Update

Well as of right now (I believe) I've been in China for exactly 1 month. I know I gave you a little update a week or so ago but I thought I'd do another one.

Here's a few things I'd like to highlight on:

1. I'm getting used to "China." I put that in quotes (possibly incorrectly) because China not only refers to the country but how we now use the term China as an adjective. Ex: "smells like China"... "tastes like China"... I realize that China is still a noun in those sentences but by the way we say them there's very much a connotation that what we are experiencing is Chinese, or, China. There's the food that ranges from having no taste or flavor at all to being vegetables drenched in oil to having so much spicy Chinese pizza-flavored flavor in my Chinese Ramen that I washed it off before I ate it. Twice. I'm getting used to wearing shoes any time I walk into my bathroom whether I'm showering or not. It's just that gross. I'm getting used to the wind tunnel that forms an icy obstacle between our dorms and the cafeteria. I'm getting used to the constant noise of people loudly hawking (sp?) loogies (sp?) and spitting next to me (even old women do it). I'm getting used to the toddler on the bus who is in the process of potty-training and therefore had a slit in the back and front of his pants for easy access and therefore either has his front or back privates displayed for you. I'm getting used to people staring at me, taking pictures with me, and commenting on my blue hair.

   In fact, I am so used to all of this that I'm turned off most of the time at the idea of eating chicken nuggets and fries for dinner. I'm so used to it that I'm now part of the group that stares when they see a white person and then talks about them even though they're standing 10 feet away. (This really happened at DQ the other night, poor guy.) I'm so used to it that I'm excited to see cooked cabbage and fried tofu on my dinner plate with a delicious side of rice. I'm so used to it that I wore my shoes in my room until I was ready to go to sleep last night.

   And do you know what? I am going to miss it terribly.

2. I love my children. I have 60 children and I'm still working on learning all of Talon's kids (that are now part of my 60) but even though I just thought to myself that I only like half of them, I really could find love for them all if I tried. These kids need so desperately to be loved and want so much for someone to love them. Bruce is one of my students that comes up to me and instantly melts my heart. I think I might even be working against loving them because I'm afraid if I let myself that I'll love them too much to let go. I cannot hardly even wait to tuck them in bed tomorrow night.

3. I love my life here. I love waking up in the morning in a simple room and realizing once again how very very happy I am. I had been so miserable before I came here-- happy on the surface but deep down really struggling with myself. And that is gone. It's not even that much really changed. It's more that I was finally able to have a new start and simply let all of my baggage go. I'm discovering how to be fully happy-- not for the purpose or goal of being happy but more that I am living my life in a way that when the day is over I realize that's what I've created as the end product. And I really really love being able to say that I am finally at a point that I can accept myself and love myself and therefore let other people do that too. I'm finally enough.

I would love to keep writing and tell you about what has been going on that doesn't really fit into an "I did this" style post but it is far past midnight and I do need to get some sleep.

I can't believe I'm already 1/4 of the way done.

I'm already starting to dream about what adventure will wait for me next.

All my love,

Amanda

mon/tues/wed

Monday 3/25:

Even though Monday was only 2 days ago (it's now Wed. night) I can't even remember what I did that morning. We're pretty lame in the mornings because everyone else is teaching and its not a big enough time gap to go anywhere very far so it's usually pretty chill. Probably did my usual sleep in until 8, shower, read scriptures, eat breakfast, plan lessons..

We have in-service training M/W after lunch but elementary was excluded from this one and we were told to meet the next morning at 9:30 down at the school instead. I spent the time they were in the meeting laying on the floor next to the windows in the hallways in the sun with Sam and Melanie as we appreciated being in warm sunlight. It's been pretty cold here so we keep going outside to a minimum which is really unfortunate because we're starting to get tired of being in such close quarters all the time and I really really miss being outside. Once it warms up though I plan to make beach visits a very regular activity. Or Spider mountain. Or even the common room (which is almost as cold as outside some days, minus the wind).

For my 4^th grade class we started reading The Three Little Pigs and the teacher stayed in the classroom so it actually went pretty well. Up until this week I've always loved my 5^th graders more than my 4^th graders because they were better behaved but that has switched this week or maybe my patience level has just worn out in different areas. My 5^th graders were, as they like to call it, "very very crazy" so I started a system of strikes. If they are talking or speaking in Chinese I write their name on their board and give them a strike. 3 strikes and you're out. One of the girls copies down the names in Chinese and gives them to her teacher. It makes things a little big better but of course does not even come close to completely solving the problem. I had a gap between classes so I sat in on Melanie's class to help her keep her kids quiet but they were a little bit better than usual and there was a Chinese teacher in there so they weren't too bad.

After dinner I spent about an hour putting together a slideshow on holidays for one of the classes I planned for Tuesday. I never got to use it because they were incapable of being quiet long enough to get through the first lesson, let alone two.

For FHE Mikelle planned singing with headphones on for the group like we did on the bus which was fun to do again and I got some cute videos but when I checked my camera this morning all my pictures and videos were gone (I have NO idea what happened) but I've been pretty good about uploading regularly to my laptop so I think I have most of them saved other than what I have from that night. Sam sang a song by The Darkness called I Believe in a Thing Called Love and even with headphones in he did really really well. But ya, somehow deleted. At least it was only a few.

Tuesday 3/26:

Yesterday (Tuesday) I did my normal routine (with TOAST and hot chocolate for breakfast!!! Only because Melanie bought me bread) before I had to go to my Elementary training at the school at 9:30. We walked ALL the way down to the school and then ALL the way up the stairs to the supply room and then waited for an ENTIRE 15 minutes (am I being dramatic enough? Lol) before we found out that apparently the meeting had been cancelled. Alisha: "It was on the board." Me: "I checked the board before I came. There was nothing on there." Alisha: "I took the Post-It for the meeting off like 2 days ago." Me: "You told us last night that we needed to be here." Alisha: "........." Melanie: "The Post-It could have just fallen off (it's right next to a window that gets very windy when it is open) or someone could have taken it off just because. You taking it off the board doesn't tell us that the meeting is cancelled." *Amanda simply walks down stairs because she's far too immature to think rationally* Blah. So I was a little bit ticked off. Both because I'm tired of showing up to meetings multiple times a week that get cancelled without anyone telling me or missing things because no one tells me and because I knew it really shouldn't have been a big deal and I should get over it but I didn't want to.

Lunch was disgusting. They fed us shrimp again with their black eyes looking at us so I didn't even bother making an attempt to eat them this time. Since I've decided against learning Chinese I took a nap in the sun in the hallway while everyone else went to class. It was wonderful.

Since it was Tuesday it was Talon's day to teach!! I still helped but it was nice to not be in charge. The first hour we finished reading the book and then the 2^nd hour we showed them a video of the story on youku.com (their youtube) that we had found earlier in the day. Youku.com is now one of my favorite websites because they videos are a whole new level of awkward wonderful. Here's the link for the 3 Little Pigs story we showed them:

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjY1NTQ4NTYw.html

After we showed this to them we had them act out the story while I read it. It was actually really really really fun. I tried to do the same lesson with my 5^th graders for their second hour and they just couldn't handle it. SIGH They did decide it was time to start using the F-word though (luckily, in Chinese so I couldn't understand it) and since my kids are such huge tattle-tells one of the girls informed me that, "Teacher! Amanda!!! Kevin say very bad word in Chinese. In English it is... F Q." Me: "(correcting her): F you. Kevin-- stop it." I was secretly laughing really hard though. F Q (because they can't tell the difference in sounds very well). That's fabulous Chinglish.

Dinner was nasty too. We had fish sticks again that actually have fake fish in them but its super salty and ocean fishy unlike the shark they feed us in the USA and call fish sticks. I saved some to feed to my stray kitties but they weren't outside our building when I walked back so I just threw it on the ground for them. My favorite cat is a little white one (or it would be if someone washed it) that's super friendly and cute without being overwhelming. It was in the cafeteria a couple Sundays ago and I hand fed it another kind of fish stuff they gave us. She (or he) was down by the main building when we were coming back the other night and I said, "hey nasty! Come back home!!" and she followed us back to the dorms. So her name is now Nastie. Because "ie" is a cuter ending than "y."

