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.