Thursday 5/2:
Thursday morning I woke up a good half hour or more before everyone and couldn't go back to sleep so I stared at the ceiling for a while and read some more scriptures on Sam's phone before people started waking up. We were supposed to have a van pick us up from the hostel at 8:20 to head to the Gudong waterfall so we all waited downstairs on the couches looking at ecards on Instagram and playing with Pizza until the bus showed up late at 9. Welcome to China.
I was still exhausted so on the ride I somehow managed to almost fall asleep on Mikelle's shoulder when Sam poked my leg to inform me of his latest theory about the mountains- that they are God's whack-a-mole game. I have no idea where he gets these theories.. but they make me laugh.
The van stopped at a random place in Gudong with some vendors set up for shopping and we got to walk along the Li River and could see where the water level had gotten 8-10 feet higher during the storm than it was at the moment and I'm sure even then it was still higher than usual. I couldn't believe how much the river had risen but you could see the debris from the flood in the trees and marks on the buildings up to where the water level had been.
After that we finally headed to the Gudong waterfall which had more and better Chinglish than I've seen anywhere else. In addition to the main signs they had phrases on all the trash cans and my favorite one said, "Though I'm ugly, I'm gentle and good at doing housework, such as collecting the wastes." Nice woman/wife joke, ya? It wasn't until we were at the waterfall that I realized how unbelievably pissed off half of our group was. Jay was still sick so she was in a really bad mood from that combined with who knows what else, Melanie was mad at.. the world?, and Geoff was upset because he felt like everyone was fighting with him. I'm not sure it's possible to find 3 people who were less appealing to be around. However, Mikelle, Sam and I had an incredible time on vacation and were still having lots of fun.
We had to buy gear to climb up the waterfall which included a helmet, a dry pouch for valuables, and straw sandals. The climb up the first waterfall was probably about 100 feet but then that was it and they took our helmets back. It was fun but I was expecting more. There were stairs/routes to climb the other levels of the waterfall but everything was still super flooded from the rain so they wouldn't let us climb the rest. There was a little pavilion with a bench at the top that was under about 4 inches of water that I assume is usually quite dry.
It was a really beautiful area and a nice climb even though we didn't get to climb in the actual waterfall for the remainder of the hike. I saw my first millipede and counted 94 legs on one side. Pretty sure that's a little inaccurate. We chose the option of paying to zip line part way down the mountain and it was totally worth it. Not sure how safe it was but hey it's China! We also got to walk across a hanging bridge which was breathtaking and absolutely incredible.
We ate lunch down at the bottom before we got back in the van to drive to Yangshuo and Sam was kind enough to stand there and order the different things to put in the egg noodles we got. They were only 8 yuan and ended up being really good. We ran out of time to eat and ended up eating them in our laps on trash bags in the back of the van on the drive back. They don't usually have take-out boxes here. They just throw the food straight in a bag. Kinda weirded me out when I first got here but now I really like it. On the drive back we realized we were going the wrong direction and talked to the driver and a few minutes later they pulled off the road and they put us on another random bus heading the right direction back to Guilin. On our walk to a different hostel than we had been at a couple days ago we passed the street that had been flooded and observed that the streets were back to normal. The hostel we stayed in was super nice. They had curtains around the bunk beds that you could shut so you didn't disturb your neighbor and they had a shower curtain in the bathroom!! I haven't see one of those since I got here. There was a nice courtyard right outside our room and the girls at the desk spoke perfect English. One of them was actually practicing speaking English with a British accent. Above the community computers they had painted "Google is watching you" on the wall which gave me a good laugh. They even had a little movie room full of cushions with a TV and Wii.
But here's where things get... meh. Worse than meh.
Jay was still feeling really sick still so Melanie called her dad (who is a doctor) and he diagnosed Jay over the phone with (probably) pneumonia. Jay wanted to go to the hospital and asked Melanie to go with her and then needed 1 more person. (ILP rules-- groups of 3 or more on vacation). The 4 of us girls were in a room together and were trying to figure out what to do and Sam walked by and hear us talking and joined in. Geoff showed up later and thought we were purposefully excluding him and got in a big fight with Melanie about diagnosing people over the phone and whether Jay should go to the hospital or not. It got super tense and it ended up being Jay, Melanie, and Sam going to the hospital together.
