Getting Out of the Bubble

One of the few things I knew about Yinchuan when I arrived here was that it had a significant Hui Muslim population, but once here there wasn't a lot of active seeking out of the Muslim culture that has influenced the city – unless, of course, you count the abundance of amazing Muslim food we eat here. Sure lots of the street signs are in pinyin (English characters), Chinese and Arabic; and sure, there was that beautiful Muslim area we went to early on but we didn't really know anything about the culture itself. Definitive proof that I can actually jump. That is until school decided to take all the staff on a trip to the Hui Culture Park and Great Mosque just outside the city limits. It was amazing! I've always loved Islamic architecture with all it's intricacy, but I'd never really seen it close up. To get to the Hui Culture Park the school had hired a bus to take us all; not a coach, literally a local bus, so we shivered in our little plastic sea

It's always interesting to discover and experience the holidays and festivals of another culture, but it's also interesting to see how other cultures celebrate the holidays that we hold dear at home. This week was one of the Western world's favourite holidays, Halloween, and as it turns out it's not too different on the other side of the world. Not that that should really be too surprising. Halloween has the holiday trifecta: costumes, candy and childishness. For children this means running around screaming in a sugar induced haze, and for adults...well, it's pretty much the same. Teachers gone spooky! Our first taste of Halloween was at school when suddenly, over night, school turned into another world of pumpkins, giant spiders and general spookiness. It really was something quite impressive and certainly gave the kids something new to scream about, which is always nice for the ears and sanity. On actual Halloween night the school held a party fo