Our Week Long Vaca! Day 1 and 2

Alright, we are back from our vacation and into the rhythm of things so now I’m able to finally blog about it! Our trip was quite the adventure. It started on Thursday with a two hour bus ride to the train station where we got on a train and rode for 26 hours…yes, more than a day. The train station was so crowded with people sitting on newspapers on the floor because they know how dirty it is. I mean, we saw a little kid pee on the floor in one of the train stations and was it cleaned up after? Nope! His parents didn’t do anything about it except act a little embarrassed and neither did anyone else the whole time we were there. Once we got on the train time practically came to a stand still because we all knew we would be there for so dang long, sitting up right, on a train, for 26 hours…not cool! We talked for a long time, ate all our snacks, studied Chinese/English with a bunch of Chinese people that gathered around when we pulled out our flashcards and started speaking Chinese, watched a few episodes of The Office, tried really hard to sleep through the night which included sleeping pills and only 20 minute increments of sleep, played Sudoku, got our pictures taken on camera phones multiple times by multiple people, watched more Office and Seinfeld, and listened to a lot of music. It was a very long day if you can’t tell and because I had only gotten 3 hours of sleep the night before I was feeling like I was going to die around 1 or 2 A.M. My body was aching from sitting for so long. Let’s just say it was definitely not my most favorite experience of my life. It was such a relief to get off that train and move on in our lives! We went to our hostiles and got checked in. We actually had to hustle there hoping to get there right before 5 P.M. or else they wouldn’t have our rooms reserved. But after running the last couple minutes while trying to find the place we made it just in time. Afterwards, we found Emily, Emily (a.k.a. M&M named by me), and Charlotte who had arrived the night before because they flew instead of riding the retched train and all headed to Muslim Street while the boys (Caleb Larkin, Ray, and Young…our two Chinese friends for the trip) and Ashley went to buy our train tickets to Hangzhou. Muslim Street is a market with tons and tons of people buying and selling whatever you can think of. It was the national holiday so oh, were those streets packed each night. We tried “Chinese Pizza” and just walked around for a couple hours, got some amazing ice cream cones at one of the stands, talked in McDonalds for a while about the Terra-cotta Warriors we’d be going to the next day, and headed back to our hostile. For most of that adventure it was just me, Emily P., Gen, and Shantel because the streets are too crowded to stay in a huge group and get any shopping done. Anita, Natasha, Aimee, Sierra, and I were all in a separate hostel than the rest of the group. Our room had four bunk beds so…of course, we had three guys in our room with us each night. Two of them were there during our entire stay, one from the Czech Republic and the other from Germany. They both said they were there because they were on a “World Tour” but not with a group, just on their own. The final bunk was occupied by a different guy each night. The first night he didn’t come into our room until midnight which was just for literally five seconds and then not again until the sun was about to rise. The next guy was Simon from New Zealand and he was actually really fun to talk to. The last night Tony was our roomie and he is from the states and is here teaching English too but through a different program. He was funny because he did not want to stop talking…even when it got to about 1:30. I finally had to ask him to turn off the light and made a joke out of it because he was so awake, I had been lying in bed for twenty minutes and I was on the top bunk. He and his girlfriend are on a one year contract to teach here which would be scary because what if something happened to their relationship? Hopefully they survive it! Anyways, the next morning we got up and headed to the Terra-cotta Warriors which is what Xi’an is known for. There are thousands of these warriors that were discovered about 30 years ago that were buried more than a thousand years ago! Each of these warriors was individually made so they don’t look the same as any other and apparently there are still a lot more that are still buried. It was really interesting to see and we loved it. About 13 or so of us were waiting for a couple more people from our group outside the Terra-cotta Warriors when we were bombarded by one Chinese person after another to get their picture taken with us. It was so funny! I mean it does happen a lot that you get people that’ll take your picture and then every once in a while you get someone that will ask to take a picture with you but never yet had we had so many people do it in a row. We were honestly posing for pictures for five minutes straight. We were cracking up. I finally said to a group of them, “wu kuai” which means five dollars in Chinese and they all busted up laughing, it was funny. We ate lunch at a Subway that we happily discovered was just outside the Warriors as well. There are tons of McDonalds and KFC’s anywhere you go in China and we really don’t ever go to those places except for when we want an ice cream or something sweet but Subways and places like Pizza Hut are far and few between. Because of this it really is so nice to get an American meal every once in a while which actually ended up happening quite a bit in Xi’an because our hostel also had American entrees like French Toast which was SOO good haha. Anyways, enough about food, we also went to a pagoda called the Big Goose Pagoda and took a bunch of pictures there as well. That night we bought some calligraphy pieces and drawings from our friend Hwong that we met and had taken us to all these places throughout the day so we wouldn’t get ripped off by the tour groups. He had some great paintings and really cool sayings and even taught some of our friends earlier how to do some of the calligraphy. Later, a few of us just had dinner at our hostel and talked for a couple hours until we went to bed after a long day. I’m going to split days up in my posts since this is obviously going to take a few words! : )