After dinner we hung out in my room with one of the topics being top things we want in someone we marry and I am happy to say I'm with a group of people that all agree that them needing to have read and like Harry Potter is at the top of the list. Things after that got boring. Sam, Kristen, and Sarah were doing an ab workout in the common room and everyone else was already heading to bed so things wound down a little bit earlier than usual and poor Melanie had to listen to me talk for at least half an hour before I let her go to sleep. We did agree though that we need to start exercising by running in the morning after breakfast (which means we have to get up early.... :(....) because we feel gross and want to be healthy but also want a hot shower (which turns off from 8:30-11:30). We also decided that we would not start doing this until tomorrow :)

A final note for the day-- I took my ground pad off my bed to sleep on in the hallway and I was too lazy to remake my bed and put it back on so I decided upon a night sleeping on my board *cough* I mean, bed. And surprisingly, it was one of the best nights of sleep I got here. I think I just needed a break from the ground pad. Hopefully Sam slept nicely too because I let him borrow it.

Wednesday 3/27:

Wednesday was the usual routine again-- waking up to the mop lady, getting up 15 minutes later for an almost hot shower, reading, breakfast, and planning. This morning was a little bit better because I started reading Jesus the Christ. I volunteered to teach the Sunday School lesson this week so I'm hoping to have some things to talk about for the Easter holiday from the book. We also watched the first episode of Big Bang Theory while I drank a guava "milkshake" one of my students gave me and even though I'm quite sure it cut off the beginning (of the episode) I still thoroughly enjoyed watching it and not only seeing my friends again but seeing them when they met and were even more adorably awkward. Melanie and I were the only ones who watched it because Sam and Talon were going to go running (even though Talon claimed he was super sick and had strep throat) but then decided against it because it was so windy so they went to the JiaJiaYue to get noodles instead. Sam did come and spend a little bit of time with us before though when he came and cuddled up on the end of Melanie's comfy bed and chatted with us for a few minutes. This sort of behavior is very common for a few different people in our group. Let's just say that Melanie's (what feels like) memory foam mattresses and my ground pad are very popular.

Melanie had to leave early to go print stuff off for her class so I had extra time to put a little effort into my appearance today. I wore my retarded navy blue plaid shirt that I love so much that buttons up the front and back and french braided my hair and put on makeup. Luke informed me that I was not, "hard on the eyes" so apparently I did okay :)

For lunch there was fried-ish rice!! It had some veggies in it and I think even a little bit of salt although I don't know if it was actually fried. But still.. it tasted amazing and I ate more than a normal portion. We had in-service training outisde on the steps because it was actually warm today. We've had a couple decent warm windows for a few hours at a time where I only had to have hoodie on but today I didn't wear a jacket at all. It was fantastically wonderfully marvelous.

I taught 4 classes today. The first one for the 4^th graders was on hermit crabs and went really well other than when one of my students asked me what p-e-n-i-s meant. 5^th grade was still pretty crazy although I bribed them with letting them watch another youku video (I showed them Dumb Ways to Die yesterday) at the end of class if they got less than 5 strikes total. They only got 4 but half of that wasn't so much their bad behavior but me being nice because I wanted to watch the video and have class end 3 minutes sooner. The second hour of 4^th grade was back to complete panic. It started off okay and then all at once there was what I am going to call an explosion of children from the back of the room all yelling about water and running off to grab mops and brooms and dust pans. Apparently the pipe that runs up the back corner of the room has started leaking and flooded the back of the room. That was all sorts of crazy to calm down and then there were about 5 boys that started getting into legit fighting mode back there and they can actually get really mean and violent with each other so its something you really do have to stop. I went back and yelled for everyone to "SIT DOWN NOW!!!!!" and spent the next 10 minutes watching my biggest problem child, Walter, screwing around in the back to the point that Talon took him out of the room but when he went back there Walter had his pen up like he was going to stab Talon so he ended up having to pin the kid's arms to his side and push him out of the room which ended in basically carrying him out of the room. Somehow I managed to get the kids to practice an educational version of the Macarena after that but I have no idea how. The teacher came back in with a few minutes to spare and said they all needed to go practice their jump rope skills for the competition tomorrow so not only did I get 2-3 minutes shorter of a 4^th grade class but my next 5^th grade class started 10 minutes late :) The teacher didn't actually tell me all of that but after a failed attempt at communicating verbally I figured it out by following the kids out of the room. I understood the "class is over" part and I wasn't going to disagree. In 30 minutes the 5^th grade class was so crazy that I gave them 20 strikes which is apparently is equivalent to 200 Chinese points which they total on the board every day and I'm pretty sure 200 points is really really bad, especially for only that much time.

Dinner was meh and some of the people in the group went to get cheap massages afterwards that I didn't get invited to this time because I wasn't at the right place at the right time when it got set up. It happens.. oh well. Melanie and Mikelle left for the store so I enjoyed the quiet time to myself by writing my lesson plans for next week that were due at 8pm, reading my Rocks and Minerals book, and catching up on journaling which I'm very happy to say I have almost now finally completed!!!!! (It's also almost midnight.) The plan was to do all of that and then tuck my kids in at 8:00 so I waited all evening until it was late enough and then Mikelle walked in and said one of my kids was asking for me (because I had promised them I'd go tonight). It was 8:40 and I thought it was only 7:40. I had gotten so wrapped up in writing that I'd gone over an hour without checking the time and the time on my laptop is still AZ time because I want to still have a link to reality at home. So ya.. missed it. Again. But tomorrow night I'll go. Can't even wait to tuck those stinky little buggers in. But seriously. I know I complain about them and talk about how crazy and talkative they are but then Bruce or Bettd (that's not a typo) will come up to me and just love on me and I can't help but fall crazy in love with them too.

Melanie just started snoring so I need to wrap this up pretty soon. She's started snoring because she's a little sick but she'll also randomly say things in her sleep every once in a while. This morning she randomly laughed and a few minutes later said, "cool!" which gave me a big smile. I probably already wrote this forever ago but one night Mark (I was told this by Geoff) said, "Bum in chair!" which is one of their rules and one I'm sure they have to repeat quite a bit. I really wonder if I've ever said anything in my sleep. I have no idea. I did spend about 20 minutes telling Melanie about my awesome camping gear last night when she was going to sleep and then talked about some other stuff too and looking back I really appreciate that I have a nice roommate because I can't imagine how boring my camping gear must be to other people even though I find it to be one of the coolest things in my life. Anyways, good morning USA, goodnight China. I know you've just woken up and for me it's already tomorrow. Such a strange concept that is..

love, Amanda.

Saturday/Sunday

Saturday 3/23:

Saturdays I usually go on a home visit which the school sets up but a couple of my kids had told me I was going to go with them so I told them they had to call the school. I never heard back that I was going with them so when Melanie and Sam left for their home visit I spent the beginning of my morning on REI.com contemplating how I wanted to spend my dividend that I "earned" last year. I had decided on a really sweet deal buying a hammock and pair of Tevas and was about to confirm my purchase when someone knocked on my door. It was Cindy-- she'd been running down by the school and said there was a student there named Bruce who was waiting for me. He was one of the kids in class that had told me I was going to his house but had never called to confirm with the school. He's probably my favorite in that class and likes to come up to me before class and imitate all the emotions of the sheep on my bag that I bought in Ireland. Totes adorbs. Even though I was super excited about having a day off I felt bad for not being there when he was so excited about it so I quickly got ready and went down to meet him with Andrea who decided to come with me. We climbed in a really nice BMW with custom leather seat covers and drove to his house where we played Legos for a while and then he took us to the mountain by his house which is actually the same "mountain" we climbed with Mars and Leo. It's the one with the watch tower on it but the side we were on this time had a huge statue of soldiers and a bunch of headstones so from those minor clues (I'm being sarcastic.) I deduced we were at a memorial. He then took us down to the JiaJiaYue by his house. These stores are everywhere and vary in all sizes but this one was especially huge. I'm talking mall size with its own arcade and electric animals you can drive around. We walked around there for a while but neither Andrea or I had brought money so we left after a while. After that he took us to the square downtown where apparently they have hundreds of vendors on Saturday afternoons. It was tons of fun to wander through all these ghetto little streets looking at the different shops and things they were selling. Again, we had no money so we went back to his house. His grandma (who is adorable and I have decided I need a Chinese grandmother of my own) made us dumplings for lunch. Some were green inside and were meh and some were orange and super good. About that time one of Leo's friends came over so they played Legos for the next two hours while Andrea and I sat there and talked. I did tell the mom we had to go back to the school at 2 and if I hadn't I don't know if we would have had to play Legos all day or what.

