Catching up!

So I'm the worst blogger in the world? Yes. China's been great...we've been here for nearly 2 months now, and we've been having a fantastic time.

Our dance won 500 RMB (a little over $80) for "Most Extraordinary" at the Bond opening lunch. We rode around Zhongshan on bright green bikes for a couple hours wearing these bright orange jackets, then performed in front of a ton of people.

I found Birthday Cake Oreos in Nanlang, and was happy.

These are 2 of the teachers at our kindergarten, Eden and Angile. We want them to get married.

Street bread.

Not really a bread, but that's what we call it, because "The most amazing thing you will ever eat in your entire life" is too long.

Alexa and Leisha making dumplings at Michael's house!

We went on a hike up to a pagoda with some of our students. Here is Joshua, Emily, Peter, and Eric with Alexa and Chris.

Feeding a monkey at the Guangzhou Safari Park.

Feeding/petting a baby tiger in Guangzhou!

Feeding a giraffe in Guangzhou!

Getting kisses from an elephant!

Pandas!

Riding on an elephant was amazing! It's name was "wee da"...no idea how it's spelt.

One day Emily forgot to wear pants to school.

We went to district conference in Guangzhou. This is the view from the apartment we went to afterwards for a fireside/delicious food.

Jacob thinks everything is sour, and his face is always priceless.

We took our first vacation to Sanya, the Hawaii of China. It was great. We layed on the beach for 3 days.

Sanya is also Russia's Hawaii, and people often tried talking to us in Russian.

The view on the beach was great. ;)

We went to Monkey Island. 2000 monkeys...they were cute before they started jumping on our heads.

Monkey's all over.

Hainan ice cream. Soooooo goooooood.

Sanya has a whole bunch of cheese! We freaked out when we saw all of this. We miss cheese. A lot.

Swimming, eating, laying out, swimming, eating, and laying out, then eating again was basically how our vacation to Sanya went.

All of us with our new Sanya friends at our hostel.

 Chinese class.

Sometimes our students take us out to crazy fancy restaurants and we eat tons of good food. Sometimes Eden is there and we don't know why...

Sometimes the school feeds us fish heads. 

 

We like sitting down on the escalator at one of our grocery stores. Everyone who sees us thinks we're crazy. Maybe we are.

Finally here!

Wow. I’m in China!  When I first got here, I couldn’t even really believe it. It seemed like a dream or something. But it’s really real! I flew to Seattle early...very very early on the 21^st, I was there for a few hours before the big group flew in from Salt Lake City, then once they arrived I was able to meet the girls I’m with here in Nanlang and visit with them and the other teachers who will be near us in Zhongshan. The flight to Seoul was long but uneventful. I slept for a few hours right away (we left at 12pm Seattle time which was 5am Korea time), then woke up and ate and watched movies till we landed in Seoul. Getting 51 people organized with everyone’s luggage isn’t easy, but we made it to our hotel, and checked in. We had supper (I was able to have kimchi in Korea!), then went to bed. We had to wake up early to get our luggage downstairs, then ate breakfast (last chance for BACON),then headed off for our flight to Guangzhou.

Korea has bacon...why can't China?!

Korean sunrise

 I found myself unable to stop smiling once we landed. I was home! I got through immigration and got my luggage, and then I got to see my Mary! Mary was my coordinator in Guzhen last year, and I love her. She was there to pick up the girls going to Guzhen and take them, while the rest of us all got on a bus together. We dropped the Xiaolan girls off, then the rest of us got dropped off at the Kaiyin school.

MARY!

BENNY!!!! <3

The Kaiyin group and Shiqi group took their luggage to their apartments, while us Nanlang girls as well as the Dachong group and our coordinators hung out waiting for the other truck to come with the rest of our luggage. We were there for only a few minutes, when I look over, and see my BENNY!!!

