Sunday 5/26:
Sunday started off with church like usual. Kelly was out of minutes on her cell phone so she took our ILP one to use therefore we had no phone to call in for church. Sam ended up calling in through Skype instead and with most of the people off the internet it actually worked really well. Everyone's supposed to mute their end of the line unless you're speaking but when we started singing and heard someone very awkwardly singing along we discovered that hadn't happened on at least one line. Maddie gave one of the talks which was really nice to have someone we could hear properly again. She talked about obedience and how it's the only sure way to happiness. She also talked about obeying being a sign of love and gratitude for our Heavenly Father and Christ. I never cease to be awed by the importance of gratitude. It is so essential that we are aware of our surroundings and see the goodness of God in each little thing.
After lunch we had another practice for the final performance and worked on Edge of Glory. We had got the voice parts down pretty well the day before and decided to add in guitar, beat boxing, and cups. Alisha and Rochelle started us off with guitar while a group of us sang "bums" and then the rest of the voices came in. Sam added beat boxing and Andrea, Susan, and I played cups for some percussion. We practiced in the common room and it sounded amazing. I felt like I was in an acapella/Glee group and fully enjoyed practicing that day.
After practice Melanie, Mikelle, Mark, Geoff, Sam and I played a round of Phase 10 and then Mikelle and I played Uno for a while after the rest of the people bailed out. Most of the group left for the rest of the day/evening to go to Big World and get fast food for dinner. I ended up watching Ratatouille with Melanie to end off the night.
Monday 5/27:
Monday night/morning was what I called the hurricane storm. I know it wasn't anywhere close to being intense enough but it's as close as I've ever gotten to being in one. It poured rain all night and doors in the building kept slamming shut from the wind. When I got up in the morning the common room was flooded because the windows were left open. The floor was covered and the couches were pretty soggy too.
I went in Sam's room and to my surprise discovered him still in bed which never happens so I laid on Luke's bed and read for a while and then talked to Sam the rest of the morning. We had a pre-dress rehearsal in the auditorium at 12:15 which turned into 3 hours of rehearsal. Kelly planted us in the front row and we got to sit through all the other acts too while we waited for our turn. I was joking with Kelly about her cancelling my classes for the rest of the day and no matter how obvious I made it that I was joking, she just didn't get it. It ended up that my first two classes were cancelled because of the rehearsal anyway so I only had to teach 1 period of 5th grade. During the rehearsal I got to watch Dellany doing Tai Quan Do with numchucks which looked really good. I also got to watch my 4th graders do a skit for Emperor's New Clothes and couldn't help but laugh uncontrollably when Bruce said, "Oh my god am I stupid?" when he can't see the new clothes in the skit. As for our dance and song... it was a horrible performance. The auditorium is dead as far as acoustics go and we couldn't hear each other so for the song we were all on different notes and beats. Super embarrassing.
It was nice not having class until 4:45 but my 5th graders were absolutely horrible. I taught a lesson on names that 4th grade absolutely loved but the 5th graders wouldn't shut up long enough to listen. I was pretty mad at them and 10 minutes before class ended their Chinese teacher walked in and they were angels and we all pretended that I hadn't been yelling at them for the past half hour and happily finished the lesson. Twits.
That evening I read for a while but took a nap because I couldn't keep my eyes open even though it was only 6pm. I had to get up for a worthless meeting about the performance and then a group of us were going to watch this pirate movie made by the people who did Wallace and Gromit but after 15 minutes of watching Warning screens in 10 different languages and not being able to get the movie playing we switched to Fantastic Mr. Fox which I watched until I was too tired and couldn't handle the stupid humor anymore. When I got back to my room Luke was sitting on my bed talking to Melanie so I walked out to go sleep on his bed instead and ran into Sam in the hall coming to tell me goodnight. I kicked Luke out of my room and passed out cold.
Tuesday 5/28:
Tuesday morning I started off the day right with a hot shower and ended up working on a Powerpoint for my class that was all about Harry Potter. Melanie worked out to Insanity again during this and once again I just sat on the couch and ate food while she sweat. I kinda enjoy it. Late that morning Mikelle wandered in sick and had left teaching because she felt so bad. I was a little worried that maybe she had appendicitis and sent her to bed until Melanie was out of the shower and could maybe shed some light on the situation. Turned out the wrong side of her stomach was in pain for that to be the diagnosis. Oops.
