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!