When I got back I did a couple quick loads of laundry while I was waiting for Melanie to get back from her home visit and then Mikelle, Melanie, Sam, Talon, and I went downtown to hang out for the evening. The girls went back to the market Bruce had showed me although by that point in the day lots of people had gone home and the giant JiaJiaYue was closed. We snacked on some Chinese street pizza and wandered through the streets and eventually stumbled upon the honey man. This shop had wood flooring!! The whole shop was different types of honey and honey products. Acacia honey, citrus honey, cherry honey, mulberry honey, honey shampoo, honey lotion.. The guy there was with his son and they were super fun even though they didn't speak a word of English. He let us sample some of them and gave us some free samples to take with us and Melanie and Mikelle both bought some. After that we met up with Sam and Talon at DQ. It's so strange to be in the middle of China and then go grab chicken nuggets at KFC and get a Blizzard next door. We split back up after that and we headed back to the night market and I bought this wonderfully Chinese panda sweater that has a panda on the front and has a panda hood. Kinda in love. When we got back we got together with a group of us that is going on vacation together next week to these temples and mud caves. We booked rooms at a hotel because all the hostels were sold out due to there being a flower festival there next week (which should be cool) but we got rooms for $25 a night (2 nights) which is still dirt cheap. After that they put in another episode of Walking Dead (which I decided I'm not a huge fan of) so I painted my nails (with my new awesome sparkly green polish that I bought for 5 yuen on the street) and went to bed.

Sunday 3/24:

Sunday I woke up to 6 emails which was an extremely pleasant surprise. I remembered I had never put away the jigsaw puzzle from the week before so I stumbled in the common room and cleaned that up so we wouldn't be looking at a murder mystery next to the sacrament. I've figured out that a Chinese lady mops our hall around 7:45 every morning which often wakes me up (because I can hear the mop slap the door) which works out perfectly for me because the hot water turns off at 8:30 and takes about 15 minutes to heat up before I get in so I've established a informal schedule the past few days of getting up around 8 and turning on the water while I'm checking email and grabbing clean clothes and then showering before it turns ice cold. That's what I did Sunday morning. Afterwards I pull out my Ensign and read a couple articles while Melanie is still passed out asleep in bed. She usually gets up about 9am so it's a very healthy hour of silence for me.

Church is at 10 but they ask that you be seated by 9:45 to listen to the music and you have to get in there earlier if you want a seat on the couch. I managed to snag the last seat this past week plus they had a heating pad on it so I didn't completely freeze. I had emailed the branch president back saying I would say the closing prayer and it was really wonderful and awkward at the same time to say a prayer for all of China (29 cities were listening in).

A bunch of us decided to do our own Sunday School after lunch because the one they do runs right through meal time plus its kinda awkward to all participate in a lesson talking over the phone. It turned out that half the group went on another home visit after lunch so there were only 7 of us in the class but it was still really good. Sam taught a lesson on scriptures and Jay was there who is Christian but not LDS so we had a really nice lesson discussing the meaning of scriptures in our lives and what they offer. Along with some info about the Book of Mormon of course :)

After that we put in Sherlock (the TV series) and ended up watching the entire 2^nd season with only a small break for dinner. It's only 3 episodes but they're 1.5 hours long so it was really really pathetic of us and a waste of our only free day. After that I wanted to play games but that didn't happen so I watched one group FB stalking (Mark has a VPN) old pictures of people in our group and then they decided to watch Life of Pi which I have been dying to watch all week so I submitted myself to another couple hours on the couch that I had already devoted about 8 hours to already that day. It was a pretty good movie but it was all in Chinese with a decent interpretation of Chinese to English subtitles. When it ended I went back in my room to discover that Melanie, Mikelle, and Geoff had created a series of secret Harry Potter handshakes. One for each book and they were pretty funny. I got to get on FB for a minute on Mikelle's computer (she has a VPN too) and check a couple things (some of you can probably guess what I checked first now that it's the end of March). Then the usually nightly chit chat, blah blah blah, get out of my room so I can sleep, goodnight.

Thursday/Friday

Thursday 3/21:

On Thursday waking up was so difficult but I was super hungry so I dragged myself out of bed for breakfast at 6:45am. Melanie didn't want to get up for breakfast so she asked me to bring her a roll. I got down to breakfast and it was a boiled egg and roll again (surprise! Oh wait.. I've never had anything else here for breakfast). The principal sat down at the table to eat with Cindy and I but she doesn't speak English so it was awkward and I ate my egg super fast. The rolls had these jello-y noodles in them that Melanie hates so I brought her two for breakfast :) I later found out that she threw them out. Melanie had Chinese observations for a class they had her teach at 8 which I was a couple minutes late for and sat next to Sam in the back who was practically asleep. Hardly anyone even came to observe her so it was pretty pointless to be there. After it was over we went back to our room and the 3 of us (Talon never showed up for anyone else's lessons) just hung out and talked until I had to teach at 10. My lesson was especially horrible and afterwards we went back to the room again and played Monopoly Deal. At lunch we had DUMPLINGS and it was a fantastic treat. It's amazing how desperate we are for mediocre food here. After lunch we played Monopoly Deal again. I kept losing which wounded my game ego a little bit.

At 12:30 we went to our first Chinese lessons and I decided that I was going to keep sticking to my decision that I didn't want to learn Chinese. I tried to fill out the job application to work for ILP this summer in Utah when I get back but China's internet only works about 20% of the time so I kept getting blocked.

Thursday is Talon's day to teach 4^th grade so I was pretty much done teaching for the day since I'd already taught 5^th grade in the morning (I only have 1 5^th grade class on Thursdays). I sat in on the 4^th grade classes and Talon taught math for the first one. The objective of teaching math is not to teach the actual math but to teach them the terms in English. Those kids are ridiculously advanced in math. I had an hour gap between 4^th grade classes so I was just going to hang out down at the school but I had to pee and since there is no TP or soap in the bathrooms at the school (plus they're squatters that reek of pee/poo) I made the trek back up almost 200 stairs to my own wonderful Western toilet. While I was up there I ate a kiwi and enjoyed some quiet time and then headed back down to the school. When the second class got out I picked up a new water bottle to put on our water dispenser and carried that beast up to my room except for the last 2 flights of stairs because Luke ran into me and stole it to take the rest of the way. Luke, Melanie, and I went and bought noodles at another Muslim place down the street and they were wonderful as always. We're supposed to sign out on a sheet when we leave but since we were only going to be gone for an hour and classes were still going on we failed to do so. We stopped at the JiaJiaYue for some groceries on the way back and when we got back to school Alicia (one of the head teachers) yelled at me a little because (OVER) a week later someone had finally come to replace our bathroom light and they couldn't find us. He did leave the bulb though which was nice.

We had our in-service training meeting at 6pm that night to make up for the one that was cancelled the day before because Casey came. It was as worthless as usual and after 45 minutes of sitting on the arm of the couch my butt was pretty impatient to stay put. And that's all I wrote down in bullet points for Thursday so I have no idea what I did for the rest of the night. Probably just hung out with people in my room and talked. Like usual.