Lunch was all disgusting except for the semi-fried rice so I just ate a big bowl of that and called it good. Back at the dorms I decided to see if I could throw our bathroom garbage (we call it our pee trash since you can't flush toilet paper here) from the 5th floor down to the small dumpsters on the ground. I totally made it.
Since I'd been diligent about working on stuff for class all morning I took the liberty of borrowing Luke's straightener and straightened my hair before I had Luke practice the dance we're doing to Footloose for the final performance.
In class that day I taught the kids about Harry Potter and then had my 4th graders make coat of arms (coats of arms?) which ended up being a really good activity. My 5th graders were unbelievably horrible and I grabbed Luke from next door to yell at them during the 1st period and then ended up letting him teach them for the last hour. I had the intention of teaching them but forgot Tuesday was my day with extra 4th graders so I ran out of coat of arms worksheets and the printing room failed at letting me print off more in time for class.
After dinner we had another dance practice in the auditorium, after which I discovered that Mikelle had 4 kidney stones, the biggest being 7mm. No wonder she hurt. That night no one was doing much so I spent the evening in my room quietly catching up on journaling. Mikelle asked Melanie and I to sub for her the next day and we said yes but then I got Geoff to take sub instead (since we didn't want to and they used to be his kids anyway) but he later backed out.
Sam came and talked to us for an hour while Luke was on the phone with his mom which was a nice touch to end the night off right.
Wednesday 5/29:
Wednesday morning Sam was supposed to wake me up so when Melanie got up to go sub for Mikelle I just went back to sleep. I was scheduled to take over at 10 and it turned out Sam forgot to wake me up so I began my crazy day at 9:30 when I finally woke up and grabbed The Rainbow Fish and some paper for my lesson that day and ran down the stairs. During opening exercises I ended up being a huge distraction because the kids kept looking at my blue hair and colorful nails. In primary there are 2 main teachers' favorites: Christian (who is a brat but is still adorable and will dance for you and make kissy faces) and Laurence. Laurence is in Mikelle's group and speaks English better than most of my 5th graders. Not only does he speak English really well but he's very formal about how he says things so as he stood there rubbing my elbow he was chatting up a storm. Here are two clips from our conversation:
(As you read these you have to picture a very formal little chubby Chinese boy speaking very matter-of-factly. If you don't it just sounds stupid.)
Laurence: "Your hair is blue."
Me: "I know. Do you like it?"
Laurence: "No. It doesn't look good."
Laurence: "Where is Mikelle?"
Me: "She's sick."
Laurence: "Did she die?"
I'll have to get a video of a conversation with Laurence because it's always ridiculously amusing.
Since I was teaching the 2nd half of the morning I had the 2nd graders. There are 3 rotations for 25 minutes each with 8 or 9 kids in each group. I read (mostly paraphrased) The Rainbow Fish and then they all drew a rainbow fish and we glued on a single sequin for a sparkly scale. They were angels. I feel bad now for how much I freaked out when I taught Sarah's class because if you just give them paper and a marker they're pretty good about shutting up and being good. You just can't teach them a serious lesson and have much of an expectation for them to speak English.
After lunch was our dress rehearsal for the performance on Friday. I am mind blown at how much work went into this show. Our dance to Footloose went really well and singing to The Edge of Glory was okay but we were on different beats for a little while because it's hard to hear each other because the speakers are all turned out to the audience and the auditorium eats up sound (seriously, the walls of the stage are cork board). After rehearsal I printed off some stuff for my classes but when I got upstairs I found out that Kristen and Cherish were subbing for Bayli (who takes half my kids) so I gave them carmel apple suckers and they subbed for me too :) We're not allowed to do that but the head teachers already thought that all the elementary classes were cancelled for the day (they were except for mine) and they just showed them Tangled so I didn't feel super bad.
