4/13-4/16

Saturday 4/13:
Saturday we finally got to go to the zoo!!! We were supposed to go a
couple weeks after we arrived in China but Kelly postponed it because
it was so cold and was a little bit cheaper to go later. It was a 1.5
hour drive away so we took a small tour bus that had Asian-sized leg
room AKA I didn't fit. I half-slept most of the way there so Mikelle
got a picture to add to the sleeping album Mark's putting together.
The zoo was huge and by huge I mean the biggest outdoor zoo in Asia.
It was butt to butt almost the entire time we were there but hey,
where does that not happen here? We walked up this long ramp to get to
the beginning of the animals and there was a big mountain face they'd
put outlines of animals on that would have been awesome to go
rock-climbing on. The first exhibit had ligers. LIGERS! When I first
looked at them that was the word that came to mind and looking at the
sign that's exactly what they were. The first mile or so of walking
were lions and tigers and other big cats and wolves. After that we
moved on to tons of monkeys that I had brought shrimp chips and
bananas to feed them. The shrimp chips were a gift from Mars when we
did a home visit with her and neither Melanie nor I were interested in
eating them so we'd been saving them for this occasion.
My favorite part of the zoo was towards the end. You reach this area
where they have a bunch of animals out that you can take pictures with
next to them. I've never been super interested in animal rights but
this experience triggered a sensitive spot because they had a bear
standing up with his arms chained eagle-spread to the fence and a
white tiger with its head chained down to the table that they'd hit to
get it to roar for you. NOT COOL. The elephant seemed happy because
they just fed it hay the entire time so Mikelle and I got our picture
with it although they only printed us one copy the first time so we
had to go back and take it again to get the second one we paid for.
Here's the cool part that was my favorite-- we found the babies. We'd
seen a few babies here and there like a baby monkey wrapped up in the
mama's arms but later we found the jackpot. It was after we saw the
panda taking a squat in it's swimming pool and there were about 8
random cages and looking inside we found baby bears, tigers, a
panther, and some other cat cub. They're super friendly and you can
put your fingers through the cage and pet them so we now have videos
of us chillin' with baby tigers. We also passed the elephants whose
area is close enough to the walkway that they can reach you with their
trunks so we each took turns feeding one the last of our bananas.
AWESOME.
The last part of the zoo was all aquarium and it was good but in a
different way than you'd normally see at a zoo. The thing about Weihai
is that no matter where you are you can get to the coast in about 10
minutes of driving. The zoo was on the coast so most of their sea
animals were actually in the sea. They had built these enclosures that
allow the water to flow in and out but not let the animals out. There
was also a room inside with a bunch of big sea turtles that you could
touch and of course, I did. One thing I've learned about China-- they
really don't have many rules. It's more that you live by the rule of
don't do anything stupid or you'll be seriously injured or die.
Literally. And so far.. it's worked pretty well. There's no need to
have a sign that says not to touch the turtles or stick your hands in
a baby tiger's cage.. it's just understood that if you do and they
bite your finger off it's your own fault. I kinda like it.
On the way back home I sat next to Mikelle on the bus and we talked to
Kelly for a while. I'm pretty sure I forgot to write about this but I
found a wedding dress I'm going to buy while I'm here. Chinese people
have INCREDIBLY good taste when it comes to wedding things and I found
a dress I really like at Big World. The 3rd floor there is all wedding
dresses and tuxedos and other red dresses I'm pretty sure they wear at
weddings here. I asked the lady at the shop how much the one I'm in
love with costs and she said 800 yuan which is only $130. On the bus I
asked Kelly about it and she made a scolding sound and said the last
dress she bought there for another teacher was 200 yuan ($30). I
showed her the picture and she commented that mine was nicer and said
to start at 300 and go to 400. $60 for a dream wedding dress that's
custom fit, can you imagine?
Back at the dorms I was itching to get back outside and go to the
beach but the problem here is that (yay.....) you can't go anywhere
alone. Sam wanted to go to the beach too but if it's someone of the
opposite sex you have to have 3 so whoop-de-do I was stuck on campus.
Instead of flying a kite on the beach like we wanted, Sam suggested we
just go up on the roof and fly it so that's what we did and it was
really enjoyable to just spend some time chilling outside and not be a
frozen popsicle.
That night Melanie was talking to a guy on Skype so I went in Sam and
(what is now) Luke's room to hang out with them and we watched a movie
called Storm Trooper which is basically the same as every other stupid
random disaster movie you've ever seen. They have their beds pushed
together and I ended up falling asleep between the two of them until
Luke woke me up when it ended and I made the trek back down the hall
to my own bed.