Friday 3/22:

Friday I woke up sick. Sick meaning I simply felt horrible without any side-effects for proof. Here you teach unless you're on your death bed (because let's be honest.. most of us are sick most of the time) so I managed to make it through both of my classes of kids who were not any less crazy even though I looked pitiful and told them I was sick. The elementary teachers had a meeting at 9:40 in Ella's office (what?! ANOTHER Chinese meeting?!!!) but it was actually really really nice. They complimented on us on what good teachers we were and talked about how they want to help us as much as they can because they have been trained as actual teachers and Ella gave us all lasers that also stretch out as pointers. It was very nice after an exhausting week of being observed and having to watch observations every day.

After the meeting I went back to my room and slept through lunch. I got out of bed in time to make it to a calligraphy class at 2 that a couple of the Chinese teachers taught. I don't think I have a single ounce of art in me because I simply could not understand why I had to paint the characters a certain way and why I couldn't just draw straight lines. So I worked on it for a little while and then just sat there watching other people appreciating it and shared their joy over it. After calligraphy a bunch of us went downtown on the bus at 4:15 (it comes every hour) to get noodles at our favorite place and then a bunch of people went to KTV afterwards which is a karaoke place but Melanie and I were both sick so we went to the street they always have a night market on and got a few more DVDs and picked up some stuff at the bakery to eat for breakfast the next morning. I bought This Means War, Breaking Dawn 2 (just because I have never seen it and want to) and the first 5 seasons of Big Bang Theory ($3 for all 5 baby!) Then we went home and laid in bed until everyone else got back and told us about their epic adventures and we kicked them out so we could sleep.

Tuesday/Wednesday

Tuesday 3/19:

Tuesday we started the day off with another Chinese observation in Sam's class @ 10. They're kinda awkward because your kids are suddenly good since all the Chinese teachers are in there and they get super quiet and don't participate as much so you kinda look like an idiot. He taught about holidays and had a good lesson planned but between the teachers being there and him being sick that day it could have gone better but we all know (including the teachers) that he teaches better than that so no big deal.

That afternoon I combined my 4^th grade class with Talon's for the first time and it went pretty well. He worked on a story out of the book for the first class while I walked around and kept kids focused. The second half though he just had them write a note about themselves and it got kinda crazy but it was nice to work with the kids individually at that point.

That night we played Catch Phrase in Jay and Cindy's room which is always enjoyable. I love having so many people here who like playing games with me :) Afterwards we were going to watch Life of Pi that Mark had bought at one of the DVD shops we found but that never happened so Sam, Mikelle, Melanie, and I just sat in our room and talked until 10:30 opposite sex curfew.

Wednesday 3/20:

Wednesday was our only day all week that we didn't have to do something in the morning so we got to sleep in!! We're supposed to have the mornings off M-Th because of our later teaching schedule (from 1:30-5pm) but we've had all those dumb Chinese observations so.. ya. Once I woke up I spent the entire morning planning for one of my 4^th grade classes that afternoon because Casey (the ILP boss) was going to be there for mid-semester (not quite) observations (more observations!!). I was going to finish the story Talon had been working on the day before so I prepared lots of props to help them understand the meaning of adjectives like long, rough, smooth, wide, heavy, etc..

After lunch I was supposed to have my 1-on-1 interview with Casey but he never showed up so I figured he was held back at the airport or something but no one really knew because the head teachers left to go pick him up so we were all still at the school out of the loop on what was going on (the lack of cell phones to communicate has created somewhat of an obstacle to overcome). I sat in the room for my allotted time and then went to class.

My first 4^th grade class was psycho. The Chinese teacher wasn't there and sometimes Talon is more of a distraction to the children than an aid for me. The 5^th graders were better but still pretty talkative but dang it I was going to have a good class for Casey to see. When my 2^nd 4^th grade class came around the Chinese teacher was in there so they were better behaved and I had done enough preparation and brought in enough objects/activities that most of them were actually paying attention and participating!And that's the thing.. I know that the discipline problem in my classes could be helped out if I spent a few hours every morning prepping my lesson better but.. some days I just don't want to do that or don't want to cut my social time down enough to do that. Anyways, the class was amazing. Amazing. It was hands down the best class I've taught my entire time here and Casey and the two head teachers sat through the middle of it. :) yay me. My 5^th grade class afterwards was just meh again but I was so ecstatic about my success before that I walked out of that class too still skipping with happiness.

After class I had to go back to the school to interview with Casey and sat in the hallway waiting forever with a group of people who also still needed to be interviewed. We ran out of time so all of us headed to the restaurant that ILP was feeding us that night special for Casey's visit. The dinner was pretty decent. Not necessarily better than the cafeteria food (which is hit or miss) but they had more variety which is what made it better. The only place here I've ordered off of a menu here is at the little noodle shops. Everywhere else they just put a bunch off food out on Lazy Susans for us and we all eat off of those. I'm going to be such a rude pig when I get home because here it is totally acceptable to reach across the table and eat straight out of main dish. Dinner was nice but got a little awkward at the end because Luke and Melanie (sitting on either side of me) were deep in conversation about history that I was entirely uninterested in joining. The other side of the table were discussing religion- a conversation I hope to never jump into because Talon is super anti-mormon so things get really intense really fast.

After dinner I had my interview with Casey out in the hallway while we choked over the smell of the ashtray next to us. It still freaks me out when I walk down the stairs out of the dorm and one of the Chinese men in our building has another cigarette lit up as he passes me on the stairs. Casey asked about the social aspects of our group, things about teaching, how things with the head teachers were. I was mature about it but I let him know exactly what I thought. About how our classes are way too big and how my bathroom light has been broken for a week so I've had to pee and shower with the door open and how the head teachers are kinda copping out on being the mean ones to tell the Chinese teachers no to all these observations. But I gave the program a lot of praise too. I told him how much I loved living in China and how helpful the Chinese teachers were and how well our group gets along and how much I love my roommate.

Back at the dorms we all filed into the common room which is what I imagine sitting in a refrigerator to feel like. Two of the walls are windows so that offers no insulation and the floor below us has a balcony instead of a room so the floor is about the temperature of the 1 degree C outside. But it's home and we discovered some electric heating pads that we sit on now that help tremendously. We had a big ILP training meeting that Casey updated us on some stuff and answered questions we had. He also brought us Reese's!!!!! Anyone who knows me can say how much I don't like them but when you're in China and haven't had peanut butter or chocolate in a few weeks they're one of the best things in the world. During the meeting Casey talked about how they're starting a new summer program in SLC where they host kids ages 10-16 there for a week. You have class in the morning and then go do activities in the afternoon. The end of the week has a trip to S. Utah AKA Bryce, Zions.... :) :) :) Guess who is super super super hoping she gets that job?? It runs in July and August so its only a few weeks but hey.. something is better than nothing and its with a program I'm already familiar with and it's exactly the kind of job I would love to have. Fingers crossed.

After the meeting Casey left and I planned with Talon for our 4^th grade classes for the next week. Hopefully this set up works and we'll continue getting along and working together well while we're here. After we were done planning together I quickly wrote my 5^th grade lessons and handed in that dreaded planning book for review. I spent the rest of the evening talking with Jay, Sam, and Melanie in our room until 10:30 and then was up until after midnight planning for my Chinese observation lesson that I was teaching the next morning.

Then I collapsed into my wonderful ground pad bed, totally exhausted.

Sunday/Monday

Sunday 3/17:

Sunday was fantastic. At 6:15am I heard our door get attacked for Melanie's birthday but luckily she didn't wake up. I went back to sleep but eventually got up and showered before the hot water turned off at 8:30 (We only have hot water 4 times a day). I managed to get most of Melanie's birthday cake made before she woke up but all I did was stick a bunch of birthday cake Oreos together with frosting in the shape of the Olympic rings. Do you know how difficult it is to quietly unwrap rolls of Oreos? Impossible. She woke up at the end and I told her, "Go back to sleep for 10 seconds" and she obeyed immediately. Once I finished the cake she got up and I got online to check my email and managed to get in a 15 minute Skype call with Matt which was really nice since I haven't talked to anyone from home since I got here.

