4/2 - 4/12

Tuesday 4/2:

Since I'm a week behind in journaling all I have to say is that on Tuesday we were supposed to be packing for our vacation the next day and writing lesson plans for when we got back but did I do either of those things? Heck no! We discovered that we can watch full-length Once Upon A Time episodes on youku.com and were 3-4 episodes behind at that point so we stayed up until almost midnight mostly catching up. I loved how intense and good they were and it was a refreshing taste from home. Half-way through the episode Melanie voiced my unformed thought on why the show seemed different-- it had all white people in it. I've seen 2 white people other than my group the entire time I've been in Weihai. When we go to the bigger tourist spots out of the city we'll see a handful here and there but we've discovered our city is more of a Chinese tourist spot than an international one.

Wednesday 4/3:

Wednesday we got our classes switched to the morning so we could leave earlier to go on vacation (wish we could do that EVERY day!!) but for some reason they only had me teach 3 classes instead of 4 which I was totally okay with. I quickly packed between classes and after lunch we got in 2 vans that Kelly (our Chinese ILP person) coordinated for us and drove an hour to Yantai to the train station there. On the drive Sarah had the front window rolled down for some fresh air and we hit a wave of China smell so she quickly rolled it up but we were all still choking in the van so the Chinese driver grabbed an aerosol bottle of lemon scented spray and turned around and sprayed up right at us. I started cracking up laughing but it really did smell good. We hung out at the train station for about an hour and a half and then boarded our hard sleeper train car #14 and I was on bed 8, bottom bunk. We were a little worried about what to expect from the train but I actually really liked it. Each compartment has 2 stacks of beds, 3 bunks each so if you're on top you're about 8 feet above the ground. We had 11 people in our group on this trip so we had 2 areas to ourselves plus one random Chinese man. About half an hour into the 21 hour ride (yeah, there's a reason we upgraded to a sleeper train) a Chinese man came and sat on my bed with me because he thought it was his. Turned out he was one car over but his name is Lú Bô (that's supposed to be an upward facing v but I can't find it on the special characters page) and he stayed and talked to us for a while. Most of the people we met on the train know a little bit of English and some of the people in our group know a little bit of Chinese so we can make it work. There was also a young couple in the compartment next to us that spoke English really well named Mars and Dandan and they're from Xi'an which is where we'll spend the first part of our next vacation in 3 weeks so I think we're going to be meeting back up with them there.

A little bit more about the train-- you can only sit up on the bottom bunks but they have 2 seats for each compartment in the aisle you can use too. The "hard" beds are actually softer than our beds at the school so we're wondering how nice the soft sleeper train must be. The train provides hot water for you so you can make tea or Ramen or, in my case, instant mashed potatoes!! That's right, I finally broke out some of my American food. It tasted really good but now that I'm used to the food here it's not that big of a deal to have a stash of American food so I kinda wish I would have eaten some of it those first 2 weeks in China that I was starving. The bathrooms on the train are squatters (of course) which are always an adventure on a moving vehicle. They empty out onto the track so sometimes they're nice enough to flush but other times you're just peeing straight out on the ground. It's kinda nice though because then they don't smell as bad and with 100 people all sharing the same bathroom the usual China port-a-potty smell wouldn't take too long to form. They do close the bathrooms when you get close to the stations they stop at though so you don't stink up the platforms.

Later in the evening Mark met a guy named Jack who learned a majority of his English from watching Big Bang Theory and The Walking Dead. He was super funny and didn't know if some things were appropriate to say so he would whisper them. For example: "Obama... he is very bad man... *whispers* because he black?" or another time when somehow being gay was brought up and Dellany asked him if he liked boys and he said, "I IS NOT GAY!!!" and then pointed to one of the guys in our group and said, "I like you the way Sheldon likes Leonard." I think I might have to use that line forever more because I'm a little bit in love with it.

Lights in the train are supposed to go off at 10pm but they shut them off about 20 minutes early which I don't think anyone really minded. I slept okay on the train but the train jolts when they switch tracks which kept waking me up so it was a meh night of sleep.

Thursday 4/4:

I woke up to Sam getting out of bed which was probably the best way for me to wake up seeing as how I'm kinda grumpy first thing in the morning but I seem to do a lot better if it's him waking me up. I laid in bed for a little while and started reading an article out of the Ensign but then everyone else woke up and that wonderful, beautiful peace became a lively commotion. We were supposed to get off the train at 10am and head straight to the hotel but the train got in a little bit late.