His mom was pointing at me to him, then he started running to me and I ran and hugged him. Oh man. I thought I was gonna explode with happiness. I almost couldn’t take it. I asked him how he was, and instead of answering with “I’m fine thank you, and you?” like how every other Chinese student will answer, he told me he was happy. He knew I was coming back to China, and his mom had said she wanted to go out to dinner with me sometime, but seeing him that day, and that soon after getting back to China was totally unexpected! I was sad to have to say goodbye to him after only a couple minutes, but I should be seeing him again sometime.

mmmmm

We went and ate jiaozi soon afterwards too, since our luggage was going to be awhile. And I looooove jiaozi (dumplings), so it was pretty much the best day ever...seeing Mary, seeing Benny, and eating jiaozi. Doesn’t get any better than that! Wo ai ZhongGuo!

3rd time's the charm?

Yep. I'm going back! In like 2 weeks! Holy! I didn't really think it was going to be possible for me to go back to China...especially so soon, but here I am! It's not like I didn't WANT to go back...but I thought I would be a responsible young adult and maybe go back to school or something...well, nothing really worked out for the fall or spring, so I was just living and working in Sparwood....dying a little bit more each day, haha. Then I received an email from ILP near the end of November asking for alumni to go back to China because they were short teachers for the next semester, and offered us a sweet deal - $500! (rather than the usual $2520) That would cover our flights, Chinese visas, apartment, and food for the whole semester. My immediate reaction was "Heck yes I'm doing this!". After speaking with my dad I had to take a step back and really make sure that it was really something I should be doing, but after thinking it over, I decided to go ahead and do another semester in China.

I went down to Utah at the beginning of January for training (and visited some friends I made last year during my semester in China), but at the time still wasn't sure exactly where in China I would be teaching. I had asked to go back to Guzhen, Zhongshan, because I LOVE it there...but was told that Guzhen was full. They said there were other spots in Zhongshan open, so I would at least be close enough to visit. A couple days after training I got assigned to teach in Kaiyin! I was familiar with the school and area, because we would go there every week to meet with the other ILP teachers in Zhongshan and have church there, and while I was still sad I wouldn't be in Guzhen, I was glad to know where I was going!

A few days after getting my school assignment, I got a call from Casey, one of the directors at ILP. He told me that one of the head teachers had dropped out, and they were wondering if I would be willing to go back to China as a head teacher, rather than just a regular teacher. (Head teachers help the teachers out with getting to know the teaching program, do workshops with them, do some reports, travel with the group, etc. and for this they don't have to pay the program fee, plus ILP gives them a bit of a stipend to offset some of the travel expenses and such). I said yes right away. It actually kinda surprised me how fast I said yes, because I had really been looking forward to having my own homeroom of kids and just teaching. Right after saying yes, I had to just take a second to go through everything in my mind, but then it was a definite yes. While there is more responsibility, it was going to be a big blessing money-wise, what with me having just applied to go to school in the fall. (And then I found out a few days after this phone call that I was accepted to BYU-Hawaii!!) A couple weeks later I found out I was going to Nanlang, Zhongshan! They opened ILP to the school there in the fall of 2011, so it's fairly new to the ILP program, and we have a smaller class and group (3 teachers plus me, rather than 6 plus a head teacher like it had been for me in Guzhen), but I am looking forward to it all!!! I finally found out my flight itinerary too and I fly out from Calgary early on the 21st! (With a 15 1/2 hour layover in Seoul, South Korean...woot woot? We'll see.)

Roger

Almost 2 weeks ago (on May 19th), we bought a turtle!

We went to the grocery store in Xiaolan, about a 20 minute bus ride away from Guzhen, and looked them all over before picking the one we wanted. He was the runt of the group (did you know a group of turtles is called a bale?), but he also seemed to be the most active. We got the attention of one of the employees, who then went and got the person who was in charge of the turtles and fish, and we pointed to the one we wanted. He picked him up, put him in his hand, then covered him with his other hand and shook him! He laughed while we all stared at him with a "What are you doing? Don't shake our turtle!" look on our faces. We picked out a little container for him and the man put the price sticker for the turtle on his new home. (He only cost 8 yuan! That's like $1.25!) We also got him turtle food, and rocks for his home. We carefully transported him back to Guzhen, where we named him Roger....or "Rog" as we called him.

