Later:
Luke and Josh came in my room and hung out with me all night. We were all starving so Luke donated some dried out french bread that we put peanut butter and honey on and managed to eat. It was either that or Ramen and I just don't know if I can eat any more Chinese Ramen here. I spent most of the night repacking my suitcases. I've been putting stuff in them since we got back from Beijing but they needed some serious organization. Packing made me realize how trunky I've become and made me want to get home even faster. While I was packing Josh was putting together a prank where you tape a penny to a door and then pull it with a string so it makes a really annoying tapping noise. I told him if he did it to my door I'd shank him with the pocked knife I found in my room. After a while Josh left so Luke and I tried on outfits for each other. He had me help him pick out what to wear for a... date... the next day and I showed him what I'd come up with for my best Chinese outfit. Be excited to see what it looks like my first night home! Luke finally left around 1am (oops! Was there a 10:30 rule for boys and girls out of each others' rooms?) and I ended up playing on my computer until 3am because I was wide awake and the internet was working better than it has since I got here. It was during this time that I decided to finally set up a fake profile for my fiance and start the ball rolling. I figured the people who had kept up with me while I was here would know it was a joke and those who hadn't would get the shock of their lives! Nah, nothing that dramatic but I figured I had the advantage of 4 months of separation and photos so if I was ever going to have a chance at convincing people, now was the time. I should have built up to it more and had better picture documentation but too late now.
Sunday 6/16:
Sunday morning I chatted with Matt on Skype for a while and then at the last possible moment, showered and went to church with dripping wet hair. Church was a whole new level of interesting. It opened with the usual prelude music, then the notice of not including Chinese nationals in church meetings, then the sacrament, then... the first talk. It's usually hard to hear and understand what people are saying and it was especially bad that morning so I turned to Sam and jokingly asked if she was speaking English. Turned out she was speaking French. After my comment Sam asked the group if anyone was actually listening to church or getting anything out of it and suggested we have a testimony meeting instead. We ended up hanging up on church and finishing the meeting on our own. Half of what people said were experiences from being here (mine included) but it was really inspiring to hear the testimonies of the people I've been living with for 4 months and reach that personal of a level. Even Jay came in (who's not LDS) and she talked about wanting to be a spiritual person before she came here but she didn't quite know how to be that and have it work with the people around her. After living with Mormons for 4 months she complimented our faith and has figured out how she can be spiritual in her own life and plans to continue the feeling she's had here when she gets home.
After lunch Luke, Josh, and Mikelle hung out in my room and Luke straightened Josh's hair and then mine too. Luke wanted me to go to the International Beach with him to meet this Chinese guy and I was pretty eh on the matter but he said Sam was probably going to go so I figured if I had Sam to hang out with there it could be fun, especially since I hadn't been there yet. (Should I run on that sentence a little more?) We were running a little late on leaving and I discovered that Sam wasn't going (Luke had told him that I'd already said I would go, which I hadn't at that point) so I was suddenly faced with being a 3rd wheel on a blind date which I was most definitely not okay with. I got Mikelle to join us and the 3 of us started walking down the street to grab a taxi. Before we reached the main road with taxis a guy offered to drive us in his car so we got in some random guy's car. Can I get a heeyah for stupid?! On the drive over he showed us a disk that said "Sexy" on it and made the motion asking us if we wanted him to play it. Turned out he has a DVD of American girls dancing in a pretty slutty club. That's right.. I watched semi-porn in a stranger's car in China. He dropped us of randomly on the side of the road where Luke indicated and I was really confused why Luke hadn't told him the beach. Surprise! We were meeting up with Rachel first. Rachel is a butch Chinese lesbian who Mark found on the couch hoppers website that we went to the KTV and played pool with a few months back. She lived in the states for 7? years so her English is perfect. By the time we got home Sunday night I discovered that Luke had been talking to Rachel on QQ the night before, not the guy he was meeting. Rachel had hooked him up on this blind date with a guy she hadn't seen for a couple years and who, I later discovered, didn't speak much English. Definitely not what I was under the impression was happening that day when I agreed to go. Anyway, we met up with Rachel and started walking down the street where we eventually ran into.. um.. I don't know his name so I'm going to call him Boy. Boy is super attractive but has put on enough weight since Rachel last saw him that she initially walked past him on the sidewalk because she didn't recognize him. Boy is 30 years old, a fattie (for a Chinese person), and doesn't speak much English. Talk about awkward first date with him, Luke, and Rachel. I was really glad I had Mikelle with me. When we got to the beach Mikelle and I left the 3 of them to walk down the beach and ended up running into the same guy who sketched us on the night market about 2 months ago. He asked if he could draw us (for free) and I wasn't positive it was the same guy until I saw him start drawing Mikelle in the same style he drew Melanie and I before. His name is Jack and I discovered later that he's one of the guys Talon and Luke used to hang out with. He's pretty cool and cute and funny but you can tell he's a rich boy and druggie. The portraits turned out a lot better than last time and they looked really good at first but the longer you stare at them the stranger you look. He's pretty good at drawing individual features but not all of them together on one face. When he was done drawing us Mikelle and I headed back to find the other 3 and discovered Rachel sitting there alone. I noticed Luke's shirt, shorts, and underwear sitting next to her and asked where he was and if he was walking around naked. She said Luke and Boy had walked down the beach and she'd called them and they were supposedly on their way back. The 3 of us girls started walking in the direction they went and eventually ran into them. It turned out that Luke was wearing short swimsuit shorts which was good because I was starting to get really concerned that he was naked. We ran into Jack again and waited while he sketched Luke. The 5 of us ate popsicles (mine was sweetened with red beans like everything else here and had actual beans in it) while we were discussing what to do. While we were sitting there Rachel's partner, Leslie, showed up and I suddenly realized I was on a triple homosexual date. Never again. Rachel bailed out with Leslie and the 4 of us got on a bus and ended up at our noodle shop downtown where we got dinner, then ice cream at KFC, and then Luke, Mikelle, and I took a bus home.