When we got to Luo Yang it turned out that no one had written down where this hotel was or what the phone number was so we had a crowd of about 20 Chinese people surrounding us all trying to figure out where it was. A few of us went into a building that had an internet sign to try and look it up so while Mark was on the computer Geoff, Sam, and I started a game of pool. I don't know what Mark looked up but it didn't seem to help us ever find the hotel. It finally reached the point where 3 taxi drivers told us they could take us there for 100 yuan per car which is really pricey seeing as how it only costs us 20 for the 25 minute ride back to our school from town in Weihai but they said the hotel was far away so we went for it. Half an hour later after our taxi asked several random people where the hotel was at while he was driving they finally pulled over to the side of the road in the middle of a random hilly road and pulled out a map to discover that the hotel the group had booked online wasn't anywhere near to being in town and no taxi would take us there and there were no buses that went out that far.

The Longmen Grottoes that we had planned on going to were right down the hill so we decided to go there while we figured out where we were going to sleep since we were practically forced to walk away from the hotel rooms we had already paid for because when booking the group failed take the distance from the city seriously. The problem was that there is a huge peony flower festival in Luo Yang every year and we happened to be there that weekend so everything was already booked. It was super frustrating because half the group didn't really see a problem with not knowing where we were sleeping yet that night and wanted to keep partying and find a room later that night and the other half of us were seriously concerned that unless we took immediate action there was a possibility some of us were going to be stuck on the streets that night. I was part of the stressed out group because I've been in that situation before and am aware of how much more difficult things were about to get with no phones, internet, and a language barrier. Melanie remembered that one of the Relief Society ladies in our China branch that emails us each week lives in Luo Yang so we used emergency minutes on Melanie's phone to call the branch president to get her number and she was super helpful in creating a list of hostels and hotels that still had space open. After an awkward argument between the opposing parties we ended up spending 2 hours touring the Longmen Grottoes before we started our search for a place to stay. It was an interesting place.. apparently there were over 3000 Buddhas carved into the rocks but a fair amount of them were faceless because the Muslims came through during one of the holy wars and destroyed them. They ranged from 1'' tall to 100 feet tall which was pretty incredible. I had a major blonde moment when I connected that Buddha was part of Buddhaism but everyone got a good laugh out of it. It was a beautiful area and I enjoyed just walking around even though using the term "walking" is kinda exaggerating because there were so many people there it was more like shuffling. Chinese people don't have many personal boundaries so they'll just cut you in line and shove you around wherever they want you. It gets awkward though when other tourists are there because you just can't shove an old American lady so I've been taught a lot of patience when it comes to travelling.

When we left we got ripped off on taxis again and somehow all managed to get to the hostel although my taxi drove past the hostel but luckily I saw it and made him turn around. I swear we were protected by God's angels on this trip because when we walked in expecting to hear that all the rooms had been booked we discovered that a 2-person private room had just opened up 10 minutes before, there was 1 bed open in a dorm room, and they had just bought tents for people to sleep on the roof in. I couldn't believe we found a place for all 11 of us on the first try. AND.. those options were available for both nights we were in Luo Yang.

When we checked into the hostel I decided to take a quick shower because I'd been on a train all night and then stressed out all day and had never cleaned myself up because I thought we'd be at our hotel by 11 that morning where I could shower. There was a shower in the private room but I used one of the community ones downstairs and it was one of the best moments I've had here in China. The water was hot. HOT. And there was water pressure! Other than the hostel I've had one hot shower since I got here and hot showers are kinda a big deal for me so I've really missed them. After my shower we went out to dinner and ended up splitting into two groups. Melanie, Mikelle, Geoff, Sam and I went to this place that had tortillas. TORTILLAS!!! Everything was in Chinese but once again we were blessed and there was a lady there eating dinner who knew English so she helped us order. We bought tortillas and a few different meats with vegetables and they taught us how to roll Chinese taquitos with chopsticks and it just might have been the best meal I've had in China. Super delicious and even though it was expensive (an entire $4!) it was totally worth it. There was also a kid there who had his head shaved except for a star on the top and it looked pretty darn cool.