Mikelle and I decided to take the time they were gone to get dressed up for the night. She took the opportunity with our nice bathroom and shower curtain to shower and clean up and while she was in the shower I pulled Geoff aside and talked to him. I tried to calm things down and help relieve some of the anger and stress and maybe made a little bit of progress but eventually gave up. Mikelle and I did each other's eyebrows and I took it upon myself to provide commentary for each hair she pulled out. It started with, "ouch! Ouch! Ouch!!" and then turned into various answers to the question, "How are you?" "Fantastic! Wonderful! Horrible! I'm fine.. and how are you?" Let's just say we were laughing too much to make much progress for a while. We eventually got all beautified and we borrowed a hair dryer and I got to blow dry my hair for the first time in 3-ish months. I even put on make-up and wore one of my new dresses. We were lookin' pretty hott. The three of us walked across the street to this awesome big outdoor mall and ordered 2 pizzas. We had to wait half an hour for them which was kinda awkward since Geoff was still mad but we all broke out a smile when a Chinese guy checked us out and his wife hit him for it. The pizza was pretty good and it was nice to have a break from bad Chinese food and/or packaged convenience store food.
I was hoping the other 3 would be back to the hostel by the time we got back but they weren't so we played Texas Holdem and Headbandz in the lobby for a while and then retreated to isolating ourselves on our computers while we waited. And waited. And waited. The hostel did have a VPN though so one of the wireless networks allowed me to get on Facebook and Blogger which was a nice little miracle.
About 5 hours in I started getting really worried but we had no way to contact them. I sent them emails and Geoff posted a message on Instagram in hopes that they would see it. No taquito. Or burrito. Or cigar. Whatever that phrase is.. Point is, didn't work. It hit almost midnight and I was beyond worried and tired and refused to go to sleep before I knew they were back and everything was okay. Mikelle and I put in Crazy, Stupid, Love which is always hit or miss for me but for that night it was a nice distraction. We decided if they hadn't come back before the end of the movie we were just going to go to the hospital ourselves and find them. Melanie walked in half-way through and demanded the key to our room. No "hey, you waited up" or "Jay's okay".. just angry Melanie so we handed over the key and went to find Sam to see what had happened. He said Jay had a severe case of bronchitis, almost to the point of pneumonia. There was the possibility that she had the bird flu and they tried to get her to stay in the hospital for 3 days while they observed her but our train left early the next morning so that just wasn't gonna happen. Mostly they'd just been sitting around for a long time and she'd gotten x-rays and a CAT scan done and then they sent her back with a bunch of medicine.
I tried to go to bed but Mikelle was talking to her family on the phone and Jay kept coughing so I made sure my stuff was packed up and went out to the lobby to hang out with Sam and Geoff and pull an all-nighter. I've had the idea for a while now that I'd like to own a hostel some day and Sam likes the idea of doing that too so we started a list of things that make a great hostel. We also played the game Golf for a little while but then Geoff went to bed. Sam looked at pictures from the trip while I caught up on journaling (I hate that I always write about doing that yet I'm still a month behind). We got kicked out around 3-3:30am so I spent a while sitting on my bed uploading pictures from the trip to my laptop. I gave in to sleep at 4 and then woke up at 5 to head to the train station.
Friday 5/3:
Friday I woke up at 5 after my hour nap and packed up a couple last things and headed out the door for the train station. We were conveniently close by so I walked there with Sam and Geoff while the other 3 girls took a taxi because Jay was sick. Our train left at 7:12 and I was asleep before it even pulled out of the station. I woke up around noon, braved the squatter, and then headed back to our area to discover that everyone else was still sleeping so I stared out the window for a while and then went back to sleep until 4. Normally this is a total waste of the day but we're on this train until Sunday morning except for a break in Jinan so it was nice to kill that big of a chunk of time with sleeping. Problem is its now 10:20 and I'm starting to worry about sleeping through the night. [Don't you like how I was writing this like is was in the past but I actually wrote this post the day it happened? Not confusing at all.]
