On Wednesday I went to a Rosh Hashanah service with Christine. Even though I am not very religious, and more of a cultural Jew, I wanted to see what a service like this would be like in China. It ended up being a lot of fun and a great experience. The new Rabbi and his wife had just arrived in Kunming from Israel, literally in the beginning of the week, but had managed to throw a pretty successful service. They're missionaries, informing us that Kunming was one of last places in China that didn't have a Rabbi yet, which was their main reason for coming. We had a short, but pretty legitimate service (girls and boys were even separated by a screen) and a big dinner afterwords. About 20 people came in total and I was able to make a lot of new friends in the area, many of whom are originally from Israel. I even met the famous Jesse, a guy our Chinese teacher from UVM told us about who had done our same study abroad program (and had obviously gone to UVM as well) in 2005 and decided to come back to Kunming last year.

Today we had our final exam, leading us into a much needed vacation that splits our fall semester in two. Next week I plan to go to Shanghai to visit my cousin and two friends, and then after I stay there for about a week I am going to go to Hong Kong for a few days to explore the city, since I have never been there before.