Back at the hostel I went to check out the 2-man tent I was sharing with Sarah (the person that the most people in the group were upset with) and it was pretty decent sized but we only had one blanket so I borrowed a small one Geoff had brought with him. It was a nice evening so I didn't worry too much about it. It started sprinkling as soon as we went to sleep and by 2 am Sarah and I woke up for the millionth time freezing to discover that the tent had started flooding and the blankets were getting wet so we went inside and slept on the floor in the private room. It was wood flooring but its really not much harder than anything else we sleep on here so it wasn't bad. I curled up on a little mat to try and stay warm and got a couple hours of sleep in but let's just say by the next morning I definitely felt like I hadn't slept properly in 2 nights for good reason.

Friday 4/5:

When I woke up the next morning I decided a long, hot shower was a priority and on my way downstairs discovered the tracks of footprints visible on the stairs from where we had all walked barefoot through the rain in the middle of the night to find shelter. The other 5 people sleeping in tents had crashed in the lobby downstairs on a couple couches which was kinda a funny sight because none of them are that big and Mark's 6'4'' figure didn't quite fit on the loveseat he slept on. I got up early enough to spend a wonderful 50 minutes in the shower and I desperately needed it and enjoyed it. My life has been a little bit short on privacy, quiet time, hot water, and naked time and that shower shared some love on all of those levels.

We signed up at the hostel to go on a tour bus to the Shaolin temple that morning which ended up costing us way more than it should have (surprise, surprise) but after all the hell we went through the day before I was very grateful for someone to drive me around and take care of me for a few hours. The tour guide only spoke a little bit of English and other than a few other people from the hostel that are from Spain the rest of the bus were Chinese and it didn't take long for them to start making fun of us in Chinese and having a good laugh. Totally rude but I know that I've said a lot of rude things about them because they couldn't understand me. It was still raining all morning so just from crossing the street to get on the bus my shoes were completely soaked and freezing but the bus ride over was nice because I got to just sit there and talk to Sam. At the temples I was pretty miserable and actually ended up wishing I hadn't gone. It was cold, wet, rainy, and Sam and Kristen were linked arm in arm under an umbrella like an adorable little couple. It was a pretty cool place but it just reminded me of the Imperial Palace in Beijing so not a huge deal. On the drive back to the hostel Sam fell asleep with his head in my lap and almost everyone else was asleep too so I had way too much time to just look out the window and think. We stopped at this artsy shop on the way back and Sam showed me some pottery with a cool expensive glaze which was nice to learn about.

Back at the hostel I was finally able to take off my muddy, wet shoes and wash off my feet that were also muddy by that point and put on flip-flops to wear downtown even though that is super rude in China but I didn't have any other shoes with me. When we got on the bus to go downtown half the group decided to get on a different bus behind us at the last second so we weren't able to coordinate where to get off so we just got off randomly but it ended up being a really good spot and their bus pulled in about 5 minutes after us so everyone was able to meet up again. We ended up on a street full of shops and street-vendors so Melanie, Mikelle, Geoff, and I split off from the group and ate street food for dinner. We started off with these buns for 1 yuan (16 cents) that had salt in them. Kinda tasted like a soft pretzel. I doubt I would have been able to taste the salt in them if I was back in the USA but here where there isn't salt in anything it tasted pretty darn good. We also had some random meat on sticks that was good and a tortilla-like wrap with egg and chives inside of it that was super delicious. I also bought some big fake peony flowers and 2 pairs of shoes that were on clearance at a shop ($3 each!). I wore one pair that night and saved the other pair to be brand new to wear when I get home. We did end up stopping at a chicken place that's like KFC that was really good and super cheap. It was only 6.5 yuan ($1) for their chicken sandwich which was made of real chicken and would have cost about 4 bucks back home. After we were stuffed full we wandered around the streets some more and found a street packed with food vendors and people for the peony festival. Imagine Merry Main Street and then multiply the number of people by 50. There were probably a good couple thousand packed on the one street and it was tons of fun walking around looking at it all. They even had a few trash cans so you wouldn't throw your garbage on the ground which is what we're usually expected to do here and some of the bins were overflowing with just skewer sticks which looked pretty cool.