Back at the dorms I watched a little bit of Harry Potter in the common room with a group but I was tired and was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes so I went to bed and fell asleep almost immediately.
Monday 6/17:
Monday I was up in time for breakfast and then took a super hot shower and was a little sad when there was no cold water to cool the scalding water off. It's amazing how one month I'm complaining about how there's no hot water and now I get upset if there isn't cold.
It was super dark outside and rainy so I worked on editing a blog post I'd written the night before. While I was working Sam came in and we ended talking all morning until lunch. I was pretty sick of the Sam fan club drama and hadn't really talked to him much since the whole thing with Geoff went down (which also didn't help my relationship with Sam) but once he came in my room that morning somehow I changed my mind and ended up being really glad we got one last Monday morning together.
After lunch I helped Mikelle write out Jeopardy questions for teaching Melanie's class (that's the thing with people leaving-- the rest of the group gets the task of taking their kids for them) and then planned my own lessons.
In 4th grade I taught my kids the concept of popcorn reading and it made reading through the book 10 times better. We spent an entire class period reading one story and I couldn't believe how well it went. When I got to 5th grade I tried to do the same thing but I never got them to shut up so I spent pretty much the entire class just telling them to be quiet. I had a break after that and hid up in the supply room working on Sudoku puzzles and then eventually curling up in a chair for a few moments of quiet rest. It was really hard to convince myself to get back out of that chair and go teach 5th grade again but I did it. Luke usually teaches English Corner at that time but he discovered it was over for the semester so he came and taught my kids instead. He went over a worksheet about job applications and then we let them go outside to play a game. By the time we got outside and I tried to play Ooga Booga with them it started raining again so we went back inside and played Pictionary for the last 10 minutes of class. The last word I gave them was W.C. (bathroom) and they drew a picture of a squatter on the floor with a guy taking a dump over it. It made my day a little bit better.
After dinner we were supposed to go rollerskating but that got cancelled again which I deduced from everyone having already taken off for the night. Mikelle walked out in the hallway obviously annoyed at something and I found out Sarah had dumped Mikelle's stuff off the desk onto her bed while she was cleaning. The battle of whether there should be stuff on the desk or not is pretty constant in their room. Mikelle and I went to the Jia Jia Yue and I bought all of the banana popsicles they had. I hadn't had them for a couple days and I was going through serious withdrawals. There was a cleaning/room check the next day so everyone was cleaning and I figured that even though I have what might be the cleanest room in the group I should probably work on some stuff too. I ended up cleaning my fan and taking everything off the walls before I gave up because I wasn't really in the mood. I invited Mikelle over for a sleepover and we played 3 games of Flux before we were too tired to focus and decided to just go to sleep.
Tuesday 6/18:
Tuesday morning I turned on the shower and sprayed down the whole bathroom and scrubbed at it for a while and then showered all the gross off my body too when I was done. I worked on cleaning up my room some more but got bored and decided it was clean enough so I switched to working on my student profiles that the head teachers finally gave me. I have about 50-55 (I've lost track of how many kids I currently teach) profiles to write out and they're taking forever to do. I got bored out of my mind and walked down the hall to hang out with Luke and Sam and talked with them while they were cleaning their room. Sam asked me to help him carry stuff down to the supply room before lunch so we walked down the waterfall pouring off the stairs from the rain and then headed up to the cafeteria for a really good lunch.
After lunch I went back down to the supply room with Mikelle to get her suitcase she's left up there since we got here and then got back to my room and discovered the internet was working for the first time in a few days.
My first 4th grade class was cancelled because they were swimming. Teaching 5th grade was horrible again. I tried to get them to finish reading the story (which would take 10 minutes if they'd shut up) but they just weren't having it. Luke needed the books for his class and he only had 8 students so he ended up bringing them in my class and trying to teach all of them. They wouldn't shut up for him either so he went and got a Chinese teacher. When they came back in he told the kids they were so bad we weren't teaching the other class of the day and that the Chinese teacher would teach them instead. I was very happy to hear that. 4th grade was super talkative too but not as bad. I did an activity with them talking about what they were going to do on summer vacation. As soon as class was over I left the school building and headed back to the dorms.