He was a grump too...but we blamed the man who shook him...and Olivia-for kicking him across the room (on accident). We changed his home to a bigger bucket that he seemed to like more, and kept him outside on our porch in the fresh air. We showed him to our friends who would come over to our apartment...Mary, Apple, our student Benny boy, as well as a boy down our hall who is also named Benny. Benny from down the hall asked us if we were going to eat him, which we quickly shook our heads to. We enjoyed having Roger...even though we were convinced he was trying to die because he didn't seem to ever eat. And then...on Sunday morning, he disappeared. Gone. Vanished. Benny from down the hall had been over for a second in the morning, and we can't be sure...but we're convinced he let Roger out, or took him, or something...cuz there's no possible way for Roger to have gotten out on his own. He was cute. We miss him. (We also have no idea if "he" was actually a "he"...but Roger seemed to fit...)

Also...the sky was pretty the day we bought him.

Beijing! (April 28-May 6)

 

So last week, we had our week-long vacation to Beijing! 4 of us left on Saturday right after teaching in the morning. The other 3 girls were flying to Beijing...they didn’t want to take the 21 hour train ride with us and our standing tickets. Yah...by the time we bought our tickets the sleeper beds had sold out...as well as the seats...so standing it was! We were not excited about it at all...but we didn’t have the money to fly! We tried sitting down in seats as soon as we got on the train...just picked some random seats and sat down...and that worked for about 2 minutes, then people started telling us that we were in their seats. After everyone had boarded and we realized how many people there were and how crowded it was, we all went a little crazy. We tried figuring out how we were gonna sleep...we contemplated sleeping on top of the luggage racks, and planking on the top of the seats. We made friends with the people who’s seats we had tried to steal though, and they shared all of their food with us (the good stuff, as well as the bad...I had no idea papaya tasted like puke!) One of them actually got off after an hour, so Katey slid into that seat before any of the other people standing could, so then we had the one seat that we would rotate every hour, taking turns sitting in it. We would also sit down whenever someone went to go to the bathroom, or went to have a smoke, or sometimes they would just stand up to stretch their legs. There were also plastic buckets that the train had for people to sit on, they ran out of them before we could get any for ourselves, but sometimes one of our new friends would let us sit on theirs. It was a long train ride for sure. We all slept (or tried to) on the floor that night. At about 9am a bunch of people got off, including our new friends Johnny, Bruce, and Bruce’s wife, so then we all got seats. I was finally able to sleep then, usually only for about 20 minutes at a time, but it was sleep that I needed.

 We got to Beijing at about 3pm on Sunday afternoon. We had directions to the hostel...so we tried following them... They said to take the metro, so we got onto the metro and realized that the station at the Beijing West train station doesn`t connect to any other line yet because it`s still under construction... So we headed back to the train station, and while standing around, wondering which way was north so that we could walk to another metro station, a guard walked up to us and asked if we needed any help. I pointed to the metro stop we wanted to go to on a map and he told us to follow him. At first he walked us to some taxis, and they were telling us how much it would cost, but we were like, no, we want to walk...it's free! So then the guard started walking us to the station...asking like 8 people along the way for directions, and at one point we were following him, and he was following some old guy, but we did get to the right metro stop, and got to our hostel safe and sound. The four of us just kinda walked around near our hostel that day, we went to a little shop that I would go to almost every night that I was in Beijing last year and introduced these girls to my friend Zo there and got a couple shirts from him.

On Monday we all went shopping!!! We went to the silk market, then to the pearl market. We were only at the pearl market for a few minutes before it closed, but were able to make some friends and make the short time worthwhile. On Tuesday we went to the Temple of Heaven in the morning. We danced with some old people there, and watched a bunch of people stretch and exercise. They were pretty crazy though...folding themselves in half and swinging around upside down, even though they were like 60 years old! We headed over to the pearl market after that and shopped some more.