National Holiday Celebration!

Tomorrow is the start of our week long vacation in which we will be traveling to Xi’an and Hangzhou. It will be awesome but I will have to tell you about that after it happens! Wish me luck though for the 26 hour train ride I will be on tomorrow and the next day!! Ah! Haha. Anyways, today we didn’t have any school because the kids had their Friday class schedule and we don’t teach on Fridays so it was a nice, relaxing day. The best part was the end though and you’ll never guess what we did. All the teachers at the school were getting together for a celebration since they are celebrating this national holiday and they invited us to come. Well, that also meant that they wanted us to perform too like the rest of them. So, we pulled together a great routine that some of you may know…it is from a movie that came out recently, it’s called the Hoedown Throwdown. Hannah Montana Movie…ever heard of it? Haha. Well, if you haven’t, you should go rent that movie from redbox and see the great dance we did for all the Chinese teachers! It was hilarious and they all loved it! It was funny though because everyone else was singing songs that were almost ceremonious and then we come along, “Jump to the left, stick it, glide. Zig zag, cross the floor, shuffle in diagonal, when the drums hit hands on your hips, one foot hop one eighty twist.” It was great. We all wore black shirts, jeans, and then those of us who had bandanas spiced it up with that! It was a fun night even though most of the time we had no idea what was going on in the rest of the performances because we don't know Chinese! We loved it!

The crazy happenings of living on the other side of the world! : )

So have you ever been bothered by/thought it was weird when you’ve had to go to a study group or take a final on a Saturday? Well, think again. The kids, yes little children mind you, had to make up a few missed days of school from a rain storm not only on a Saturday but also Sunday! WHA??? Haha, ya crazy! They were seriously in school Monday through the entire weekend and don’t get a break until the National holiday which starts this upcoming Thursday. So they will have be in school consecutively from Monday until the next Wednesday all day long. I can’t believe they are able to do that but we just went with it and taught our kids on a Saturday! Luckily, ILP has a rule against us teaching on Sunday so the school couldn’t ask us to but the kids still had class from 8 in the morning until 8 at night. I don’t know how they do it. They are probably going to be exhausted by the time this week is over but luckily it is the national holiday or else it would be even longer because we are teaching the Saturday (and they do have class that Sunday) after we get back from the holiday. It was fun though, I was teaching my kids a science lesson on plants and one of the options in the text book was to compare different types of fruits and vegetables and talk about how they are plants. So, I went to the fruit market behind the school and picked up some fruits and veggies and my kids loved it. We decided whether each one was a fruit or vegetable, where it grows, what part of the plant you eat, if you eat it raw or cooked, and which one was everyone’s favorite. So of course, we all had to taste each one! They loved it. We had a lot of fun and I even got one of the other teachers in my group to take some pictures so I’ll have to put them on my photobucket. I haven’t been able to figure out how to put pictures on my blog yet while I’m here but I do have pictures in photobucket. You can go to photobucket.com then in the search bar type hilbil27. It will pull up a window that says “No matches were found to your search request”…BUT further down the page it says, “Are you looking for the Photobucket user hilbil27? Click here to see this user’s album”. There are a ton of pictures on there and they aren’t really edited so there might be some weird ones but that’s what I’ve got for now! I have some more on my camera I need to upload but I will do that soon. Do enjoy though and post some comments on them there or on my blog or even email me! I’d love to hear from you! Thanks for all your support while I’ve been here. I honestly love it so much here and LOVE teaching. The kids are so adorable and try so hard to tell you what they are trying to say in English. They are so fun.
I also have to tell you that we found a Subway…same amazing experience like Pizza Hut. I tell you…once you leave the states and live in a place that serves you chicken feet as one of the options (this happened for the first time today in the cafeteria and I barely had enough of an appetite to eat the rice and snow peas I got) you really learn to appreciate the option of a simple sandwich! Haha. I loved it though and we will definitely be venturing back to Subway in a while just because it is so nice to bite into a sandwich for once! It was so good!! We also found a grocery store with Land o’ Lakes CHEESE!! We are going to buy some bread and make grilled cheese sandwiches this week, we can’t wait! Haha. Don’t get me wrong though, I really am loving the adventures we are having with all the different foods we are trying here but finding American items like cheese, milk, butter, and even sliced bread is so great! Hahaha.