Since I didn't have to teach I got to leave campus before it was dark outside!! Melanie and I went downtown to check to see if the DVDs she ordered were pirated yet. We were both already starving so I grabbed a Chinese taco off the street and ate it while we were waiting for food at the chicken place. After we ate we stopped at the little artsy shop across the street that I'm in love with and I bought a sticker for my laptop that says I <3 China and then also discovered a notebook called The Notebook and skull tattoos that I added to my purchase. I passed a guy on the street who was still selling pineapple and bought two slices that tasted amazing. They're pretty much out of season here I guess because no one sells them anymore so it was nice to have my fix at least one more time. When we stopped at the big Jia Jia Yue (which translates to home home happy or happy happy home) I went upstairs for the first time and discovered all the non-food wonders up there. I ended up buying these stick-on clips that you can use to clip electronic cords to stuff. I've wanted some for a while now but have never actually seen them in stores. Walking over to the DVD shop we stopped at our favorite bakery and they still had American sandwiches (wheat bread, lettuce, tomato, egg, lunch meat-ish, and mayo!) so I bought both they had left. I'm now eating them for breakfast as I write this. Scrumdiddilyumptious! I also discovered a random cool shop by the bakery and picked up a couple more awesome Asian hair ties and a cheap bracelet that I've been looking for for about two months now. I'll be going back so that you peeps (gag.. I just wrote that) back home can have some too. At the DVD shop they didn't have the movies they said they'd have ready for us but I still managed to buy 9 other DVDs anyway. Let's just say that I now have an almost complete collection of every movie I've ever wanted to own. On the way to the bus I picked up some more fresh apricots (yay for poor Chinese farmers!) that I'm stoked to eat. The bus back was a tiny bit less packed than usual (I was only touching 4 people standing up) and Melanie and I decided it was a good time to start using our arms being up holding on to the bar to our advantage. When Melanie tickled me my response/reflex was to jerk my arm back and elbow the Chinese woman behind me. I still can't remember how to say either form of sorry in Chinese so it was a tiny bit awkward. I spent the rest of the ride making Melanie think that I'd licked her elbow when she wasn't looking which gave me a good laugh.
Back home I took off the blue cover on my laptop to clean it off and add my China sticker and freaked everyone out with my white laptop that was suddenly much smaller and dirty looking. I tried to throw our trash out the window again to the bins (that are maybe 2' in diameter) 5 stories below and missed so I had to run downstairs and pick up all our trash that had exploded all over the ground. I won't be doing that again. While I was putting everything I bought away Sam came down the hall to say goodnight and we ended up heading to bed not long after him even though it was barely even 10-ish. Melanie and I stayed up and had girl/boy talk for a while discussing a few different things and somehow got on the topic of Alzheimers which was not in any way connected to the first topic but it was an interesting conversation so it worked out. I tried to not sleep under my big comforter that I've been using since I got here (because I wake up sweating every morning) but gave up about 20 minutes in and crawled under it because I couldn't fall asleep. I think it provides another layer of security when I wedge myself up against the wall in the corner to sleep. Whoever knew a comforter would be comforting.. lol I'm soooooooo funny.
Thursday 5/30:
Thursday was super chill and and I hid in my room all morning because there was no class for the primary teachers due to the kids practicing for the performance. I wrote in my journal all morning while eating the delicious sandwiches I'd bought the night before.
Melanie came back in the room mad because Alicia, Andrea, and Sarah were asleep in the common room where she wanted to work out and she had to share the toaster oven so she couldn't make her toast for breakfast right away. I got a good laugh out of that. Mark had anonymously left a note over the sink that just added to my morning humor.
"I don't know who you are, but stop leaving your dishes in the sink. Wash them. Dry them. Put them away. It's really frustrating to walk into the kitchen to see the sink full of everyone's crap every day. It's gross and it takes up the sink. Love, Your mom. P.S.- The plates will be held ransom until this is clean. What up now?"
After lunch we were supposed to rehearse again so I laid out on the cement with Mikelle, waiting for the rest of the group to show up. Mikelle got some of her kids to tickle me and later on of them jumped over my head. It never ceases to amaze me how no matter how much room there is somewhere, I still get bumped into or walked over. There were people in the auditorium so we practiced the dance and song once and called it good. I wrote in my journal until class started and gave my 4th graders a word search for the first period because they were super crazy from the informal week of practices and then had Mikelle join me for the 2nd hour to teach them about taking pictures. There was really no hope in keeping things under control so we ended up just having a fun time taking pictures other than when Walter randomly started saying "F... you" again over and over again it went pretty well. He even started singing, "We will.. .we will.. F you." He wouldn't stop so Luke took him out in the hallway and talked to him. When I got him back he was crying and wouldn't apologize so I just told him I was sorry and hugged him. Poor kid flinched like I was going to hit him. Think about how strict abuse rules are in the USA, especially in schools and then reverse that and imagine how okay it is for teachers to hit kids here. Happens every day. 5th grade was cancelled (thank goodness!) so I got to leave early but not before a hilariously awkward moment happened.