When I woke up this afternoon I was quite worried that I had pink eye because one eye kept watering and was kinda puffy and Pizza (the kitten from the hostel in Yangshuo) had pink eye. My eye's not pink at all though so I really don't know what's wrong. Jay gave me a makeup remover wipe and had me take off my mascara (which I've never actually done in my life) and then we got one of my tank-tops wet with boiling hot water that's provided on the train and laid that on my face for a good 20 minutes. It helped make me feel better about it but my eye is still freaking out.
Once we did our best at being our own doctors in China I made my last package of instant potatoes (sad day!!) and ate them while I read a little bit in a special journal I have and added a new entry. Later I made Jay some Ramen and then wrote some more for one of my blogs. At that point I decided it was time to get out of my bed and bug Sam who was reading the 7 Principles of Marriage book I brought. The beds on this train are even smaller than usual and you can't sit up on the upper bunks so its pretty tight but we managed and ended up chatting about my study abroad to the U.K. and scholarships and grades in high school and our favorite parts of the trip.
Being wedged on the same bed started some gossip so I moved back down to my bed and ended up talking to Jay for a while before it was bedtime and the train turned off the lights (9:40 pm) and now here I am, catching up on journaling once again. I figure that I still have another full day on the train and should be able to get all caught up by then. [That definitely didn't happen.]
Saturday: 5/4:
Saturday morning I woke up to Melanie buying an entire breakfast meal just to eat the mento with honey. Made me laugh. Mikelle, Sam, and I spent the morning playing Yahtzee (we played a variation where you fill in 2 columns at one time) and Phase 10 (I kicked everyone's trash) and then took a break to eat some food (mhmm... Chinese Ramen). Right before we got off in Jinan I was playing Solitaire on my phone which Sam titled 'cheater Solitaire' because I have it set to draw only 1 at a time instead of 3. We paralleled Solitaire with dating and Sam commented that whether you're playing 3 cards at a time or only 1, you're still playing Solitaire. He asked Crista (Crista, Rachelle, and Sam girl were also on the train with us) what him playing 3 cards at a time said about his personality and she responded, "You're a slut." I got a good laugh out of that.
We had all afternoon/evening in Jinan to kill before we got on another train late that night so we went to Daming (Da Ming, not damning) Lake which was quite picturesque and ran into a few girls dressed up as legit anime characters. We were there until sunset and then took a bus to the mall where we went to.. *drumroll*...........Walmart!! That's right, there's a Walmart in Jinan and Guilin here in China. I even bought myself some mouthwash which I had to leave behind in America and have been quite enjoying the past couple weeks. Afterwards we wanted to see the new Iron Man movie and discovered that the theater was on the floor above Walmart (Walmart was 2nd and 3rd, movie theater was 4th). They were all sold out for the shows playing before we had to be back to the train station so that plan failed. We headed back to the train station and Mikelle, Sam and I sat outside on the dirty ground and talked for a couple hours while the 3 party poopers charged their electronic devices inside a hotel lobby. It was really beautiful outside, especially after 2 months of freezing weather in Weihai.
Once we got on the train I could barely stay awake long enough to give the train guy my ticket and then I had my music in which Sam was listening to with me. I woke up about an hour later and realized I hadn't even made it through 2 songs. Sam was asleep too so I turned it off and went right back to sleep.
Sunday 5/5:
Sunday morning I woke up to the ticket man giving our tickets back and spent all morning laying in bed talking to Sam whose bunk was back to back with mine again. It turned out that our train got to Weihai 1.5 hours earlier than we expected but since I hadn't moved off my bunk since we got on the train all my stuff was still all packed up and ready to go. Sam, Mikelle, and I met Joe and he drove us back to the school in his taxi. He's possibly my favorite Chinese person I've met outside of school since I got here. He spoke English really well and it was really fun to talk to him on the drive back home. I wish we could keep him as our permanent driver.
