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 4th 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 4th 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 4th 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 4th 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 4th grade class because Talon had taught it that morning (woooooohoooo!!). I barely made it to 5th 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 2nd 5th grade class but I decided to tough it out and spent my hour break (because I only have to teach 1 4th 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 3rd 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.
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