Sunday 4/14:
Sunday morning Melanie had downloaded Sunday morning's conference
which we planned to watch in our room because we didn't want to end up
in a big group of people talking through it. I went to tell Sam that
we were and ended up watching the end of Peter Pan until Rochelle came
in to inform them that the big group was watching conference in the
common room. I decided to give that group a shot and there ended up
being about 8 of us watching conference together. We stopped for lunch
and then watched the Sunday afternoon session when we got back. I
ended up falling asleep on Sam's shoulder by the end but I loved the
talk by L. Whitney Clayton (surprise, surprise) and have already
listened to it again since then.
After conference ended I took a 3-hour nap in my room which was really
nice other than being interrupted by ILP people who thought it was a
good idea to jump rope on the roof above my room. We're on the top
floor of the building so it's pretty freakin' loud.
When I finally got out of bed I went to see what everyone was up to
and everyone I was willing to spend time with other than Melanie were
busy. Mikelle had been hiding in her room from people all day and was
showering. Jay was watching Walking Dead. Sam was watching Walking
Dead. Geoff was watching Walking Dead. We have 2 groups of tv-watchers
here: The Walking Dead group and Big Bang Theory. After the first
night of Walking Dead Sam and I both decided that we didn't like the
show so I was upset when he spent the entire night watching it and
cuddling with Kristen.
Later I went in Luke's room to talk to him and Sam came in while we
were talking and I called him out on being a cuddle whore because,
hey.. that's just what I do. I really don't have any business saying
anything because we're in China and no one is supposed to be exclusive
anyways but how often have you seen me hold back something I really
wanted to say? We watched She's the Man until around midnight when we
decided to pause it until morning.

Monday 4/15:
By the next morning (Monday) I felt really bad for what I said and
went in Sam's room to wake him up and apologize. He's always always
awake before me but sometimes I pretend that me visiting his room in
the morning marks the beginning of the day. We laid there and chat
until Luke got back from teaching his morning class and then finished
watching She's the Man. I've probably seen that movie 20 times but
Luke had never seen it so it was fun to watch it with a newbie.
That night I was super stressed out and kinda frustrated at the world
so I spent almost 2 hours in my room cleaning, mostly just the floors.
When we got here our room was pretty clean for China's standards but I
finally took the initiative to move our beds and sweep up the massive
amounts of dust bunnies that have accumulated for who knows how long.

Tuesday 4/16:
Monday morning I woke up to Mikelle knocking on our door asking if one
of us could sub for Sarah because she had diarrhea. The crappy thing
about being in elementary is that if one of the 15 primary teachers
get sick and need a sub, there's only 4 of us to choose from because
the head teachers are "too busy" to sub. I said I'd do it and I threw
together a lesson really fast that I had learned from doing training
back in January. It was horrible. In primary you start with 1st
graders and have a 10-minute opening and then 3 rotations of ~8 kids
for 25 minutes each. Then there's a break and you do the same thing
over with 2nd grade. The classroom Sarah teaches in she has to share
with their Chinese teacher so the kids kept getting up and running
around the classroom doing different things. One boy, Danny, was the
breaking point for me. Within the first few minutes of class he was
punching the girl next to him and had made her cry so I sat in between
them at which point he made the boy sitting on the other side of him
start crying. He wouldn't listen to me so I had him stand facing the
wall like the Chinese teachers do with their kids and he didn't like
that either so he started hitting me and then tried to run out of the
classroom. I wouldn't let him out the front door of the class so he
went out the back one. We were in the class at the end of the hall so
I stood in the hallway so he couldn't pass me at which point he tried
to climb out the window so I gave up and just went back in the
classroom. Alicia (one of the head teachers) brought him back about 15
minutes later without even saying anything to me. Once the 1st grade
rotations were done I went to find the head teachers and basically
told them, "screw you." Definitely not the nicest of meanings I could
get across but I was mad. I told them that either they could teach the
rest of Sarah's class or I could go get Sarah and she could come teach
but I was done being the one teaching. Why was I mad? Because they had
just sent home Talon so I had way more school work that I needed to
do, no one had trained me properly to teach these kids, I had 4 more
hours of teaching I had to do that afternoon.. and why the hell
couldn't the head teachers sub? The told me they couldn't sub because
they had to finish doing teacher evaluations that morning which is a
load of crap because they have 5 mornings a week they could do that.
Anyways, I headed back to the dorms and told Sarah that I was done
teaching and then went in my room and exploded to Melanie. I headed to
the common room to listen to conference in hopes that it would calm me
down which it did a little bit. Sam and Luke were going down the
street to run a couple errands so I went with them as a distraction.
We stopped at the bank and then got a sandwich at a ghetto Chinese
chicken shop and then grabbed some groceries at the JiaJiaYue before
we headed back to the school for lunch.
I was worried that the head teachers would pull me aside at lunch to
talk to me about walking out on teaching but nothing ever happened.
I've figured that out here.. I can do pretty much whatever I want and
as long as I don't parade it around I get away with it because the
head teachers know better than to mess with me. It's one of the few
things here that keeps me from feeling like I've lost most of my
agency.
Geoff could tell that I was upset at lunch so he tried to get out of
me what happened and wouldn't leave me alone until I had to physically
hit him to get the point across that I wanted him out of my room. Sam
came in a little bit later and apologized for being mad at me when we
got back to school which I hadn't really noticed because sometimes Sam
will just take off randomly and I was super caught up in my own
miserable world. I spent a good half-hour moping in my bed and then
decided to pull myself together and quit with the drama.
As soon as I did that my day was immensely better. My classes were
awesome and I got to take a hot shower that night for the second time
since I've been here.
We finished off the night with watching Big Bang Theory which Sam came
in a sat by me during but didn't cuddle like usual and then left to
"go write in his journal" which, when I went to bed, actually ended up
being him and Kristen cuddling reading scriptures. Needless to say, I
was again hurt and frustrated with Sam. That's the thing about all
living in the same hallway.. very few things are private and sometimes
I really wish I didn't witness as much as I do.