On Wednesday we headed to the Great Wall of China!!! We went to the Mutianyu section, which is actually the same section of the wall I went to last year, but we walked in a different direction, so it was all new still. A day or two before we went the girls had seen some of the ``I climbed the Great Wall` shirts and had said something about not really climbing, and I had told them then that it was indeed a climb, and they saw what I meant when we went, because there are parts where the stairs are gigantic and go so steeply up the mountain. It`s exhausting. We made some friends on the wall though, including Chao Yun, who shared his cucumbers with Brianna and Olivia. It was a gorgeous day though, and we had a great time on the wall. After sliding down the mountain from the Great Wall we ate lunch and headed back to Beijing, then went back to the silk market for some more shopping.

On Thursday 4 of us woke up at 4:30am to go to Tiananmen Square and watch the flag ceremony that happens every day at sunrise and sunset. Later that morning we all went back to Tiananmen Square and then to the Forbidden City. I`d been there last year as well, but since the place is so big I was able to walk through a different part and see almost entirely new things...plus I don`t have any of my Beijing pictures from last year...so it`s nice being able to have pictures from Beijing now. That night some of us went to the Olympic plaza and saw the bird`s nest and the water cube. It was cool seeing them all lit up too. We chilled around there for a bit, watching all the Mickey Mouse’s pose for other people, then photobombed a few people while walking back to the metro.

On Friday me and 2 other girls went to the Lama temple, one of the largest Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. It was really neat, we saw a 26m tall statue of a Buddha carved from a single piece of white sandalwood, and were able to watch a big group of monks begin some chanting thing. At one point they were all chanting and the 3 of us were sitting outside the building, then one of them walked out and went to a corner and started texting on his phone! I thought it was a bit strange that he would stop the chanting or praying thing, to go text on his phone! That evening we went back to the pearl market for a few last minute things. I bought some shoes from this one guy, and the girls all around his stall were all telling me that I should be his girlfriend...they said he was very rich and that I would get all the free shoes I wanted, haha, but I passed on the offer.

Saturday was our last day...and there were just 3 of us left...Brianna and Olivia had left for Shanghai on Thursday afternoon, and Celine and Marina had gone home on Friday afternoon, so it was just me and Tiffany and Katey. We had kind of a lazy day...but the rest of the week had been so full, we had been constantly on the go, so it was nice to have a vacation from our vacation for a day, haha. We did have to go back to the pearl market to switch some things around, and then headed to the train station that afternoon. We got our tickets really easily (sometimes they make us go to some specific window to pick up the tickets that we paid for online...and sometimes they don`t speak english, so sometimes it can be a bit of an ordeal picking up the tickets). We had sleeper bed tickets for the ride home...so the trip home was about a million times better than the ride to Beijing. There was a big group of university students on the train with us, and so we made a bunch of new friends. They didn`t really have super good English...but usually between a few of them they could figure out how to say something...that or use a translator. The train ride went by super fast, and before we knew it, we were home! It was a great vacation, there were a million jumping pictures, Chinese opera singers in the forest, love notes, and Rain advertisements! I`m just sad that it was our last vacation!

VACATIONS – April 14th

So we had 2 vacations in the past month...the first was from March 16-19^th and we went to Xi’an! I was so excited to go because Xi’an was the main place I didn’t get to see last year! We flew there to save time and got to our hostel at about 1am on Friday morning. We just walked around Xi’an that day...looked at the bell tower, drum tower, and the Muslim quarters. Did some shopping, then went back to our hostel that night for a free dumpling party! 

Saturday was when we went to the Terracotta Army. We went to Qin Shi Huang’s tomb at first...kind of...it’s full of mercury, so basically all we actually did was look at a man-made hill from a safe distance, haha. There are 3 pits of the warriors, so we went to pit 2, then 3, then 1 (that’s in order to save the best for last). You are able to see some of the warriors up close in pit 2, so that was really neat...there is soooo much detail on each of them! I had known that each of them has a different face...but actually seeing the detail on them-the shoe soles, the hair, the armour, and their faces, and knowing that each one represented an actual person is crazy! And pit 1, seeing thousands of these warriors...wow. We also got to shake hands with the man who discovered them!

On Sunday we did more shopping at the Muslim quarters, then went to the Great Mosque as well. That was really neat. It’s gorgeous, just this quiet area right in the middle of everything with beautiful buildings and greenery that the Chinese Muslim people go to to pray. It was really neat actually. 

