VACA!!!

So today was our last day of teaching for 9 whole days!!! This next week is a national holiday in China, kinda like the 4th of July in the States or 1st of July in Canada...so no kids!! We are leaving on a plane tomorrow afternoon at 1:30pm for Shanghai and will not be returning until Sunday the 9th. Very happy to be spending a relaxing vacation with new friends. Tonight we went to dinner at a Muslim restaurant, the noodles tasted very good but they were extremely spicy, like every other food in this country! So i went back over to the dumpling place we ate at a few weeks ago and got take out. I ordered Chinese take out...in China...in Chinese!! I got the Gua Bau Row or sweet pork :) It tastes like orange chicken from panda express! So so so yummy. Well tonight my head teacher Cami wanted to watch a scary movie, so we did, haha she wanted to see When A Stranger Calls because it isn't too scary, but I am now having to walk her down the hall to and from her room. It is pretty funny. After indulging in everything that is sweet in China and watching 2 movies I am feeling rather sick to my stomach and ready for bed. Going to sleep in tomorrow and then pack for VACATION!!!

1 month down!..well almost :)

Well we have officially been here in China for almost an entire month! It will be one month officially on Sunday. Not to much has happened from getting back from Beijing. We still wake up each morning and go teach our crazy little kids. They are getting a little bit more behaved...I think, it could simply be that we are used to the bad behavior so it's not so bad anymore but either way we now get hugs at the end out class, and sometimes more than once during class, it's very cute. I caught a cold this week, which is strange for me seeing as I hardly ever get them at home in the states, but then again from what I hear it is part of being a teacher. I must say though that the children here are far less clean than the ones at home...trying to get them to wash their hands after using the bathroom and when I hold up soap they look at me like they aren't really sure what I want them to do with it. Oh well, WTC. This is an acronym we came up with since being here, it stands for "Welcome To China". We generally say it whenever something bad, weird, really gross, or wrong happens, which is daily. We have gotten some exploring of the city in this week, Kate and I, not by choice. You see while trying to find a bus on Friday we got lost for about 3 hours and finally found a taxi driver who knew the school. Then today we were not feeling like eating rice for dinner so we hit up McDonald's :) totally worth the 35 minute bus ride...although once again we tried to find a bus home and ended up walking about 3 miles before we were actually able to find the bus that would take us home! I have never walked so much in my life as I have in the past month. We asked Kelli (our native director) why the Chinese have stairs EVERYWHERE! She says that stairs in China mean empowerment, so you are empowered when you can climb stairs...again WTC :) We have our 10 day long vacation coming up that we have begun planning, we are going to Yangshuo and Guilin, they are in southeastern China, quite a ways away **drum roll please** it's a 30 hour bus ride. Yeah, NOT so excited about that part but hey we get to spend an entire week in a gorgeous part of China, NOT being dragged around by a tour guide who doesn't understand us, and we get a week of no teaching! Going to be a great week. We booked our hotel, it's actaully an Inn but it looked very clean and nice and we have an 8-bed private suite so 6 of us get the entire room to ourselves, for the whole week and it is only is costing us $40, for the entire week. I wish hotels in the states were that cheap!! That's all for now, I have to go to bed, it's almost 1AM here, but I had a 4 hour nap today so thats why I'm not so tired :) WTC!

Beijing

So sorry it has taken so long to update this...I just keep forgetting but I will hopefully have it all updated by today :) For starters we went to Beijing about a week ago and it was a very interesting experience. It was both fun and a pain in the butt, I shall explain.

#1: We were set up on an actual tour...like with scheduled stops, guides, and everything. Basically we went where THEY wanted us to go, when THEY wanted to take us (THEY being the tour company). So we get on the bus on Friday evening and come to find out we have 2 bus drivers, neither speak any English. We have a tour guide...he doesn't speak English either. Then we have the tour guides translator, who spoke about as much English as I speak Chinese...which is like 3 or 4 basic phrases. So here we are in this huge city with one guy who kinda knows a minuscule amount of English and 20 of us teachers thinking we would have some time to do stuff, boy were we wrong! We got maybe, maybe an hour and a half at each location we went to (the forbidden city, the great wall of china, the temple of heaven, etc) and the biggest disappointment was we only got 10 minutes, 10 MINUTES! at the Olympic park so they would not allow me to go tour the inside of the pool! Anyways it just felt rushed the entire time and the food believe it or not was better here at our schools cafeteria. Except for the 3 meals we managed to sneak away for...in which cases I had McDonals and Subway :) Note to  Self: NEVER take guided tours in China...