We got back around 10am and discovered that the water was completely shut off so I couldn't wash off my 3 days of nasty. Sam called in to church on Skype so I went to "church" dirty, wearing ripped jeans and a 4-5 day old t-shirt. Since we'd just gotten back we didn't have much food so we used banana bread for the sacrament. It was definitely the most un-church-like church I've ever attended but I've discovered here that church is as spiritual as you want it to be, even if you're on Skype, sitting on a couch in a dirty common room in a country with religious restrictions wearing gross clothes, smelling horrible, and eating banana bread.
When church ended we headed downstairs for lunch and when we got back the water was working again so I took a quick shower and then went to the beach with Sam and Geoff. When we left on vacation it was still winter here. When we came back it was summer. I feel like we missed the week of spring. Anyway, it was a beautiful, perfect day at the beach and we laid out to tan for a while until 8 Chinese boys our age came to bug me to take pictures with them and kept persisting saying, "Come on baby..." until I got up and took pictures with all of them in my swimsuit. The best part was I had taken out my contacts during church because my eyes hurt really bad (remember the possible pink eye from the cat?) and switched to my glasses which I was not wearing on the beach so I couldn't even see them properly. Those boys ended up following us around for the next hour or two until we left. In that time we played in the water for a little while and Sam and Geoff made sure to pick me up and dunk me in that yummy China water. I also got covered up in sand and turned into a mermaid but I kept laughing and making the sand crumble.
Back home I spent quite a while trying to wash sand out of every area of my body (Sam even shoved sand in my belly button) which took a while but it was nice to be properly clean for the first time in quite a few days. Sam and I watched Saturday afternoon conference, took a break for dinner, and then finally finished watching conference (it only took us a month!).
That night Elementary teachers gathered together with our new schedules to figure out how things were going to work with incorporating Geoff (P.S.- Geoff got switched to Elementary and Cherish is teaching Primary) and Bayli into our schedules. I don't have to coordinate too much because except for 1 class period, either Geoff or Bayli take the same kids every day so I basically just changed to a smaller class size. We were supposed to give Geoff and Bayli our lower level kids to work with but Luke wanted to send the smartest kids from his 5th grade class. I told him no and he kept arguing so I said we'd figure it out later.
Monday 5/6:
I really don't remember what happened Monday because I only wrote down 2 bullet points. That night Jay came in and told us her hospital story. BTW-- Jay went to the hospital again when we got home. It was a huge event of miscommunication but here's the SparkNotes version-- Jay felt super sick in the middle of the night, wanted meds, talked to her mom on Skype, mom got unnecessarily involved and called the ILP office in Utah, ILP called the head teachers, head teachers took Jay to the hospital, they sent her back to the school clinic which wouldn't let her stay on campus because they thought she might have bird flu, went back to the hospital and did a million tests, they wanted to observe her for a week in case she had bird flu, political issues that involved ILP and the embassy, everyone overreacted and Jay came back with some pills in hand and was fine. And she had to poop in a cup. I had a video of her telling us about this poop event but failed to upload it before my camera was stolen (oops!! spoiler alert! Toooo late.) Apparently they had to do a poop test so they handed her a tiny cup with a handle on it and she had to go in a random closet and fill it up over the squatter. While she trying to figure out just how to hold the cup and accomplish this task, a Chinese woman opened the door to get supplies out of the closet and discovered Jay with her pants down squatting. Once Jay finished she exited to discover that the woman was still standing outside the door waiting and then she then had to carefully carry her not-so-solid poop cup across the hospital dodging random scooters driving through at which point she finally arrived at the lab and just stood there and held it for a minute and finally walked up to a woman and pointed to it asking "nali?" (where) and then set it down on the table. To sum up this dramatic story (Jay's stories are usually wonderfully entertaining and dramatic) she finished with, "Moral of the story: just don't get bird flu 'cause weird freakin' things happen to you."
Following this retell of the event, we had an intense discussion on the logistics of properly catching diarrhea. BTW- any filter I might have had back home had since been eliminated.