I had to log off to go to "church" at 10 and sat through my hour of sacrament meeting (on the phone) during which there was so much static half way through one of the talks that the branch president interrupted to ask that the girl tell the whole story all over again. The first talk was really good though. It's incredible how I can be with 20 people in a freezing common room having church over the phone but still feel the Spirit so strongly. After church we ate lunch and then I brought out my jigsaw puzzle I brought and we put it together and solved the mystery. It was fun but its the only one I brought and I'm really sad that I won't have another one to do for 3 more months.

After the puzzle we spent the next couple hours making mashed potatoes. They do have potatoes here (although they look a little bit different than they do at home) so we cut them up and put them in our wok and cooked them on our hot plate. Then put them in a big bowl and mashed them with the bottle of a metal water bottle. Booyah! That's how you make mashed potatoes ghetto style. It took 3 batches of cooking to get them all done but they were super delicious with butter and salt and garlic. A true 'merican treat. While this was going on we had the window open (yes.. it was actually almost warm enough to do that for once) and were flirting with the construction workers over on Spider Mountain behind the dorms that have been out there working since we got here. They're working on this cement bridge thing and have been drilling at it the last couple days. Well.. after some flirting back and forth one of the workers starts yelling at us in Chinese and motions for us to shut the window and move away so we all ran into the next room and went out on Jay's porch and watched as the construction workers all headed way down the hill and then started yelling things. Our guess was that they were going to blow it up so I had Jay start recording and we got it on video!!!! Imagine a huge epic explosion from your favorite action movie. Now try to take that idea and be the person ducking from the enormous amounts of debris that came flying at us. I actually ducked because I thought a piece of cement was going to smash the window. We went outside to survey the damage and there were at least 10 windows in the 2 dorm buildings that were shattered from pieces of cement off the bridge. There had been a guy working in a little field on the side of the hill and we found a 1-foot wide piece of cement sitting where he had been standing. Only in China, right?

Later Luke was playing with my hair and commented on how good it would look perfectly straight so he went and pulled out his flat iron and did my hair for me and then continued straightening hair in the group for the rest of the night. I got tired of it so I sat with a group watching Scott Pilgrim but that movie is still as stupid as last time I watched so I spent the next hour jumping back and forth between two things I was entirely uninterested in. The hair party was in my room so I couldn't go to bed so I ended up hanging out with Sam and Talon in their room learning some Chinese using an app on an ipad. At 10:30 (curfew for people of the opposite sex in your room) I kicked everyone out of my room and finally went to bed.

Truly though.. it was one of best days I've had in my life.

Monday 3/18:

Monday Melanie and I both got up for breakfast at 6:45, ate, and then went back to bed. She called her family on Skype around 9 for her birthday so I got a nice 45-minute period to slowly wake up again.

After that we went downstairs to the school for the first of many many many training meetings this week. Monday was Talon's day to teach and be observed so we sat through a lesson on Jack and Jill with 40 4^th graders. He and I usually split the class up and each teach half but since this was a special meeting they had him take all of them which ended up being fine since the principal, 4 Chinese teachers, and 3 ILP teachers were sitting there watching. Wish those kids would act that way when we really teach them. The lesson went fine other than the fact that he spelled "pale of water" wrong. Afterwards we all filed back in the principal's (Ella) office, a place we're becoming pretty familiar with. Half an hour later after we critiqued his lesson and he told the principal he hadn't spent any time preparing the lesson (unlike the hours the Chinese teachers had spent for theirs) which she really didn't like we all were told that we needed to start making Powerpoint presentations and put up pictures and make worksheets....... at which point we informed her that we have no problem doing that but everything here is in Chinese so we have no idea HOW to do that. So Julianna (one of the Chinese teachers that actually speaks almost fluent English) showed us around baidu.com which is their Google (and apparently pulls up a lot of porn when you click on the images link) and said we'd all get USB drives to transfer over Powerpoints from our laptops to the computers in the classrooms. We also walked over on our own and explored the copy room and tested out the options there. So.. I feel better about the option of having a better lesson now but this is quickly becoming a full-time serious job which isn't exactly what most of us are looking for as volunteers who paid to be here and don't really like teaching. Oh and my 4^th grade class is just in an extra supply room so there's no computer in there which makes it hard to use a Powerpoint so they decided to just keep the 4^th grade class of 40 students combined and have Talon and I switch off between teaching and monitoring the class. We'll see how that goes. Since I've already given up on any hope of my 4^th graders really learning anything valuable this semester I don't think they've got much to lose.

Luckily lunch was at 11:30 (which is what probably kept our meeting shorter than usual) so the 4 of us (Elementary teachers- me, Talon, Melanie and boy Sam) headed over there to eat what actually ended up being a really good meal. It's really hit or miss over here but we got a couple little pieces of actual chicken mixed in and they didn't even have bones in them. I always get super excited when I see meat on my plate but it almost always ends up being tofu (which I'm almost starting to like now as long as they fry it so it doesn't turn out like Jello) or "meat" that is basically what was left after they picked off every good piece of meat and then threw the remains in a grinder. They waste nothing here. Eww- so random story- we had this shrimp stuff (the always just give us rice with a random mixture of things to eat it with) and I was super excited because it was actual real shrimp. Then I looked closer and it was whole shrimp. Now, I've had shrimp plenty of times where you had to pull the tail, legs, and shell off but these still had their heads with big black eyes looking at you. Jay ripped off the first head for me and I managed the rest and then started to eat the remainder of this mixture. I didn't realize there were going to be antennas in there too so that was a nasty surprise after the first bite but I was a lot more careful afterwards. ANYWAYS..

After lunch we had our ILP training meeting which we tried to get out of since we now have 8 extra hour of Chinese training meetings this week but no cigar. (lol if that cliché doesn't actually make sense just ignore it. The internet isn't working so I can't double check it.) It was kinda lame as always but I did get tons of praise for my lesson last Friday when I did Stone Soup and was the the example they gave the rest of the group for ideas on how to teach better. (Booyah!) After the training I went back to bed (again.) because I didn't have to teach my 4^th grade class because Talon had taught it that morning (woooooohoooo!!). I barely made it to 5^th grade on time and the teacher wasn't there like usual so they were not as angelic as usual and I didn't feel good so it was a pretty boring lesson with lots of "shhhhh"ses and "please be quiet." By the end of the lesson I was feeling pretty crappy and seriously considering looking for the head teachers so I didn't have to teach my 2^nd 5^th grade class but I decided to tough it out and spent my hour break (because I only have to teach 1 4^th grade class on Mondays) in the quiet supply room planning for my observation on Thursday during which time I started feeling a little bit better and went back to class to teach my 13 students (10 had left to go to a special event) a few new words and then go over the ones we had worked on that morning and then play hangman for the rest of class.

After dinner Melanie and I were chilling in our room and people started knocking on the door and coming in. We're one of the popular rooms here and it's a new concept to both of us. We were talking with Luke and Geoff and I was exhausted so I was already in my pajamas and in bed even though it was only about 6:30. Luke ran a theory across us about it being sensual for guys to brush a girl's hair out of her face. (That was random but it's important for later.) Luke was sitting on the bed talking to us and then asked if he could scoot further back on the bed and I made the joke that he could just lay down next to me and he actually did. It really didn't mind but later Talon came in and asked if we wanted to go to the JiaJiaYue and Luke rolled over and looked at me and said something like, "hey babe wanna go?" while he was brushing my bangs out of my eyes. At which point I informed him that he was being awkward because I no longer knew if he was still joking or actually serious. Anyways, Melanie, Luke, Talon and I all went to the JiaJiaYue and I stocked up on birthday cake Oreos, honey, fresh fruit, and Chinese ramen which are my basic staples here. When we got back to the school a group had just started watching the 3^rd season of Walking Dead so I jumped in for a minute to see what it was and ended up sitting through 2 episodes even though I think it's a pretty poorly written dumb show. I am starting to really miss having a couple of 20 minute episodes of Big Bang Theory or How I Met Your Mother each week to watch and relax with.