We caught one of the buses home and missed our stop so we got off a couple miles too late and started walking back and ran into a huge dance group doing their exercise routine. You see these all the time in China-- just a random group of people all lined up dancing or doing different exercise moves so we spent about half an hour with 300-400 other people dancing and exercising in a parking lot. It was ridiculously fun and incredible that I got to participate in something so simple but so culturistic (I realize that's not a word) of China. Back at the hostel I hung out with Melanie and Mikelle and Geoff in the private room and we all rubbed my nice smooth shaved legs while we had boy talk. Mikelle asked why we talk about boys so much when we can't even date each other and Melanie pointed out that that's exactly why we do it. We talk about it because it that's as good as it gets.

I went back out to my tent that they had dried out and added a little extra padding to and I made sure I had a real blanket this time but at 3am Sarah and I were both awake again and freezing out butts off but we just toughed it out. I can now say that I've spent an entire night sleeping on a rooftop in China. Not something I ever want to do again when it is wet or cold.

Saturday 4/6:

After my 3^rd night in a row without proper sleep I retreated to a hot shower again and cut it short at only 30 minutes before we took a city bus with a couple other Chinese people that were staying at the hostel to go to the official peony garden for festival day. That was probably my favorite morning in China so far. We got there early when it had just opened so it was uncrowded and quiet and clean and beautiful. That very rarely happens here. We spent a couple hours just walking around enjoying the morning and looking at the almost-bloomed flowers (it would have been better to have waited 1 more week) but all the trees were bloomed out too so it made for a colorful wonderland. Luo Yang is much warmer than Weihai so we're still in the barren wasteland of winter here. There was even a big lake with lots of coy fish that we fed for a little while. It was, however, a big tourist spot because of the festival so we had lots of people taking creeper photos of us and with us which gets kinda annoying after a while but for the most part is fun.

After the flower garden we picked our stuff up at the hostel and took a bus back to the train station where we had a couple hours to kill before we left so we got lunch at another chicken place which ended up being pretty gross so I made up for it with street vendors by buying some pineapple on a stick and another tortilla wrap thing. The pineapple here is amazing and I buy it every chance I get. They cut it up in slices so you can buy a big slice for 2 yuan (32 cents) and it tastes way better than any dessert I could think of. We tried to use the bathroom at KFC before we went in the train station but after 15 minutes in line I think it might have broken so we decided to use the one at the train station instead. Bad idea. I've never seen anything so disgusting in my entire life. Skip to the next paragraph if you don't want the dirty details. I'm talking smell you're choking on, poo splattered all over the door, overflowing garbage cans full of used toilet paper and bloody pads that are covering half the floor too, pee all over the floors that you have to stand it to squat over a hole. Shudder.

While we were waiting for the train Geoff was doing card tricks that gathered a group of 20 Asians around us which is becoming pretty normal. On the train we were spread across 3 compartments instead of 2 so we only had 1 completely to ourselves that we could all hang out in but Sarah switched her seat with a Chinese guy so she could be with Kristen and therefore there were 5 of us and him in the middle compartment which made things awkward. First thing we all did on the train was have 2 hours of quiet because we were all so sick of the other half of people in our group so I spent my time half listening to music and half sleeping. It was wonderful. Then we talked to the Chinese guy for a while (I have his business card somewhere that he gave us) but when they started playing a game it got a little awkward so Sam and I moved over to the next compartment for a while and talked which was really nice because other than with your roommate you really don't get private 1-on-1 time with anyone here. Sam and I had bunks next to each other with the wall between us and right before the lights went out Mikelle decided she wanted to take Fiddler on the Roof pictures of us and they tried to get me to kiss the wall so that I was kissing his "cheek" in the picture but I was embarrassed and couldn't stop laughing so she now has a shot of Sam kissing the wall and me moving away laughing. Kinda wish I would have done it and I probably would have but they turned the lights out at that point. And when I finally fell asleep that night I was out cold until my alarm went off at 3:35 the next morning which was really nice after so many days and nights of total exhaustion.

Sunday 4/7:

Sunday morning we didn't know what time exactly we were supposed to get off the train. We thought it was around 4am so the alarms were set for 3:30 (supposedly) and I set mine at 3:35 as a backup and ended up being the first one awake. Mikelle and I woke everyone up to discover that the stop we hit at 4:20 wasn't ours and we still had another hour before we got off. We've figured out that the trains tend to be about an hour late. We once again lucked out with learning our stop was an hour later because a Chinese girl in the compartment next to us told me. If she hadn't we wouldn't have known when to get off. Since we still had an hour and I was now wide awake I told everyone they could go back to sleep and I'd wake them up. I was laying in my bed listening to music and Sam made sure I was awake because he was thinking too much and I was joking with him that he woke me up so I could suffer with him.