We left that day too...2 girls flew home, and the other 3 of us took the train home....28.5 hours. Haha. At least we had beds though...sooo much better having a long train ride when you have sleeper tickets, believe me! We got to Guangzhou too late for our light train back to Guzhen, and the buses weren’t running anymore, so we took a taxi home. We were all starving by this point...we had expected there to be cup of noodles for sale on the train, but the food going up and down the aisle was not cups of noodles...so we made do with our 2 apples and 2 bananas...for nearly 29 hours. I practiced my Chinese with our taxi driver on the way home from Guangzhou, we gave him an English name, and told him we were hungry, so he offered to stop and let us get something to eat, but we just figured we’d eat when we got back to Guzhen...so when we got back to Guzhen and he started turning onto the street of our apartment, I said ‘NO! We want hamburgers!’ He thought that was funny, that we had him drop us off at McDonald’s instead, haha....good trip overall though...we stole some pizza, had some cabbage thrown at us, and met a dumpling master named Fly.

2 ½ weeks later, from April 1-4^th, we were on our way to Yangshuo!!!!!!!! Oh Yangshuo! It was my favourite vacation last year. Everything there is absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous! We took a sleeper bus there...and it was a very bumpy ride. Brianna asked me at one point if I was sure Yangshuo was worth the bus ride, and my response was Yes. Definitely. Absolutely. No question about it.

We got there a couple hours earlier than expected...our bus was going very fast...thus the bumpiness. So we got to our hostel and checked in. While eating breakfast with these crazy mountains surrounding us, Brianna and the rest of the girls agreed...the bus ride was worth it. That day we went and rented scooters and drove around the countryside near Yangshuo, taking pictures and basking in the beauty...if anyone reading this doesn’t know what I’m talking about...just search google images for “Yangshuo”, and imagine seeing all that with your own eyes.

Monday would’ve been my Mom’s 52^nd birthday...I thought of her while cruising down the Li river on a “bamboo” raft that morning. Again...gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. That afternoon we went to the mud caves as well. We went with 2 other guys from our hostel, Max from Holland, and Joe from England. Max was actually mine, Celine’s, and Marina’s roommate in our hostel. On the ride to the mud caves it came up that we were Mormon...so most of our discussion with them the rest of the day was about our church. Neither of them had ever met a Mormon before...what they did know about our church was just from South Park, haha. Joe had said that he wasn’t religious, he was Catholic. Haha. And Max said that he was a realist...he couldn’t believe in things that couldn’t be proven...so I guess in other words he had no faith. Strange. That night we offered Max one of our Book of Mormons, but he said it was too heavy to carry around in his backpack for the next 5 months. The mud caves were great though. We went to some hot springs in the cave after the mud to clean off, and while soaking another lady came and sat with us while her family went into the mud, and she said her and her family used to live in Illinois, so I mentioned that I’d been there once to Nauvoo, and she asked if I saw all the sites there and so I said yes, but the temple was under construction when I was there, and she says that it’s beautiful, so yah...turns out she was a member of the church too!!! We just thought that was the craziest thing! I mean, what are the chances that the lady you’re sitting next to in a hot spring in a cave in mainland China is a member of the church?! To make things even crazier, she knows guy who is here in China teaching English with a different program who also turns out to be friends with 2 of the girls in my group! It’s such a small world...

On Tuesday we checked out of our hostel in the morning, then went and rented scooters again. We went and saw the Big Banyan tree too. We took a bus home that night...the bus left at 7pm, so we decided to get home with an extra day off, rather than get home at 4am, then have to be at the school 4.5 hours later...so we got home at about 4:30am on Wednesday morning and were able to have the whole day off still before having to teach again on Thursday....it was a great trip too...we ate countless chocolate pancakes, found a fake Subway restaurant, and held cormorant birds, monkeys, and dressed up in traditional Chinese garb and took pictures with all 3 (not at the same time though, haha).

My time being back in China has been great...I try to spend as much time with the kids as I can...trying to stock up on all the Chinese baby love while I can...it’s gonna be rough going home again...I can’t believe today is the half way mark! L