I was standing in the hall talking to some of my 4th graders and they grabbed the fat on my stomach and asked if I had a baby and I told them yes. They weren't fooled and the conversation progressed to them claiming that I had a boyfriend who was apparently Luke. I told them Luke and I were just friends and told them I loved teacher Sam (they make sure I distinguish between liking and loving someone) and that's when wonderful happened. Tyler (my 4th grade boyfriend) was standing there holding my hand talking about how I loved teacher Sam when Kristen walked in the hallway to sub for Bayli. He made Kristen and I hold hands and then told her that I loved teacher Sam and I laughed and told him that she loved teacher Sam too. Tyler was way too excited about the new discovery and Kristen started laughing awkwardly and said she liked teacher Mark. Kristen and I have never actually talked about us liking Sam and I never thought that would ever be shared vocally, especially in front of a 4th grader while we were holding hands. I love that girl though and enjoyed the funny moment.
I got back to the dorms in time to say goodbye to Melanie and Mikelle going to the hospital to look for Mikelle's iPhone that she'd lost there when she'd gone in for kidney stone stuff. I didn't even bother attempting to eat dinner and finished off my last half of sandwich and then went to find Sam so we could walk down to the beach to watch the sunset like we'd planned. I couldn't find him so later I went up on the roof to watch it there instead and discovered him talking to Kristen. I decided to give up on sunset altogether and spent the rest of the night in my room writing in my journal some more.
Friday 5/31:
Friday was a great day. In China they celebrate Children's Day on 6/1 but we celebrated it a day early at Daguanghua. That morning was the end of the year performance and after everyone working their butts off on last minute details all week it was incredible. Since we're white we got front row seats but Jay and I ended up behind this big vase of really smelly flowers that gave me a headache 10 minutes in. Kelly wouldn't let us move them. Our kids were all adorable in their costumes with all their stage makeup on. Miffy/Amy (she changes her name) led off the performance as a cat in a cat/mouse dance/skit. Absolutely wonderful. My 4th graders made quite the highlight of the show when they performed the story Emperor's New Clothes and one of my boys danced to Gangam Style in his underwear on stage. Never thought I'd have that sort of teacher/student relationship. Our ILP group did a dance to Footloose and then sang Edge of Glory, both of which turned out pretty well considering the completely flat (for sound) stage/auditorium we were in. I could go on forever about the show but I'd much rather you just watch it with me. We're supposed to get copies of the entire thing.
After it was over a bunch of us all hung out on the steps in our matching Daguanghua polos and took a few awesome photos before we headed to lunch and then walked right back out of the building to go buy food instead. There are just some days cafeteria food is too much and you need to eat something more than rice. A big group of us headed down the street but split up to different shops and I ended up getting noodles with Luke. When we got back everyone was still gone so I had a little quiet time before people started trickling back in. Sam came in my room and talked/hung out with me for a while before we had to pack our backpacks and head to the Weihai train station for an overnight train to Jinan.
At the station while we were waiting for the train Jay and I ended up having the wonderful experience of a lady sitting next to us that made my top 5 list of worst smelling people I've met.
The train we got on was a little bit different than we've had before because it had walls at the end of the bunks separating you from the aisle. It made the train a lot quieter but also a lot smaller feeling. I wasn't a huge fan. I was tired and didn't really want to stay up talking so as soon as we pulled out of the station I put in my headphones and feigned sleep until I finally passed out for real.
Saturday 6/1:
Saturday morning I woke up first and laid there looking out the window for a while before the ticket man woke the rest of the group up. Once we got to Jinan we bought tickets for a train to Taishan later that day and then split up. Mark, Kristen, Geoff, and I went to Baodu Spring while the rest of the group hiked 1000 Buddha Mountain. The spring was pretty but it made me realize how much I just don't care about traveling in China anymore right now. It was to the point where one Chinese building looked pretty much like the other 5 I'd already seen. I'd been debating about going to Shanghai on vacation but after that realization I decided I just didn't have it in me.