When we got off the train we had a 10-hour layover in Jinan before we got on another train to Weihai. Since it was still super early an dark we retreated to McDonald's for some food and shelter. I've felt safe the entire time I've been here until I walked out of the train station in Jinan. It's a dirtier city with millions of people and homeless people begging money off of us and it didn't make it better that it was still dark. I really lucked out with getting assigned to Weihai. Weihai is a smaller city that's very peaceful and much cleaner and spread out because we're on the coast. We played Monopoly Deal for a while and then jumped in taxis to go to 1000 Buddha Mountain for a few hours. I spent my time there with Melanie, Mikelle, and Geoff and we just took the time to enjoy a beautiful Sunday morning. It was probably the most spiritual sabbath I've had here. Most of the group hiked to the top of the hill but we just hung out at a pavillion part-way up and talked and took pictures and played hearts and I loved it. It was fun to play cards on a Chinese chess table next to a giant trough of incense and then take pictures with giant statues of wise holy men. We all met down at the gate and got in 3 taxis to meet back up at the train station. The car with Sam in it didn't show up so we waited for them for a half hour and started really worrying only to discover that they had just gone to lunch. That's a big problem here is that we have no way to communicate with each other unless its in person which makes especially travelling really difficult. I got this rice stuff with meat for lunch and it was super salty compared to what we've been eating so it was amazing. I was so hungry I ate all of my food and then finished off Melanie and Mikelle's food too and still wanted more.

After that we headed back to the train station and got in the huge line of Chinese people for the train. By that point I had a bunch of huge fake peony flowers I was carrying around so we definitely stood out. While in line Mark made the comment of "tall, Mark, and handsome" which have me a good laugh for a while. Instead of a hard sleeper we were on a hard seat car which is a bunch of benches facing each other with a little table in between. I was in a booth with Geoff and a bunch of Asians but we switched and ended up with Mikelle and Melanie. The 4 of us worked on writing down bullet points for journaling (which is why 2 week later writing this I can remember this much) and then at one stop, met my stalker. He was outside on the sidewalk taking a picture of us through the window and we opened it for him so he could get a better picture. A few minutes later he came in the car and took a picture with us there and then showed me pictures he had been taking of us for the past hour-- me carrying the flowers through a crowd, walking to our train car, us through the window... That's the thing about Chinese people, not only do they take a million stalker pictures of you but they're perfectly happy to show all of them to you too. His name is China Lee which he wrote down in my notebook for me and gave me his email. I think I'll send him the picture of us so I'll "make his life" as Melanie would say.

Later in the journey Mikelle and I both threw out gum out of the window at the same, wiped our hand on our pants, and then high fived without any previous agreement to do so. Epic. The rest of the evening we played Hearts and Monopoly Deal and Golf with a random period of doing calculus problems for fun (I miss math soo much!!) and a period of girl talk. It was a long 9 hour train ride to be on a hard seat for and all of us were exhausted when we got off.

Walking out of the train station we were a little bit worried about getting taxis for all of us because it was so late there was a huge crowd at the gate for some reason and as soon as I walked out we were bombarded with a mob of Chinese people trying to get us to take their taxi or stay at their hotel. It was insane and reached the point of getting physical where they would grab our arm or bags and try and pull us to their taxi. Because I was so tired and it was the middle of the night it was a little bit terrifying and made me think of what a zombie apocalypse might feel like. We made it to a taxi safely and went home and crashed.

Monday 4/8:

Monday morning was spent unpacking, doing laundry, and trying to get things prepped for class. By the time we got to class we were all exhausted. I felt horrible and really wanted to ask someone else to sub for my class but I knew everyone else was probably as tired as I was so I just sucked it up and put in my hours.