After the lame potato couching I went back in my room and kicked Geoff off of my bed and talked to Mikelle and Melanie for a while. Mikelle had an ingrown toenail removed yesterday at a Chinese hospital. She's gotten plenty of I.V.s for drugs but no pills. Which I would be really frustrated with but she's doing okay. Mikelle went to bed and Melanie and I stayed up late talking in the dark again and I finally fell asleep some time after midnight which I paid for the next morning.

Friday, Saturday

Friday 3/15:

Friday I read my class the book Stone Soup which is one of my favorite children's books for some reason. I actually bought some veggies at the market to use as props so we make stone soup in class together and it actually turned out to be a really good lesson. After lunch we went to another training meeting with the Chinese teachers. They feel the need to have us observe them teach and then give them feedback. We're getting sick of the extra time they're asking us to commit. Especially on a Friday afternoon. Once we were free we went looking for what the last group dubbed the 'pastry man' but his shop was closed for the day. We did however see another school getting out for the day with all of the kids wearing yellow hats and later found another random pastry store. That evening back at the dorms Mark and Mikelle made an attempt at dessert pizza. It turned out.. ok. Great for China though :)

Saturday 3/16:

On Saturday Mars picked Melanie and I up and we went to her apartment where we hung out for the day and actually had a lot of fun. We practiced reading Snow White, translating back and forth between English and Chinese, where we'd teach her a sentence in English and then she'd teach us the Chinese. Pretty cool. After that was one of the most interesting eating experiences I've had here. She brought out a bar of Lindt white chocolate (all the writing was in Italian) and I we went to break off a row but she brought out plates, a knife, and spoons. We cut off some pieces of chocolate and ate them with a spoon off of our plate. So weird. She had us pick some music to listen to so we had Dumb Ways to Die and 50 Ways to Die stuck in our heads for the rest of the day. Mars showed us her imitation Olympic torch that is built out of scrap metal they used to build the stadium in Beijing in 2008. They only made 200,000 (which, for China, ain't many) and it cost 29,000 yuen which is about $500. After that she showed us some stuff in her room including a panda hat, mittens, and numchucks. Also a full skinned zebra being stored on the top bunk of her bed that apparently they got when she and her mom went to Duabi. Rich much? We looked at a world map and compared places we'd been too and then went outside and played volleyball and took turns riding her bike. Then we went back to her room and played computer games on various Apple products until lunch. Apple products are all super expensive here. An iphone 4S is about $1000 and apparently Mars has one, her mom has one, and then they have an ipad and an ipad mini. Again, rich much? Lunch was delicious and homemade :) It included pork ribs (eaten w/chopsticks), tomatoes with sugar on them (actually really good), celery, rabbit dumplings (rolls she shaped like rabbits), clam and tarrou soup, rice with cilantro (it's really weird to eat cilantro not in Mexican food), boiled eggs she cooked in sauce and cracked so they actually had flavor, and fish.

After that we headed back to the dorms and I napped and listened to people in hall right outside my room for a bit before we all met downtown at 4 and wandered around for food. The place Jay picked I wasn't really interested in so I passed and got some chicken nuggets at KFC later. We went back to street market we had found earlier (it has now become a home away from home) and bought boys' underwear that are actually suuuper comfortable and wonderful. We also found a DVD shop that has lots of American movies in English with Korean? subtitles but they're only 6 yuen each ($1) so I bought Source Code to test out and watched it that night with Sam and Mikelle and then Wolverine. It felt really nice to have the 3 of us cuddled up together. I super miss my red couch.

Wed/Thurs

To anyone who is wondering if I am still alive-- yes. I am. I'm forever behind in writing blogs and emailing but I think I have tomorrow morning off so I'll make an effort to catch up.

Wednesday 3/13:

Wednesday was the best morning I've had so far here in Weihai. I slept in a little and managed to get a shower in during a hot water period. I spent the morning preparing my lesson for the day and planning all of my lessons for the next week along with cleaning my room and washing/hanging up 2 loads of laundry. I even put on makeup! By the time we got to lunch I was feeling really good because I had managed to get ahead in all the things I needed done and my day was now stress-free.

After lunch we had an ILP training meeting during which Alicia finally gave us some sort of requirements for teaching. She just listed off how many lessons for each subject we're supposed to teach each week and how we need to format them in our lesson plans but I had just spent the morning finishing my lesson plans and barely felt like I was getting a grip on what I was already doing so suddenly all my good behavior for getting lessons done early went out the window. I can count the number of times I've almost cried since I got here on one hand and that was one of them. I actually went in my room and screamed into my pillow because I was so unbelievably frustrated. Later they told me that since I had already done lesson plans for the next week I could keep them the same and switch to the (once again) new curriculum the following week.

I know we did something fun that night because that was the reason I got my lesson plans done early but I was still mad about it for a few days so I stopped writing posts and now I can't remember.

Thursday 3/14:

Thursday we went and got noodles downtown again which is one of the best rewards here. It costs a grand total of $3 (USA) a person to take the bus downtown, eat dinner, and take a taxi home. When it is such a satisfying experience for that cheap, how can someone say no? After getting noodles we went to this night street market we stumbled upon and looked at a bunch of stands there. I bought a fake jade necklace I really like for 20 yuan which is about $3. We also bought a starfish that they cooked for us and showed us how to eat that Mark, Geoff, and I tried. Ya know that mushy green stuff in the arms? … yup that's what you eat and it's not so bad. I would probably eat it fairly often at home if we ate it there. And again.. its been so long since this happened which means I don't remember what else happened.

Summer Palace group pic

Back row: Sam (girl), Andrea, Ben, Crista, Cindy, Sam (boy), Mark, Geoff, Kristen, Jay

Middle row: Susan, Me, Rachelle, Sarah, Melanie, Maddie

Front row: Josh, Dellany, Alicia, Mikelle, Hannah

Imperial City group shot

We got everyone in the air on the first shot. Mostly :)

2 weeks!

As of this very hour I've been away from home for exactly 2 weeks now! It's incredible how much has happened since then. How much I've travelled. How much I've grown. How much I've learned about China's culture. How much money I've spent. How many times I've sharply yelled, "HEY!! BE QUIET!" 

But it has been good. Coming to China was in a lot of ways a split second decision but it is one of the best ones I've made in my life. It's incredible how being lost in the world has helped me find myself. I got a fresh start to be myself without the parts of my life back home to influence me. Here I am simply Miss Amanda. The woman who rolls out of bed 5 minutes before breakfast starts and likes wearing simple outfits. The person who has no problem being strict and yelling but who is also there to hold you through a rough moment. The one for uncontrollable laughter and serious pillow talk. And I love myself. I'm starting to believe that I am enough for myself. 

Yesterday (Monday) I spent the morning lounging around my room. Emailing, writing, reading conference talks, putting away laundry, tissue papering my windows... After lunch we had an in-service training meeting which basically consisted of all the primary teachers asking what they're supposed to do when their child kicks a hole in the wall or punches another child in the face... those questions made me feel a little bit better about my children. Then I taught 3 classes. My 4th graders are from hell. My 5th graders are from heaven. The problem is that the Chinese teacher doesn't usually sit in with the 4th grade class so they're insanely loud with just me. Another problem with teaching in China is that we have SO MANY BOYS. My girls are all angels. Some more angelic than others but compared to some of my unruly boys.. much better. After class was dinner and then Family Home Evening where we played Grunt Piggy, Grunt and then Signs. It was really fun and nice to laugh as a group. We have an incredible group. There are a few people who stand out but I'm one of the few people who is on good terms with one individual in particular. After FHE I killed time until it was an acceptable time of night for me to go to sleep (10pm) and then crashed. 