After the spring we went to Walmart and bought a bunch of banana bread that we ate for lunch. We walked over to Daming Lake and Mark and I watched while Geoff and Kristen rode the roller coaster. We decided to rent a boat for an hour (only $13!) and that was my favorite part of the entire day. It was nice to just lay out on the back of the boat and enjoy a little separation from the busyness of China. Kristen and Geoff rode the roller coaster one more time before we headed back by the train station and got lunch (well, they did but I didn't feel so hot so I only ate bread and water for about 4 days straight) and then chilled in McDonald's for a couple hours playing card games while a homeless man with a Santa Claus hat sat really close to me and watched everything I did.
The rest of the group met back up with us at McD's and we got on the 1-hour train to Taishan. I was doing okay for the first half hour but had to fight hard to stay awake for the rest. We took a van to the hostel there and I showered and went to bed ASAP which ended up being 7:30. I got to sleep until 11:45pm before Mark woke us up to go hike Mount Tai. (Tai=big, shan=mountain)
Sunday 6/2:
When we went to leave the hostel we discovered they had locked the gate so we were stuck inside. We ended up climbing halfway up an outdoor staircase and hopping over the fence. At the ticket gate the woman wouldn't take my passport as a student ID for the discount and I'd forgotten to bring any other identification so I ended up borrowing Bayli's drivers license instead and that worked. It's kinda nice sometimes looking similar to half the group because I've borrowed several of their I.D.'s for discounts. We started hiking at 12:30am and I was in the back with Ben, Cherish, and Josh. It was a nice pace at first but I realized I could go a lot faster and might miss the sunrise if I kept at that pace so I broke off and started booking it up the mountain. Taishan has about 8,000 stairs to the top so it takes quite a while to get up and is a lot rougher going up than just a trail would be. But trails don't exist in China, cement and stairs do.
I quickly ran into Sam and Kristen and discovered that Kristen was feeling sick and ended up hiking right behind them for a while. When we ran into Maddie she was feeling sick too so she and Kristen dropped back and Sam took off. After a while I reached a bigger pavilion than the ones I'd seen before and didn't see any more stairs going up. I was a little confused because I knew there was no way it was the top but I couldn't see anything higher than where I was at. It didn't help that it was pitch dark outside. After standing there a minute a Chinese man pointed me toward more stairs but they went down instead of up. I realized I was on one peak and had to go across a saddle to climb the real peak. The realization that I had at least hit a main point gave me the strength to keep going. After that Josh and I kept passing each other so we ended up hiking up the rest of the mountain together. On one of the higher landings (there are pavilions with shops on them all the way up the mountain) a guy tried to rent me this huge green communist coat and I just looked at him, pointed a my body dripping sweat, laughed, and kept going. At the end you hit this intense climb that just goes straight up with no flat areas. It's the section you usually see on postcards. It was death. It got to the point where I was taking one little staircase at a time before I let myself stop for a second to muster up enough desire to make it one more. We finally made it to the top (about 3.5 hours later) and discovered that there were several places people gathered to watch the sunrise. I would guess there were a few thousand people up there and after walking around for about half an hour we couldn't find anyone else from the group so it ended up being just Josh and I watching the sunrise together. I wasn't sure we were going to see much because it was so cloudy but a roar of noise from the crowds turned my eyes to the sky and I saw a beautiful, perfect circle of red.
Once the sun was up I saw Kristen, Cherish, and Maddie (I spotted Kristen's white legs) and we made our way over to them. They had taken the stairs really slow and made it just in time for sunrise. After 1000 of us filed through one small archway (which took forever) we ran into Mark, Sam, Bayli, and Hannah. That's a benefit of being white in China-- you can spot us forever away. Some of the group stopped to get noodles for breakfast so I hiked down with Sam. We ended up jumping over the wall along the stairs to take a scenic route that had less stairs, people, and "China." Well, except for the human poo right next to the trail. You'd think they could have at least stepped off the trail a few steps. Sam showed me this funny run down the steps that he said he learned in his honors hiking class. I made sure to make fun of him for being in an honors hiking class and we eventually made it to the bottom of Taishan around 9am. 16,000 steps in 8.5 hours? Not too bad.