That night a few people went down to the JiaJiaYue to pick up groceries for the week but I declined because I was so tired and wanted to have some quiet time. Mikelle came in my room and decided we needed to book hostels for our upcoming trip at the end of April so we spent the next couple hours looking at different hostels and things we could do on the trip and getting a group of people together to book with. Our group is going to be me, Melanie, Mikelle, Jay, Geoff, and Sam. We've discovered that groups of 4 or 6 work pretty well here for traveling so hopefully it will work out well and there won't be intense drama although to be honest I am a little bit worried but you'll discover why in a little bit.

To end off the night Luke got in a huge fight with the head teachers for reasons which we weren't aware of until the next day.. which leads me to Tuesday.

Tuesday 4/9:

Since I'm now 10 days behind on journaling I really don't remember much from Tuesday other than the biggest thing to happen here since we arrived. It's the basis to the reason I'm super behind because it turned my already exhausting week into a dramatic hell and I don't think I was really ready to relive it through writing yet.

Tuesday was the day that Luke and Talon got a call from Jared-- the main guy in charge of ILP. Apparently over the vacation when they stayed in Weihai they'd gone out with a couple of their Chinese friends to a club where they were drinking. This event was videotaped by their Chinese friend Jim who, for some reason, showed it to the head teachers. And, since ILP is a very Utah Mormon program, alcohol is a BIG no-no. The head teachers didn't tell Talon that they knew about it until Tuesday night but had told Luke Monday night which is what they were fighting about.

The call didn't come until almost midnight but I waited up for it to hear how it went because not only are they my friends but I wanted to know what happened because the outcome of the call for Talon affected me personally since we teach together. I wasn't even supposed to know about any of this going on because the way ILP operates is to keep everything a secret. I sat in my doorway and listened down the hall while they were on the phone. I couldn't hear what Luke said but when the phone was passed to Talon he told Jared about the club and how their friends started making them drinks so they just went with it. Then he started interrogating Talon about this Chinese girl, Tiffany, who Jim had told the head teachers that Talon was dating a few weeks ago (which he wasn't) but Jared wouldn't believe that Talon was telling the truth. The part that really upset me was when ILP tried to get them to rat each other out and then threw in the threat of implying that they would use Sam (Talon's roommate) to tattle on him. By the time I went to bed the only thing that had been resolved was that ILP was going to discuss what to do and get back to them. Talk about a crappy evening and I was on the good side of things.

Wednesday 4/10:

Wednesday morning was stressful just because none of us knew what was going to happen but Talon was already convinced he was going home. Lunch-time hit and as if there hadn't already been enough drama the last couple days it went from a flame to a full-blown explosion. Geoff, Andrea, and Mikelle stormed in the cafeteria yelling at each other. They work together as one of the primary groups and the three of them had been fighting all morning. Then right before the in-service meeting started at 12:15 Jay came in our room to talk to us because she was having an anxiety attack.... But wait! There's more drama.

The entire group was waiting in the common room for the in-service training to start and 20 minutes later the head teachers finally came in and told us it was cancelled for the day and pulled Luke and Talon out to talk to ILP on the phone.

Verdict: Talon was going home and Luke was on probation. Here's why they didn't both get sent home-- ILP claims that Talon was going home because he already had the warning with Tiffany so it was the combo with this second offense that was the reason for his verdict. Personally, I think that's a load of B.S. The incident with Tiffany was a misunderstanding and shouldn't have counted. Here's the real reason why one got sent home and not the other-- Talon had pissed ILP/head teachers off too much so they were already discriminating against him and this was just a good excuse to get rid of him so they wouldn't have to deal with him anymore. Luke got to stay because the school likes him so much seeing as how he teaches all of the junior high kids and has built a network of social connections. If he got sent home it would injure ILP's relationship with the school.

Anyways, the decision was that Talon would pay ILP an amount of money (that I'll refrain from sharing on such a public site) and leave on a plane in the morning. All of this was done under the agreement that it wouldn't be shared with anyone else in the group. Why? I like to think of it like Hunger Games: to prevent an uprising.

Our elementary group has developed a trust circle where these secrets are shared although if Luke knows something it never stays a secret for long ;) Knowing all of this seriously upset me for so many different reasons. First off, because Talon was going home and he was becoming someone I really appreciated in my life. I teach in a separate building from everyone else so he was the only other person in the building with me every day other than an occasional glimpse of Luke. He and I were partners in teaching our 4^th graders and someone who truly understood what teaching 4^th and 5^th grade was like. I was also upset because of how unfair and corrupt I thought the whole process with ILP was. It freaked me out to realize just how much power ILP had over me if they wanted and that I'd basically sold my life to them for 4 months. It stressed me out to have more work put on the elementary teachers who were already seriously short staffed. And all of this happening while still being exhausted and behind from vacation with all the other dramatic things going on... made for a bad week.