This morning I went to breakfast (which was practically pointless) and then took a shower using my flashlight as a light because half the bulbs are burnt out in our room. Then Melanie and I caught the bus to the JiaJiaYue in town and picked up a couple small things like Oreos, bananas, and salt. I (and everyone else in the group) are obsessed with Oreos here. They're less than $1 a box (10-ish to a box) and they have a bunch of flavors. I don't like Oreos back home but here I love the birthday cake flavored ones and I tried mango/orange today which are really good too. They also have plain, vanilla, green tea, blueberry/raspberry, coconut, and probably a couple others I can't remember. Bananas are for when I decide its not worth it to get out of bed in the morning for breakfast in the cafeteria. Salt is for anything and everything we eat. I never realized that I was taking salt and pepper shakers on the table for granted until I discovered there aren't any here. Oh- here's the typical (and by typical I mean always) breakfast they have in China- 1. rice porridge (which has a lot more water than it does rice.) Sometimes it will be a reddish/brown color (I don't know why... dirty water?) or they'll put some ground up corn in it too. I bought sugar to dump in it which helps but is still something I only eat if I'm desperate and up to the challenge. 2. boiled eggs. This is my manna each morning because they've only screwed this up for me once when they cooked them way too long. Protein. Calories. Flavor. Yum. 3. boiled rolls. We bought honey and today I also bought strawberry (supposedly) jam to put on them which makes them a million times better but to be completely honest, rice and boiled rolls make up 2/3 of the food I eat from the cafeteria and that's not because I'm being picky. That's just because that's what they always feed us. 4. sometimes cooked cabbage or another pickled topping. Cabbage is meh but not so bad so I'll eat it over half the time although it probably doesn't do much to fill me up.

When we got back from the JiaJiaYue I was starving so I made 2 packs of Chinese Ramen (which I couldn't finish so I gave the rest to Sam) and went through some of the clothes/shoes/random things the last ILP group left in the kitchen. I now own a bag from Forever 21, a new pair of flip-flops and tank top for the beach when it warms up here, and a nice pair of white Pumas which Luke cleaned with bleach in exchange for a back rub. Oh and tons more hand sanitizer. I brought a bunch with me which was completely unnecessary because there's tons here. Wish I would have known that so I could have packed something else. 

Classes went pretty well again (other than 4th grade) and I played games with my 5th graders all day. Yesterday we went over vocabulary words from last week and then played a spelling game. Today I did a game asking them questions using the words for the first half and then we played hangman for the second half. Fun and educational. My 5th graders actually know the words really well now and can tell me what they mean, how to spell them, and can answer questions about them. Tomorrow I plan on working on how to use them in a sentence. 4th grade was rough again. I tried a new discipline method which didn't work. One boy, Luke, wouldn't stop talking so I tried to have him move seats but he refused to sit next to the two "crazy, stupid" kids so he got to sit on a chair at the front of the class facing the wall instead. While I was trying to teach he wrote something in Chinese on his paper and then turned around and was showing it to the class without me knowing so I took his paper away. Then he wrote it on his hand and was showing it to the class so I took his pen away. Then he just turned around and kept talking in Chinese. Melanie and I both agree on physical punishment as the obvious solution and I'm pretty sure that's actually okay here. Luke (the teacher) is going to sit in on my class for a little bit tomorrow to see if he can help fix the problem.

Apparently Luke told one of the Chinese teachers how disgusting lunch was so when we walked in to dinner we discovered that they had made us chicken nuggets. CHICKEN NUGGETS!!! Too bad we were wrong. They were fish sticks but made of the stench-i-est fish smell I have ever encountered and 2 bites in I abandoned that Fear Factor round. The rest of dinner was really good though so I felt better about it. They made this vegetable mix that we've had twice now and I love it. It's corn, carrots, onions, and chicken. DELICIOUS and healthy!

After dinner half the group took off to go to the night market which I would love to go to but it's raining outside and really really cold so I'm hiding in my room under a few blankets with my back against the heater instead. 

Whelp.. there's my update for the last couple days. I'm alive and well. The food still often tastes like China (dry and tasteless). Everywhere still smells like China (outhouse/port-a-potty). and I'm still in China and happy to be here.

Amanda.

Jay's dinner pic

When we spent Saturday with Chinese families I got an all you can eat buffet. Here's what Jay ate and other people in our group tried once she got back. Yum......

Asian pic

When I walked up to the edge of the water this group of Chinese froze and stared at me. So I pulled an Asian move and took a picture of them with me without them noticing.

lanterns pic

None of the trees have leaves right now but for Chinese New Years they hung red lanterns in lots of them and I think it's super beautiful.

tunnel of love pic

There's a covered walkway in the Linhai park completely covered in flowers. The character you can see in the picture means marriage or double happiness.

bathroom pic

So far this bathroom has been the worst I've encountered. But ya know.. when ya gotta go.. ya gotta go.

Huan... pic

Melanie, Mars, Leo, and I at the watch tower

cement pic

Who needs cones to block off wet cement in the middle of the street when you can just use rocks?

beach pic

The beach in Weihai by our school. Kinda sorta a fairy tale.

yogurt pic

We had a yogurt party in my room. It was DELICIOUS!

Smog pic

Once upon a time it was a sunny day in China. And that, dear friends, is all smog. So much I can look straight at the sun without it hurting my eyes.

Great Wall pic

There are locks all over the Great Wall where people have locked up their love for someone and thrown away the key symbolizing everlasting romance.

Mulan pic

Let's get down to business to defeat the Huns! ~at the Imperial Palace in the Forbidden City

Chinglish 5

Mmmmm it sure tasted good!

Chinglish 4

There's a picture so that's all you really need to understand what it says, right?

Chinglish 3

This is the package for the dried pineapple I bought. It wasn't fragrant but it did taste good.

Chinglish 2

A sign over a toilet in the bathroom. They had a toilet and toilet paper. That's how you know you're peeing like royalty.

Apparently in the boys' bathroom it said "bamf" instead of "bumf" which makes the sign significantly better.

Chinglish 1

Bejing hotel pic

This picture is of our hotel room in Beijing. Let's just say that for the 3 nights we stayed there it cost 1/4 of the price for the 1 night we stayed in Seoul. It reminded me a lot of the place I stay at in St. Louis this past summer but this time it didn't even phase me because I had a roommate and other people with me. I had to fix the toilet almost every time we flushed it so I've been really grateful for my experience and knowledge of repairing things while I've been here. So far I've worked some charm with the toilet (yeah that sounded a little awkward didn't it?), the door to our room, the shower, and sewed up a hole in my roommate's shoe after she said, "I'm about to resort to one of the most ghetto things I've done in my life and tape my shoe." But it's been good and I feel good having the skill to prepare me for these little problems.

Beijing hotel pic

This picture is of our hotel room in Beijing. Let's just say that for the 3 nights we stayed there it cost 1/4 of the price for the 1 night we stayed in Seoul. It reminded me a lot of the place I stay at in St. Louis this past summer but this time it didn't even phase me because I had a roommate and other people with me. I had to fix the toilet almost every time we flushed it so I've been really grateful for my experience and knowledge of repairing things while I've been here. So far I've worked some charm with the toilet (yeah that sounded a little awkward didn't it?), the door to our room, the shower, and sewed up a hole in my roommate's shoe after she said, "I'm about to resort to one of the most ghetto things I've done in my life and tape my shoe." But it's been good and I feel good having the skill to prepare me for these little problems.

Melanie pic

This picture is with my roommate Melanie. She'll be 22 in a week and has one semester left at BYU for her undergrad degree in bio physics and is then going to med school. She's awesome. We also got assigned to the same age group so we live together, eat together, and teach at the same times. Kinda convenient to have a scheduled in best friend here. 

squatter

Sending pictures from China really sucks so I'm going to make a twentieth attempt to send something. This picture is of my first squatter!! If I hadn't really had to pee I wouldn't have even gone in the bathroom because I choked on the smell when I walked in. Squatters themselves though-- I kinda love. At least in public bathrooms because then you only have to stand in pee on the floor instead of trying to avoid sitting in it. The weird thing though is that lots of Chinese women don't shut the door when they use the squatters so when I walked into bathroom that first time I got quite the surprise.