I hung out with Mikelle and looked at photos of her family on Facebook while I ate banana popsicles and told her about how horrible teaching was. After dinner Jay joined us in my room and we played Phase 10, Uno, and Monopoly Deal while we worked on finishing my stash of American candy and gum. Jay eventually left and I made potatoes and cut up cucumber for Mikelle and I while she showered. We played Monopoly Deal until we were exhausted and ended up finishing on a tie. She slept in my room again and we slept right next to each other in our undies under the mosquito net I set up. For the second night since Melanie left I slept super well. I'm worried about sleeping alone all the time when I get home now that I've figured out that I really do sleep better with someone. Not that I sleep more or wake up less, but that I have a more peaceful sleep.
Wednesday 6/19:
Wednesday morning the internet was running pretty well so I decided to start working on my GeoCorps applications. You can only apply for three so I've decided on Dinosaur National Monument near Vernal, UT, Congaree National Park in South Carolina, and Oregon Caves National Monument in (you guessed it) Oregon. I was an idiot and deleted my cover letters from the last time I applied so I got to start over from scratch. My resume and grades are still saved though so at least I don't have to do those again. I also took some time that morning to attack my eyebrows that now look 10 times better and add to my notebook that I've been working on the past couple months. Have I ever mentioned my notebook on here? I just have a lot of random pages with different topics I add to every day like funny quotes or Things I Hate About ILP or What I Miss About America. I'm a little more than a little obsessed with it. After that little break I went back to working on my application and updating my resume for the rest of the morning.
After lunch I spent my break planning my lessons for the day and then went to a meeting at Ella's office. We had to wait to go in because there were parents in there talking to her who want to sue the school for their kid's head being cracked open. That seems to happen a lot here. I think we're up to 3 or 4 students since we got here. One slipped on the tiles outside when it was raining the other day. Another one was beat up by another student. As I'm sure I've already mentioned, the kids are super violent here and I'm actually surprised more accidents haven't happened. At the meeting we just talked about stuff going on for the next week. We're supposed to greet parents of new students Sunday morning and then the school's taking us out for lunch and then to an orphanage for the rest of the day. On Monday we're putting on a carnival for the primary students.
For 4th grade I taught the kids about chores and then played I Spy with them for the last 5 minutes of class which they LOVED. Bayli took my 2 5th grade classes that day because she already takes part of them each day and knew I was sick of them and didn't mind teaching all of them.
During my break between 4th grade classes I talked to Mikelle for a while and started compiling my journal entries onto a word document to print off before I leave here so I can put it in a notebook. For my second 4th grade class we went through the story we'd read on Monday and talked about the chores in the story and then Bruce's mom came in and gave the kids ice cream that she had frozen in molds so you could just eat it off a toothpick. The chocolate was okay but by the time she got to the yellow ice cream it had started melting and she scooped it all in a bowl and gave it to me to drink the whole thing. It tasted like egg nog and I was in heaven. She had brought all the stuff to make more ice cream so I stayed while she was showing them how to make it but then bailed once it went in the ice cream maker.
Mikelle's mom knows a lady who transferred money into Mikelle's account so we could buy a bunch of cheap jewelry off the street for her to resell at home. I signed us out and right as we started heading down the stairs we could hear Alicia yelling for Mikelle. Well, Mikelle still hasn't turned in her student profiles so she started running down the stairs to get away and I followed. We missed the 38 bus (or it just never showed up) so we took the 15 downtown and stopped at a Bank of China to take out the shopping money before we headed to the noodle shop for dinner.
The noodle shop was closed for the day so we ended up buying these wraps off the night market that were delicious and spent the rest of the night buying cheap jewelry. I also picked up another (I have an addiction) pair of Chinese shoes and I'm just going to let you be surprised by their awesomeness when I get home. I'd let Mikelle use my boys underwear I bought off the street when we went to the mud caves and they got ruined so she bought me a new pair and they're wonderful. They're purple and made mostly out of the mesh basketball shorts material. I'm tempted to go buy some more.
We had to run to catch the last bus home but we made it in time. Barely. There were people packed all the way to the door but I shoved my foot in a gap anyway and pulled myself on. Mikelle hadn't gotten on yet when the bus started moving so I yelled at her to commit and pulled her on with me. It took some manuvering to get the door shut around us but we made it on. Success! On the ride back we discovered that a Chinese guy in an attractive floral print shirt that we'd been admiring earlier on the night market was on the bus too so we got to stare at him the whole way home. We named him Joel and I wish I would have had a camera to get a picture. I waved goodbye to him as we were getting off the bus and he waved back. Made my night. Mikelle slept in my room again and we were asleep almost immediately.
Thursday 6/20:
Mikelle has sinus allergies so I didn't sleep super well. I got up for breakfast and grabbed some "scones" and brought them back upstairs to eat with Mikelle. There were onions in them for flavoring. Gross. Mikelle left to teach and I finally got Facebook to load so I spent a while stalking until my VPN gave out. I decided to finally shave my arms again because Bettd rubbed her face on my arm yesterday and then gave me a dirty look because it was a little prickly. My bad. I've spent the rest of the morning working on compiling my journals and catching up on journaling which chatting with Nate and Matt online but now it's time for lunch so *fingers crossed* there's something good!
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