#2: We had this awesome market about 10 minutes from our hotel called the silk market. It has more than silk, in fact it is 6 floors of "name your price", "barter all you want", shopping :) One of the most fun things I have ever done, we got very good a haggling by the end of those 2 days. So basically you have the 1st floor is all electronics, 2nd floor is coats and jeans, 3rd floor is clothing of all sorts of varieties, 4th floor is anything and everything silk. I mean you name it and if it can be made of silk, it is there., 5th floor was all jewelry, and the top floor was big purchase items such as full sized Terra cotta warriors..they were pretty legit but also real pricey even when bartering. I did get quite a few things there but my favorite purchase has to be the silk robe that I got...not just because it's way cool but I was able to barter with her so well! The lady wanted 2500 qwia (about $400) and I was able to talk her down to 50 qwia :) That's right...I paid $8 for a $400 100% silk robe :) I am very proud of myself, the trick is to stand your ground and walk away. Some people were so crazy they'd like chase you down the escalators still yelling lower prices to you! Even if you had zero interest in buying it! Well all in all it was a fun fun place to shop!

#3: The Great Wall was so cool! It is very steep though, it's like the steepness of stairs, minus the steps part. And as it is in all attractions we were asked t be in many family photos haha I think it is funny how people try to sneak a picture of  the "white people" and they aren't really sneaky at all. Anyways so before I left home I promised a friend of mine that I would have a dance party in China, just for her, but I had an even better idea. I decided to have that dance party...in China...on the great wall. Yes, we had a dance party, to Justin Bieber, on the great wall of China. My sister even filmed it and I will try to get it posted somewhere for you to watch it! It was epic and we were a bigger hit than the wall itself haha. We had the biggest crowd of other tourists filming us, taking pictures, trying to dance with us, it was a great moment :)

I was very excited to just get home though to Wei Hai, never thought I'd say I missed this little old place but I did and am happy to be back.

2 weeks down...100 days to go.

Well nothing has been really happening much since my last post...just the same day to day stuff of teaching, napping, walking every where and doing homework :) We did have the chance to go to a Chinese club last night...it was newly opened and so so fun. The only people really dancing were us 17 from ILP and the DJ was so cool, he played awesome English songs...even some backstreet boys! All the Chinese people in the club just sat there and watched us, some even filmed us, it was funny! Today was an awesome day for teaching...A: because Collin was not a devil child today and he stayed in his chair the entire time! and B: becaus I get 4 days off starting now and get to spend most of them in Beijing...and on a bus...but mostly in Beijing! Tonight we were walking to the grocery store from the bank and we saw some "bung bung" driver hit a kid on a bicycle, I'm pretty sure I will NOT be walking through that parking lot ever again.

Amazing Day!

Yesterday we went to the Zoo, it is about an hour and a half away from our school but it is easily the biggest zoo I have ever seen! Hogle Zoo will forever be a let down after this one. You walk in and have only one walk way, one way in and one way out, which was nice because we couldn't get lost. Also I have never seen so many stairs ever...the Chinese really like their stairs, I must of climbed thousands of them yesterday. So the animals are caged, more like in separate areas with stone walls, and the walk ways for the tourists are along the top of them all so you can see them down below. After we got through the main part of the zoo they have a few little tents/pop-ups set up with animals underneath them and you can get your picture taken with them! I got my picture taken with a young lion, a young Siberian tiger, an elephant, a walrus, sea turtles, a bear and I shared my sandwich with a giraffe :) It was pretty much the coolest things I have ever been able to do!! Since pictures for some reason aren't working on here check them all out on my facebook page, if we are not friends my mom has them on her page as well! We also had quite a few native Chinese people that came up to us and and wanted to get their picture taken with us! It's so funny how strange we are to them. Well it was a long but amazing day, we got to see all sorts of animals, eat lunch on the rocks of the Yellow Sea, definitely worth every penny! Tomorrow we are experiencing our first Church meeting over Skype, it'll be pretty interesting I'm sure. 

Fun with the camera

When I get bored or have extra time on my hands I like to fiddle around with my new camera. I LOVE IT! Here are a few pictures I took this evening that I though were fun! Enjoy!

Rubber gloves come in PINK here!! I am going to have to bring a few home with me :)

The sun set tonight was GORGEOUS!