody spring weather. At least there aren't unexpected hail storms here. But it doesn't mean I like stepping out of the metro and realizing that it's raining.
At the end of March, we lucked out with a nice day on Easter and hopped on the company bus headed to Qingpu, a suburb (read: another large neighboring  city) of Shanghai. There, about 25 of us first visited a Painter's Village. Everyone in the area painted and the scenery was enjoyable to walk around the stream and gardens. They even gave us some paints and stencils to try our hand. Quite unusual, they gave us panda stencils yet did not provide black paint.  Oh well, like our own students, we loved the chance to get creative. After painting and lunch, we went strawberry picking! We headed into rows of greenhouses and plucked the ripest strawberries off the stems. Each of us took a nice big boxful home to enjoy.

Another weekend, a few of us decided to take a break from running errands, eating, sleeping, and teaching and go drink wine and paint. I had heard of 'Sip-N-Paint' in America and was excited to find the same thing here. The studio was located in an alley off of a popular road of restaurants and bars. We were provided canvases, paint, instruction, and some inspiration and left to create masterpieces. Oh and we ordered some sangria to sip. I scrambled 'Starry Night' with a desolate road scene and realized that I loved oil paints. I got really into the thick globbing of paint that covered any mistakes or shaky lines. At the end, we left our paintings outside and grabbed a drink at one of our favorite bars. Then we carefully transported our very wet masterpieces home (with a few paint transfers to clothes and taxis).

It's only a few weeks left until I leave China and am very much enjoying experiences out of the classroom. We have a few holidays to visit other areas and I fully intend to take advantage of them.