Kelly (the Chinese ILP person here) set up a pizza night for us that evening at a buffet but I opted out because I was still sick of most of the people that were going to be there (because of vacation) and hmmm, let's see, just wasn't really in the mood.

Thursday 4/11:

By the time I got up Thursday morning Talon was already gone so the morning was spent cleaning out his and Sam's room. Sam's a huge clean freak like me which is really nice because sometimes he cleans the kitchen which means I can go in there without getting stressed out. Also, his room now stays pretty clean which has become a stress-free zone for me to spend time in. Luke was sharing a room with Mark and Geoff so he moved in with Sam which means the 4 remaining elementary teachers now fit in 2 rooms. How depressing.

We had a meeting after lunch for the head teachers to inform the group that Talon had been sent home. This came as a surprise to no one even though it was supposed to be a secret. After the meeting they had the elementary teachers stay afterwards to divide out Talon's classes for us to teach. Alicia started the meeting out with, "Are we missing someone?" before she realized that the person we were missing was the one she'd just sent home and after my death glare finished her comment with, "Oh I'm so sorry. That was really rude." It was decided that I would take over 4^th grade by myself and that Talon's 5^th grade class would be split between Luke, Sam, and Melanie. Luke now teaches most of the 5^th grade classes but they're spread all over the place as to not interfere with his other classes. We talked to the head teachers about how we were already short on teachers and now they were giving us even more classes but they said that according to ILP we're allowed to teach up to 20 hours a week and we were only at 16-17. I then pointed out that I didn't find it fair that ILP was expecting me to hold up my end of the bargain when they were failing at theirs. In our training manual it says our classes were supposed to be 10-12 kids. I have 37 4^th graders and 23 5^th graders that I singlehandedly teach for 1.5 hours each every day. Somehow that doesn't sound like ILP is holding up their end of the deal.

I was supposed to go teach classes right after that and I can't even begin to tell you how much I didn't feel like teaching at that moment but I did anyways since I really had no option and was surprised as to how easily it was for me to change from a heartbroken emotional wreck to the most fun teacher you've ever seen the minute I walked through the door. Other than me having to tell Talon's kids that he was gone it ended up being the best block of classes I've taught since I got here.

We ended off the night watching a movie called Safe House that has Ryan Reynolds and Denzel Washington in it that ended up being nothing but action so I didn't like it but it was nice to spend a couple hours cuddling on the couch and drift away from a harsh reality for a little while.

Friday 4/12:

Fridays we teach in the morning so after lunch we headed over to Big World to buy some clothes and I ended up buying 3 knit shirts that I'm head over heels in love with. I probably paid more than I should have but they're hard bargainers there and I still got them down to about half of the starting price.

We had kind of split up in Big World so I was with Mikelle but we all (Me, Mikelle, Melanie, Geoff, Sam, Kristen, and Mark) met back up at what we call the chicken place for lunch. It's like KFC but better tasting and cheaper. I've probably mentioned it before..

We split up again and Mikelle and I went to this shop across the street that I'm going to describe as a cheap American Hobby Lobby except better. Even though it was about the size of my bedroom back home there was tons of stuff-- make your own jewelry, coffee mugs that say "I am not a paper cup," mustache stickers for scrapbooking, various incense oils and burners.... endless wonders. I'm kind of in love and will probably go back and buy a few things before I leave.

After that we went to the huge JiaJiaYue nearby that closes at 5:30 for some reason. It's 3 stories tall and has a ramp escalator so you can take your shopping cart upstairs. Each floor is different. One has a bunch of clothing shops, one has an arcade, another has the basic grocery store look like the one by us has.. so kinda like a Walmart Supercenter had a baby with Fiesta Mall. Once we left there I took Mikelle to the war memorial I had gone to with Bruce and we walked around and took some pictures before we jumped on a bus and headed home.

The rest of the evening was chilling at the dorms. We're always so tired on Fridays that we usually head out after lunch for a few hours and then crash that evening.