Catching up

I haven't felt much like writing the last couple days so this is me playing a little bit of catch-up. 

Thursday was our second day of teaching and things got slightly better because I knew half the kids' names and only had to teach 3 classes, not 4. The 4th graders were still unbelievably loud and out of control and the 5th graders still sped through the lesson much faster than I expected so even I was bored by the end. Same basic story for Friday classes as Thursday except that I only had to teach 2 thank goodness. Primary teachers teach in the morning but the 4 of us teaching elementary are scheduled from 1:30-5pm which means our kids are already tired of sitting in class all day. Friday we teach in the morning but it is still their last classes for the day so they're not any less crazy. 

In class I've been reading a story with my kids called Me on the Map so we've been going over vocabulary for rooms/things in your house and tomorrow (Monday) we'll move to town terms and then world terms on Tuesday. After that.. I have no idea what I want to do with them. We had to have lesson plans turned in for the week by last Friday so I just wrote some crap down but I'm sure even my head teachers could easily see that I have nothing really planned. 

I have at least one kid in my classes (19 4th graders, 23 5th graders) who has A.D.D. or is autistic or has some other problem. I'm really not sure but he's constantly drawing something (he's really good) or picking up his desk or simply walking around while I'm teaching and I'm just not quite sure how to handle that when I have 18 other children to worry about. It's not that he's a bad kid at all, he's actually one of the ones I like better, but still a handful for anyone, especially a teacher who isn't a teacher and has no idea what she is doing. 

Thursday morning I finally got off this campus and headed into town to pick up a few things from the JiaJiaYue (Chinese Walmart). I bought a pillow case (now I have a real pillow I can use!!), a set of small shelves that hang from my closet rod (aka my closet is finally clean), a toothbrush holder (I didn't know how many more times I could handle dropping my toothbrush on the floor here and then put it back in my mouth),  Pocky sticky, Chinese Ramen, and fresh fruit!! They don't serve any fruit at the cafeteria. Jk. On Friday afternoons they give you fruit as a special treat so I got an orange. After spending less than $20 I now feel like a queen in comparison to the starving beggar I resembled before. Jay bought this yogurt that you drink with a straw and its really good so I bought some of my own and am trying to fix my calcium deficiency.

Either Thursday or Friday I ate all the food on my tray for one of the meals. That's never happened before because I simply could not make myself eat it even though I was still hungry. It even had tofu (which I HATE and they serve it a lot here) on it but they fried it so it didn't resemble Jello quite as much and I could almost convince myself it was chicken. Oh!! another thing we bought at the store was honey and sugar. Melanie came up with the phrase "tastes like China" to describe our food because the majority of our diet is dry with no flavor. Hence, honey for the boiled rolls we get with half our meals and sugar for the "porridge" they serve with breakfast that I still only managed about 10 spoonfuls of the other day even though I loaded it up on sugar. 

Friday Melanie and Sam and I were going to head to this noodle place downtown for lunch since we finished teaching early but one of the Chinese teachers, Julianna, wanted us to come observe her class and give her feedback so that meant we had to attend at 1 pm and didn't get out of the principal's office until about 2:30. The lesson was good but I just didn't want to be at school anymore. The principal's name is Ella and she reminds me of Julie Andrews even though she is definitely Chinese. She is really beautiful and very refined and poised with a genuinely cheery personality. After we got done with that the 3 of us went to the beach which is about a 20-minute walk from the school and it is beautiful! There are a lot of sea stars and shells and we learned how to find and dig for clams. We spent a couple hours there supposedly planning our lessons for this upcoming week. Which explains why I don't have anything planned past Tuesday. When we got back we grabbed dinner at the cafeteria and then spent the night playing Texas Holdem poker using the tokens the give the kids when they answer a question right. I wiped everyone out the first hand but I'll admit it was more luck than skill because I had 2 flushes and then a straight. Mark won the second game but (and I told him that I'd post this) he only mentions himself winning in his journal, not me. I reminded him that lies of omission are a sin. 

Saturday morning we all signed up to spend the day with local Chinese families. I ended up paired with Melanie so Mars and her mom came and picked us up at 8:30am. We drove to a really ghetto building and watched the end of a voice lesson for another one of my 5th graders, Leo. After that we went to this place called Huancuilou (where Leo's mom also joined us) which is a watch tower on the edge of Weihai that they rebuilt for the Olympics I guess. The building itself was really pretty and had a bunch of art pieces inside. We ended up passing it later that night and it looked really cool all lit up too. After that we went to lunch at this place called My Home Steak which is an all you can eat buffet that has Chinese, American, Taiwanese, and Thai food. YUM. I found the best Chinglish sign so far and still haven't figured out what they meant by it but I ate these cooked greens called, "Grilled rape with snake butter." Ya.. I dunno. After Melanie and I had both eaten 3 plates of food and ice cream, they brought out plates with steak, chicken, and shrimp on them. I hadn't eaten good meat since I got here so I wished I had known sooner that they were ordering special food for us but I ate what I could without throwing up because I was so full. It felt so good to have a full stomach for the first time since I got to China. After lunch we went to Mars's piano lesson during which I had to pee something fierce and the bathroom down the hall had squatters but no stalls and they were really dirty. I compromised by locking the door to the entire bathroom and then braving the rest. After the piano lesson they took us to a park called Linhai Park and it's super beautiful, even in the winter when everything is dead. It's a super romantic area with a long tunnel of flowers that spell the word love and a heart and the Chinese sign for marriage or double happiness. There were also lots of ponds and a church where you could get married. On the edge of the park was the beach so we played there for a while and then told them to take us home because we were exhausted and needed to do laundry. When we got back we started the first of several loads of laundry and then went into town to get those amazing noodles. For $3 I took a bus for 45 minutes into town, bought a huge plate of noodles with vegetables and beef, and then took a taxi home. I call that a successful evening. We played Catch Phrase in the common room for a while before I got tired of people and went to bed. 

Today, Sunday, I slept in because I could hear the cold wind blowing outside and didn't have the courage to make the trek to breakfast. Turned out it was 28 degrees but all the wind blew the intense smog out of the area so you could actually see a really pretty view from the window and we could finally see the ocean from our hallway. Church started at 10am so 21 of us put on church clothes and sat in the common room listening to sacrament meeting on a phone call for an hour (pausing for 2 of the guys in the group to pass the sacrament) and then listened as they did attendance for the 29 different cities in China listening in. How incredible is that?! 29 groups of people in different cities all over one of the biggest countries in the world were able to have sacrament meeting together via a phone call. After attendance was a Sunday School lesson on the organization of the church (sacrament meeting was on personal revelation) but we bailed out on the end of the lesson because we were going to miss lunch and to be honest we were falling asleep. The common room doesn't have any heaters so it gets really really cold in there, especially when it is 28 degrees outside. We all started out in church clothes and ended wrapped up from head to toe in the comforters off of our beds.

After lunch I busted out my supply of hot chocolate and kettle corm and we watched Ice Age together and then went to the beach where I froze to a point beyond anything I ever remember before. Then we came back and got dinner and watched Anastasia. It was a really nice day to just relax and not have to worry about a million things. 

So that's pretty much it. My roommate is allergic to something in our room (my theory is the blankets that have probably never been washed) so she's had a rough last couple of nights with continuous allergy attacks. The birds here are black with white and they look like mockingjays which I think is totally awesome. I weighed myself on the scale Geoff brought here and it said I'm 10 pounds heavier than when I left the U.S. which I think is a load of bull because I feel like I've done nothing but starve myself and climb 1000 stairs every day.

Random fact-- there are 230 stairs from the street to my room so when I say 1000 stairs every day I'm really not exaggerating at all. Probably more some days. 

I'm exhausted so I'm going to sleep. I started taping tissue paper over our windows today so we can have a pretend stained glass window. I'm super excited to finish. 

Anyways, goodnight USA. Y'all should be waking up about now so enjoy Sunday again for me. I'm almost done with it.

Amanda.