I waited for my turn to shower and then joined a few other people for church via Skype. We called in during the sacrament so the rest of the meeting was just testimonies and I ended up laying on a bed with my eyes shut listening. We took the K3 bus back to town where we stopped at a RT Mart where I picked up a water bottle and toffee chocolate candy and then lost the group. I had no idea where they went but I had a general idea where the train station was at so I walked over there, asking people I could run faster than where it was at. I read my book while I was waiting for the group and they showed up pretty quickly after. We still had another hour until we left so I leaned up against a wall and sweat and slept for an hour.
On the train I watched Josh and Geoff play Egyptian Ratscrew while I ate some Chinese Ramen. Sam came back from the car next to us where the other half of the group was at and I laid on his bunk with him while he read. Geoff came over and said, "One of you needs to move." I asked why because that sort of thing had never bothered him before to which he replied, "It makes me uncomfortable." I commented with a quick, "B.S." and climbed up in my bunk. I put music in and half-slept for the remainder of the ride home. I was on the top bunk right next to the light which they never turned off so it was super bright a foot away from my face. The cars on the train had crappy connections so every time we stopped the car behind us would smash into ours which would wake me up. At one point when I woke up I opened my eyes to see a Chinese man sleeping in the bunk next to me which kept scaring/surprising me each time I woke up. I finally passed out for a while and Geoff slapped my foot to wake me up, saying that the ticket man needed to swap out my ticket. Since I was awake at that point I sat on Josh's bottom bunk with Sam's head in my lap for the rest of the ride home. The train stopped in Yantai which is about an hour away from our school so we had to grab taxis for the rest of the way back. I knew Geoff was miffed at me so I asked Sam to sit by me on the way home and I ended up in the back of a taxi with Sam and Ben with Geoff in the front. The ride was silent other than a Chinese guy who had helped us at the station to get the taxis for 200 yuan catching up to us in another taxi to tell us that they wanted 30 yuan more to pay for us to use the toll road. We finally got back to the school at 1am.
I made sure to pay Geoff for my portion of the taxi before I got out so I wouldn't have to talk to him later and hung back on the stairs so he wouldn't try to talk to me on the way back to our rooms. I realized too late that he was hanging back too and ended up being confronted by Geoff and getting yelled at for being so mean/jerk and getting shoved to the ground with the threat of, "What are you going to do? Call ILP?" because he had plenty of stuff I had done wrong that he could tell them about. He finally finished with his insults and I waited for him to get far ahead of me on the stairs before I followed. I was really upset so once I got up the stairs I dropped my stuff off in front of my door without even bothering to open it and went to walk down the hall to get a hug from Sam. The light was off in his room and in my upset state I didn't think about him still being awake and just leaving the light off because Luke was sleeping. I turned instead to Jay who was sitting in the hallway using the internet. We only had 1 router working and it was set up in Mark and Geoff's room so you either had to be in their room, an adjoining room, or the hallway to use the internet. I asked Jay if I could have a hug and then broke down sobbing in her arms. When she asked if I wanted to talk about it I said, "I can't." because I didn't want to get her involved and we were sitting right outside Geoff's door so I figured he could probably hear so all I said was that Geoff and I had got in a fight. She said she figured that because he was pretty mad and venting to her about me on the train. After a while I calmed down some and went to bed. I laid in bed but couldn't sleep so I went back down the hall to check my email. Jay was still out there and was trying to cheer me up, showing me funny stuff on Facebook. Geoff heard us laughing and came out mad and tried to start arguing with me again but Jay broke it off telling him to stop. He stood facing us for a few minutes, waiting for me to talk to him but I ignored him and kept reading emails until he said he was unplugging the router. Once he went back in his room the internet was gone so I went back to bed. I asked Jay to stay in the hallway until I was in my room so Geoff wouldn't come after me and she asked if I wanted her to sleep in my room with me but I declined, saying I would lock the door. I found out later that Jay stayed up all night watching Geoff pace up and down the hallway in front of my door to make sure he didn't try to break in my room.
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