That was the first bullet point.
Second bullet point:
Melanie and I watched Once Upon a Time. It was really stupid again. Don't remember what happened, just that it was stupid. Sam watched it with us a few weeks back and that was the first dumb one we'd watched and we're convinced he cursed it for the rest of the season.
The end.
Tuesday 5/7:
Tuesday morning Sam was subbing for Jay so I slept in for the first time in a while. Melanie jokingly commented on how it was interesting that I just happened to sleep in on the same morning Sam was gone. Sleeping in represented the remainder of my day pretty well. I cleaned my room for about an hour before lunch and other than teaching I really didn't do much the rest of the day. That night I went down to Sam and Luke's room to talk to Luke and discovered that Sam had fallen asleep reading a book on his bed so I grabbed my camera from my room and recorded me waking him up. Yelling his name didn't work so I had to start kicking his bed and the last shot in the video is a terrified look on his face the moment he woke up. I felt really bad but Melanie thought it was hilarious. That video also disappeared with my camera.
While I was sitting in there waiting for Luke I was getting ready to leave and just go to bed but I heard a cat in the hallway (I have no idea why they feel the need to wander around all the way up on the 5th floor when they live outside) and figured it would look bad if I walked out of Sam's room with just the two of us in there when people came out in the hall to investigate the cat noise so I stayed in the room. It turned out that the head teachers were the ones who came out to investigate and Luke showed up right as the cat was chased away. They stood right outside the door for a while talking and when Luke came in I motioned for him to not say anything about me being in there. He shut the door without saying anything and was talking to Sam and I about something when the head teachers knocked on the door and asked if anyone else was in there with the boys. Yay I finally got in trouble for breaking ILP rules. After I had gone back in my room Alicia knocked on the door and said I needed to not be alone with Sam. So really... I should have just left in the first place when I was planning on it. The part that bugs me is that they must have been outside the door listening to Luke talk to us because it was a good 2 minutes after he came back in the room before they knocked and asked if anyone else was in there.
No freakin' privacy.
Wednesday 5/8:
Wednesday was Geoff's birthday and I decided to try making a decent breakfast with the pancake mix I had bought at the Korean store. The kitchen was really really gross so I spent about an hour cleaning it (which is really sad because it's not that big) and then attempted a pancake in a wok on a hot plate. It really doesn't work at all. I started yelling at it so Sam came in and tried to get it to work but also gave up. We ended up pouring some batter on a plate and cooking it in the microwave. Totally works.
The rest of the morning I read a letter Sam had written to me that I found on his laptop and then talked to him until lunch.
The day went downhill from there and I lost it. "It" being any sort of composure and sanity. I hit a wall of total exhaustion about the time classes started and ended up letting my kids watch Finding Nemo for class. On the way back to the dorms after class Luke told me about drama going on between Daguanghua and ILP and the head teachers. *sigh* We ran into Bayli outside of the dorm building and my introduction was her giving me a big hug and I decided I liked her. Luke told me she was a dancer in the first High School Musical movie and later Melanie was able to find her in the dance in the gym at the end.
I ditched dinner for the first time since I got here and made a package of American noodles I had brought with me and ate it up on the roof while I wrote some notes down from my conversation with Sam earlier that morning. While I was writing Geoff came and found me and talked to me for a while. The receipt I had been writing on blew off the roof and into the construction area just outside of the school fence which was a little was a little bit of a problem if any ILP people found it because it would have obviously been identified as mine with the AZ address printed on it.
Geoff went downtown with a group for his birthday and I went downstairs and climbed up a dirt slope into the construction site (which I found out later people were watching me do in the kitchen), retrieved my receipt, and then crawled between a section of temporary fence back on campus. I spent the rest of the night back up on the roof hiding and writing all the things I was freaking about down so I didn't have to worry about them anymore. My conversation with Sam, getting in trouble with the head teachers, and (surprise!) the fact that other people here had discovered and were reading my blog with all the insults and secrets I don't mind sharing with America but don't want told in China. I had posted all of this information on my blog figuring that since you need a VPN to get on Blogger in China and only a few people here have one that I was probably safe, especially because I write so freakin' much and I don't know why you would spend your free time here reading my journal entires. Anyway, that's why I made it private for a while. I probably overdid the freakout but sometimes I think it's fair that I get to let it all out instead of holding it in and pretending things are okay.
