We came, We saw, We....woah, double take...

In all the wandering around China we all do, we come across many things a day were you have to do a double take because you're not quite sure what you just saw. Was it your imagination? a mirage?...nope it is very much real. So I will say it again...Welcome To China

10 oddest things we have seen since moving to China

1. Babies wear no diapers and their pants have the bum cut out of them so the little bare bums are always sticking out...no diapers...your questions were the same as ours! Where do they go to the bathroom?! The parents hold the kid in a odd position with their little bottoms inside the public trash cans ** Note to Self: Never touch the tops of said trash cans!**
2. I think the Chinese don't think American's eat because every time we eat anything around the Chinese in public they look at us like they have never seen a white person eat food before. You can imagine the looks we get when 10 American's are eating at McDonald's, doesn't get more cliche than that!
3. When waiting in a line, do not worrying if suddenly there are 3 new Chinese people shoved between you and the guy in front of you. They don't believe in lines in this country, if there is room for a small child, 5 people will appear.
4.This one ties in with #3. "There is always room for 1 more"...a philosophy the Chinese live by...You thought the subway was crowded on the 3rd stop, just wait till the 10th!
5. When ever cars, trucks, or even scooters drive by they have to honk at us...as if to say "hey look! an American!" You would think after 2 months they'd be used to us being here, but no. I am thinking of getting a shirt made that says "Yes I know I am white, no need to honk!"
6. If the only word someone knows in English is "Hello" you can be sure they have driven all over Weihai to find us to use that word, but as soon as we say hello back they run away as if they are afraid of us.
7. Don't be hatin' on the Ping Pong...very serious stuff that ping pong in China.
8. Most things in China say "Made in Japan or Taiwan"
9. Being healthy is very important to the Chinese, advertised everywhere! Exercise parks, gym class for kids, walking/running everywhere, no elevators or escalators, small portions of food....and yet EVERYONE smokes cigarettes...
10. When walking down the side walk, if you have the urge to pick up a rock and throw it in the road just make sure it isn't brown...because that ain't a rock. The word "sidewalk" in Chinese means toilet, my translation dictionary must have been wrong.

LET THE COUNTDOWN BEGIN!

As of tomorrow morning my new life in China is half over. In 62 days I get to come home!!! Not a whole lot has been happening since we came home from Shanghai, this is the long haul though. The longest time we will continuously be here in Weihai without a vacation. It has gone by relatively fast. We were told last week that due to unhappy parents on parents day we would be switching all of our students for the next 2 weeks. So the downstairs kids are who we teach these next 2 weeks and our kids go downstairs with other teachers. It is really dumb actually seeing as ILP drilled into us that routine with these kids is EVERYTHING, and now the school is ruining the last 7 weeks we've had them in a set routine by switching the to another room, another teacher, another routine. I am just praying they remember their REAL routine when they come back in 2 weeks. It was very cute today though, I had to walk my new kids down to the main floor to go to lunch and after they left my real group of kids came running down the stairs all excited to see me and they all are giving me a group hug and it almost knocked me over! There are still the select few kids who still have to walk by and smack me as they leave...just to remind me they are still not little angels. When we came home from Shanghai a bunch of us decided to go running with each other every night and thought it would be fun to call it "Biggest Loser-Weihai" so now every night you can choose from running a 7pm, Jillian Michael's 30-day shred  at 8pm, or Zumba at 9pm. It is pretty crazy and funny :) I have run 2 miles everyday thus far! HUZZAH! haha haven't run that far in a very very very....very very long time. Kate and I were doing P90X, but seeing as we have to climb like 300+ stairs ever day we decided to quit because walking is very necessary here and after 2 weeks of P90X you don't walk anymore, you waddle. Well we received packages from home a few days ago! Thank you to all who helped get them here and to our parents! We love you guys and appreciate the treats you sent! My sister got 2 bottles of vitamin C...If any of you have seen the TV show "House" then you will know Dr. House walks around and pops one or two Vicodin every hour...that was Abi with her bottle of vitamin C alllll weekend. Today is definitely a nap day! Love me some afternoon naps!

Mid-Vacation post

Well we have been in Shanghai for a total of 5 days now and we are all loving being able to relax and just do anything we want! We have hit up quite a few tourist-y things such as

The Shanghai History Museum
Nanjing Street (expensive shopping district)
Peoples Square Civilized Gardens
Hershey's World
Shanghai Art Museum
A very big, cheap, shopping market.
Shanghai Acrobatics Show

They have all been very interesting and fun. We hit up a new favorite food place here in Shanghai and they even have a branch in WeiHai! It is a Muslim Noodle restaurant. They are homemade and fresh noodles, made right there in front of you, and they taste so good! Pretty sure we can just walk in the shop and they already know our orders, that's how often we go. The greatest part is...it only costs $1.50! For a big plate of it!! Aside from doing all sorts of tourist like things we have been just hanging out here at our hostel. I have never stayed in a place like a hostel before and it has been a great experience so far. We have met quite a few new friends in the past five days and were sad to see them go this morning! Kate, Cami, and I have an extra bunk in our room so we have been having lots of random room mates all week. Our first was a girl from Poland, whose name was also Kate, she is living in the Northern most city in China teaching English! Crazy how that worked out. We didn't really see her much though because she came with a group of friends but she was fun to talk with. Our second and current roomie is Linley, she is an older lady who in from New Zeland. She has been in China for almost 8 months now....teaching English to 1st graders! It is fun to hear the stories of what she has and doesn't have at her school and how she teaches compared to us. Although last night I think she woke up every hour to ask me if I was hearing that noise or this noise or telling me she thought we had a mouse in our air conditioning unit and then turned on the light and made me get up and turn it off! Ah! I really hope she sleeps all night because I do not want to be up all night again telling her that the noises are not mice or gun shots. So we found a old guy who sells DVD's and the greatest chocolate ice cream bars just down the street from our hostel. I got all the seasons of the tv show House for $8!! So excited to start watching them! Today we hit up the fashion markets and bartered for all kinds of stuff. I got a pair of real UGGs (boots) from Australia for $16. These originally cost $148 in the states!! It was a steal! I may go back tomorrow and get the pink pair too :) I also got a bunch of stuff for gift but I won't mention those on here ;) Well we are going on a water village boat tour tomorrow morning bright and early so it'll be exciting!

Shanghai

We arrived late yesterday afternoon in Shanghai! We are staying in the City Central International Hostel and it is way nice! Our room is good sized with 2 bunk beds in it, 4 beds total, and has all amenities. There is a common room down stairs where we can access the wi-fi and it is like a common room. Open bar and just a large room with couches and tables/chairs. The bar has got drinks obviously but the best part is the cheap food!! It is all western style! Like pasta, lasagna, french toast, pancakes, soups, salads, sandwich's, onion rings, garlic bread, etc!! So many good american foods! Free breakfast with our stay here...toast with jam, rolls, cereal, oatmeal, juice :) It is going to be a glorious 8 days!! We met a lot of cool people thus far, met some scottish guys last night that we talked to forever, they teach English here in Shanghai. Also we met a guy who has been traveling since February all over the world, he is from Great Britan and his name is Matt!

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.