Back to Weihai

Well I spent an hour this morning trying to get pictures to post but only succeeded (hopefully) with the first of a few emails full of photos at which point I once again got PO-ed at the internet here and tried to take a nap at 9am. Didn't work especially when my roommate started talking to her family on Skype. 

This past week has been crazy with all of the traveling and packing and unpacking and vacation and new food etc. and I apologize for only writing about the activities that I've been doing instead of giving you the good below the surface schedule stuff. The plan for this email/post is to update you really quick about what's been going on the past couple days and then get to the details.

Monday we left the hotel in Beijing at 6:30am (there's just no sleeping in here) and spent the entire day on the bus driving back to Weihai. Our party in the back of the bus got shushed again but this time it was by the head teacher so I was only half as ticked off. BTW it was Rochelle and Crista who shushed us on the way there. *dirty glare* After we got shushed the group retreated to taking short naps and listening to music which is when I caught up on all the posts from when we were in Beijing. Later I started an epic game of Scum that ended up lasting over 3 hours. The game is already fun but gets better when you're crawling over each other trying to rotate seats on a moving charter bus in China. We got home way faster than we got there (less traffic and accidents I guess?) and ate our first dinner at the school. It was actually really really similar to what we'd already been eating at the ghetto restaurants in Beijing except that you only had 1/10 the selection and it tasted worse. That night Melanie and I just sat in our room with the door shut and enjoyed the quiet and checked our emails and then went to bed. Everyone asked us the next day where we were all night and it makes me feel a tiny bit anti-social but for heaven sakes I had just spent 5 days straight with this people for pretty much every minute of the day. I deserved a night of email dang it! 

Yesterday (Tuesday) we got up to eat breakfast at 7am and discovered it was exactly the same as the stuff we'd been eating in Beijing-- boiled rolls, rice porridge, boiled egg, and random nasty stir fry looking topping. I was doing really well with eating it in Beijing because I thought it was temporary but now that I've discovered it's going to be the same thing I eat every morning for 4 months I've lost a lot of the strength to put it in my mouth and swallow. When I packed my suitcase for CHina I put in my kettle corn seasoning and let me tell you it helped me choke down that roll this morning. I now count it as one of the top 5 best things I brought with me. The other 4 are probably my laptop, camera, vitamins, and ground pad. I'm getting zero calcium other than the 45% in my daily vitamins. I just looked on the internet and apparently tofu is high in calcium and they give us plenty of that but.. we'll get to that later. We'll have to get some almonds in town or something. We went to check sizes for uniforms (apparently we'll wear them for special occasions) which are a polo and khaki elastic mom pants and I asked for a different shirt size than pants and our Chinese ILP helper looked at me like I was crazy. They're huge into the one-size fits all here and apparently that means that your boobs and butt are supposed to be in proportion to each other. oops. Afterwards we were supposed to clean classrooms but the doors were locked and we didn't have a key so they rescheduled that for later. 

At that point we were put into our teaching groups. Other than Luke who has taught in China before (he'll be teaching 6th & 7th grade), I'm teaching the oldest kids that ILP works with. I have a 4th grade class and 5th grade class. Talon teaches the other 4th and 5th grade classes. Melanie and Sam are also in our Elementary group and they're teaching 3rd grade. Apparently ILP has never taught Elementary level here before so yesterday was rough trying to figure out which books ILP had brought were the right level and what the Chinese teachers would let us teach and none of us had actually been trained... blah blah blah. But I think I've got it figured out. I at least have lesson plans until the end of the week so.. *fingers crossed*

I wasted time getting frustrated over that all day and then last night Melanie and I decided to be social so we went and hung out with Sam in the common room which was probably 20 degrees colder than our room and I tested out my theory about how everyone has a story behind why the came to China and it usually goes along the lines of "there was a girl/boy and I wanted to get away with a new start". So far I'm 5/5 on being correct. Good thing we can't date here or it would be rebound city.

This morning we woke up for breakfast even though we don't have to teach until 1:30pm which was really a waste because all I ate was the egg and my rolls covered in kettle corn seasoning. I wasted a few hours basically just laying in bed which felt really nice and then spent a good 20 minutes discovering my eyebrows again. I actually dressed up today and look pretty darn good. I'm wearing my tacky orange button-up shirt/vest combo with a navy blue skirt and brown belt and brown tights and my brown plaid boots. WITH *drum roll* my Mockingjay pocket watch necklace I bought in the market in Beijing for $5 that is AWESOME! I've been looking for one I liked for a while and you just can't pass one up with a mockingjay on it. 

Ok so you're all caught up I believe. It's now 1:00pm on Wednesday and I need to get off my bed and head to class. But really quick before I go here's a few random thoughts/details I thought I'd throw in:

I've already kinda gone over the food here but let's just say that half of it my body really really hates eating and the other half has no flavor and it straight carbs (rolls, rice). Then there's that 5% (ya I know that doesn't all add up to 100%) that actually tastes really good. And I love it. I'm trying really hard to at least taste everything but I've given in to dipping into my American stash already. It's just not my favorite thing in the world when I have to force back gag reflexes multiple times while I'm eating a meal. Melanie said a phrase yesterday that I thought described the situation really well:

"In American we live to eat. Here we eat to live."

There's slim to no sanitation here. No TP in the bathrooms. No soap. No washing of our dishes. (Seriously, Melanie and I have started using a bar of soap to wash our trays and then hide them to use later). It's.. definitely different. 

There is no paint on the walls. It's all unfinished plaster so if you lean against the wall your shirt/jacket turns white.

There were a few things but I totes need to go guy! Like OMG!!!! 

Can't wait until I can dress like Hot Topic again. 

All my love.

Amanda.