Thursday 5/9:
Thursday I was sleepy all morning and moved from my bed to the couch to Luke's bed and still couldn't wake up properly. Okay let's be honest, I chose to not wake up properly. I watched a conference talk with Sam (from the priesthood session I believe) about wearing the armor of God and we talked for a while about how we actually do that. Also about how we like that instead of just saying don't do this, don't do this, don't do this... much of what is being taught now are positive things that we should be working toward and the doctrines behind them.
After classes Melanie, Mikelle, Sam and I went downtown a got dinner at the chicken place and then stopped at the big Jia Jia Yue to pick up some provisions to make Mexican food. It was kinda fun trying to find what we needed and making various substitutes. They eat these big fat bugs here that kinda look like a cocooned cockroach and they had a big box of them sitting in the produce section still alive and moving around. Pretty gross. They sell a pretty large portion of their food here live. I think just because it's easier to keep them that way and it shows that it's still "healthy" and edible.
And... I don't remember what else went on that day.
Friday 5/10:
Friday I went to class still half asleep and attempted to teach at the beginning of both of my classes but then gave in to their pleas of "fish movie!" I usually hang out in the supply room after I'm done with classes on Friday but I headed back to the dorms and made microwave cake instead. It was.. bleh. The pancake mix I bought tastes more like cake that this stuff did.
After lunch I showered and then took a nap which lasted through the 1pm dance rehearsal for a performance we're doing at the end of the month and the 2pm rehearsal on stage. Oops. Melanie ditched with me too and worked on her medical school application. When dance ended everyone came back to the dorms and Sam came in and tried to get me to go to the beach with them but I just rolled over and went back to sleep for another couple hours. It was so wonderfully quiet with everyone gone.
After dinner I read Eat, Pray, Love for a while and then ate some mashed potatoes that Melanie and Mikelle made. Sam was having a kinda rough day so I talked to him for a little bit and then read a little more before heading to bed.
Saturday 5/11:
Saturday morning I got up to ask Sam if he wanted to go check out a market that morning and as soon as I walked out the door ran into him and Kristen coming up the stairs. Super awkward. I read my book in the common room for a while before Luke came in to talk to me and we had a heart to heart. I really don't know what I did with the rest of the day. I spent about an hour catching up on emails. I had a random dance party with myself in my room to EFY songs. And..... that's about it? I wanted to go downtown that morning but Sam was with Kristen and Mikelle was on a home visit so I promised to wait for her to get back before we went and bought my wedding dress. Most people get back around 2pm from home visits and she said she'd try to get back early but at 5:30 we gave up on waiting and Melanie and I got on a bus headed downtown. We stopped at a random night market that we always pass and talk about stopping at but never do. It was okay but mostly just a bunch of little shops so the stuff there was more pricey than you can buy on the streets. We got back on the bus and went to our noodle shop and got dinner. The workers were all sitting outside and got up and went inside when they saw us coming down the street. I guess its not too hard to remember your American customers that come regularly almost every week. After noodles we headed to our regular night market and stopped at one of the first stands to look at a bin of 10 yuan Chinglish shirts. I felt my jacket move and discovered that someone had unzipped my jacket pocket and pulled my camera out. I turned around and the shop guy pointed down the street. HE SAW SOMEOME PICKPOCKET ME AND DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING! I ran after the sketchy looking guy that was walking way too fast through the crowd and kinda assaulted him, trying to pat him down to see if he had my camera and yelling "where's my camera" in his face. I couldn't find it and was worried that I had assaulted a random Chinese man. Josh appeared out of nowhere and I told him what happened and we ran after the guy again but I still didn't get it back. It was so frustrating because I betcha anything that he was the one who took my camera but I was incapable of telling the crowd of people around me that he had stolen my camera. SO frustrating. I even had $100 worth of Chinese money in my jean pockets that I wish he would have taken instead because I feel super awkward not having a camera now. I did upload my pictures fairly recently to my computer though so at least I have those but it's still frustrating knowing I just lost a brand new camera and 32GB card. I went back to the clothes stand and bought an awesome Chinglish shirt that says, "power girl dies! Never." Later I also picked up a couple more awesome Chinese hair ties and a green dress to wear on the beach. I don't know why but for some reason there were a bunch of people talking to us that night and one guy came up to us and asked if he could draw us. He did sketches of both Melanie and I for free. It was fun because we had a huge crowd of people (I counted 40 at one point) watching and comparing our faces with the drawings. The drawings are okay but heck they were free so it was a fun experience. Before we went home we stopped at a DVD shop and I bought 8 more DVDs. When we got back to the school a bunch of us watched Shanghai Noon that Mark had finally found on DVD and we've been wanting to watch it since we got here so it was a nice way to end off the night.
Sunday 5/12:
Sunday I woke up to knocking on my door.. then silence. Knocking.... silence. Knocking... silence. After the third episode of knocking I finally got up and discovered breakfast waiting for me. We drew names a few days ago for secret service and I got oatmeal and hot chocolate for mine. I don't actually remember ever eating oatmeal in my life because it grosses me out so much but hey.. when in China.. The part I ate with banana and brown sugar wasn't bad and the hot chocolate was delicious so it was nice to have breakfast for once. I missed hot water time for the morning (not that it's hot anyway but at least it gives me hope) and apparently missed water time altogether again. For some reason they've been shutting off the water in the building for hours at a time and some mornings its really frustrating to not be able to flush the toilet or wash your face, let alone shower. I got ready for church with dry shampoo and bottled water and headed down the hall to discover that the boys made us brunch for Mother's Day. I've never had someone make me breakfast here, let alone two. By the time I finished my french toast, eggs, and banana church had started and it was district conference. For some reason the sound quality was really bad and quiet so during the next 2 hours all I heard was some kids singing Mother's Day songs and a few phrases of, "show by the raise of your right hand" although I had no idea what we were sustaining. About half an hour in I walked out of church for the second time since I've been here and went in my room and watched a few conference talks instead.
After church got out I watched How I Met Your Mother (totes Sunday appropriate, right?) with a group for a couple episodes and then went back in my room. Later Sam came in and asked if I'd help him clean up the kitchen so we could make Mexican food. I ended up dicing up onions and garlic while he did dishes and boy did my hands smell lovely when I was done. We made refried beans and then mixed up dough for tortillas. By that point Melanie and Mikelle had joined us. Sam mixed stuff up for Spanish rice while the rest of us started flattening out the tortillas. Sam figured out how to cook the tortillas on the hot plate in a wok and I think they turned out pretty well considering. We were going to finish off cooking the ground beef we bought but discovered that after only 2 days it was bad so that idea got trashed. After a few hours of prep I got to eat tacos for dinner yesterday. Refried beans, Spanish rice, tortillas, salsa, and lettuce. All from scratch. All cooked on a hot plate in a wok in China. I call that success.
After dinner I moved to the common room to read Eat, Pray, Love some more and Sam joined me and tried to get me to try his lemon ginger tea he'd just made. Didn't happen. I read him some of the book but then we just talked until it got dark. At that point Jay decided she wanted to watch Iron Man 3 (heck yeah we already have it on DVD!). I watched the first bit but wasn't super interested and left to go shower and go to bed. I passed Geoff in the hall and he asked if we could talk so we went up on the roof and talked for a while. He has dental work he needs to get done but China's apparently too retarded to do it so he might have to go back to America. Flippin' ridiculous China. It is my constant prayer that I never have to see a doctor here because what I've witnessed from other people going to the hospital or clinic here scares the crap out of me. God bless America. And China.
Monday 5/13:
Monday morning I woke up early all on my own and got to shower and even put on makeup before Melanie got up for the day. I spent about an hour working on journaling and drinking hot chocolate and then got to talk to my mom on Skype for the first time since I got here. Right before I started the Skype call Luke came in the common room and told me that he had sent his 7 smartest kids with Bayli for class so I had to do the same. I told him that wasn't happening-- that the head teachers had told us to send the lower level learners and that's who I had already picked out. He responded saying that I had already agreed to send the higher students (which I didn't) and that even if I talked to the head teachers it wouldn't change anything. Therefore, my great morning went down the drain right before I went up on screen across the world. After the call ended I got to chat with Brianna and Matt for a little while while I ate microwave-made pancakes. No idea how I got so lucky as to have the internet working that well for two hours but it was nice to have a little miracle. Luke came back in later to see if I was still mad and we started arguing again until I walked out and went back in my room. Yay my first proper fight in China!
I worked on a Powerpoint for class until lunch (which was disgusting) and then went back after and barely finished it before class started. We talked about different ways to describe people which went over okay with the kids but by the time I got to 5th grade I was feeling pretty sick and lightheaded. When class got out I decided my sickness was attributed to the fact that I only eat carbs and never drink water. Out of everything I brought to China I've discovered 2 of the most important items have been my vitamins and water bottle. I have, however, been neglecting them as of late. While I was in the printing room working on prepping for class the next day I chugged a few glasses of water and felt a little bit better by the time I had to go back to my last hour of teaching for the day. I had 5th graders again for the last class and Melanie had the idea earlier that day of combining watching a movie with reading. I tested it out and it worked pretty well. I put in Finding Nemo again while I pulled aside students individually to work on reading with them. When they were done reading I gave them a sparkly smiley face sticker and they were totally into that reward system. I've tried so many bribes this semester-- candy, youku videos, games... but I had no idea that offering a sparkly sticker would get some of my smartest, I'm-too-cool-to-do-this-boys to participate. Win!
Dinner was good (potatoes and rice!) and afterward I went to the JiaJiaYue with Melanie and Mikelle where I picked up some fresh produce (which we rarely get here) and stocked up on my supply of the amazing chocolate carmel candies. When we got back Melanie and I watched the season finale of Once Upon a Time which was.. eh. After I heard music down the hall and went to investigate and discovered Sam doing ballet with Kristen and Bayli. I hung out with Geoff for a little bit while other people showered and then finished off the night with a couple episodes of How I Met Your Mother before I bailed out to go to bed at 9:30.
Tuesday 5/14:
Tuesday I was up early again and showered and put on makeup (2 days in a row!!!) and worked on journaling some more. It's a constant battle I'm rarely winning here.. always a week or two behind. Melanie came in the common room and worked out to a program called Insanity. She asked if I wanted to join but with a name like that I declined and sat on the couch and ate cake and yogurt while I watched her sweat. I spent the rest of the morning reading Eat, Pray, Love which I've been reading for months now along with ~5 other books and decided it was finally time to get some of them finished.
Classes went really well. I have the routine of cementing in Monday's lesson on Tuesday so to continue with the describing people topic we played Guess Who using pictures off the Powerpoint and then eventually people in the room. When I went to teach my last class of the day the kids were all leaving the classroom so I followed them and watched 3-5th grades have a tug-of-war competition. Typical of China.. no one tells you beforehand what's going on and suddenly you're in the middle of something completely unexpected. It was nice though because I didn't have to teach :) P.S.-- my kids won!
After dinner a bunch of people went downtown so I ended up playing Speed, Golf, and Go Fish with Geoff. I whooped him in Golf but lost by one pair in Go Fish. Once everyone got back the plan was to watch the movie Brothers Bloom. I made friends with Mark by giving him a Reese's that I still had stashed from Casey's visit almost 2 months ago and got a buddy to sit next to during the movie. I thought it was a pretty good movie and apparently have seen it before because I remembered a few of the scenes but I don't remember when or where I've watched it. The night finished off with Melanie and Mikelle finally finding the housing they want in Provo that I've been considering moving into with them. We'll see what happens.
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