Angels Among Us

Alright, well I haven’t been on here in a while because my dear friend Kim has been going through a lot with her best friend and roommate Trish passing away this week. We found out on Monday that she had 24 hours to live and then Tuesday that she indeed, was gone. It has been really hard for Kim but I’m so grateful for the group we are here with in China because they were ALL so supportive of her, left her notes, treats, covered her classes and everything for her that really helped her a lot. She got to go home for the funeral and we are all hoping that she will be back soon. She is such a strong person that I know she will make it through this and it will only make her stronger. It’s sad that Trish had to leave this Earth so soon but she was obviously needed for very important things in heaven and we will get to see her again and hear the stories of what she was working on while we were still down here. I never met Trish myself but from everything Kim told me about her throughout their friendship she is a great person and left a mark on this world that can’t be erased. I love you Kim and hope you know how much we all care about you and how much the Lord cares about you. Hurry back to China, we miss you!

Two words: Pizza Hut

So yesterday was supposed to be a day filled with crazy adventures at the zoo but that didn’t happen because we practically had a tsunami! It wasn’t one but the rain was coming down so hard and the wind was blowing like crazy! We woke up that morning at 5 am to a car and scooter alarms going off from the wind hitting them every 5 minutes and Gen was coherent enough to realize we had clothes hanging outside to dry since we don’t have a dryer. One pair of Kim’s shorts had fallen and she was pretty upset about that but then when we were coming back from breakfast at the cafeteria we checked the bushes and they were there! It was funny because one of the guards came up to us and was trying to communicate to us that some clothes had been flying all over the place and flown over this huge hill/small mountain right next to our apartments. He was doing the actions since he doesn’t know much English and he was swooping his arms into the air like the clothes going over the mountain and then he said, “Bye, bye” like… “Some clothes went over that mountain and they’re gone, no chance in getting those back!” He made us laugh. Luckily her shorts went straight down instead of flying around so we were able to save them. Later that day the rain calmed down so we ventured to the “5 story mall” some other volunteers had told us about. We found it and went shopping for a little there and then looked around in the shops outside the mall as well. Some people went home after that but me, Kim, Gen, and Emily stayed with Aimee, Sierra, and Emily H. to do a little more looking around and to eat at Pizza Hut! We were really excited about that and oh, were we right to be excited!! It was so much better than Pizza Hut in the states and it was seriously such a nice restaurant! It was probably more like the atmosphere and setting of like Macaroni Grill…but its Pizza Hut haha. And for China, that is an extremely nice restaurant. It only cost us like 4 US dollars a person though and it was so good! We are planning on going back with our whole group for a big celebration, maybe Thanksgiving, someone’s birthday, a made up holiday, or maybe even all of the above! Haha. We couldn’t stop talking about how great it tasted throughout the entire meal. Oh but on the way home afterwards we had to ride the #13 bus back to the fruit stand stop to get on the Kaiyin bus which would take us all the way back. Well, when the 13 bus pulled up to the stop we looked at it like, “Is this the right bus??” It was super tiny and was already packed but the bus driver saw our hesitation and motioned us in. I knew it was the right bus, I just didn’t know how we could fit 7 people into that thing! I honestly don’t know how we did...haha! We were so crammed in there, standing up and barely holding on well enough that when the bus driver would make abrupt stops (which actually happens pretty much all the time in China) we would all be falling over on top of each other. We were laughing so hard. The rest of the bus was pretty quite too because they don’t understand what we’re saying of course which made it even more funny. Sierra was trying to take a picture of us with my camera so she was only holding on with one hand and like I said, the bus driver’s always slammin on the brakes so her foot was sliding into a full on lunge. She is a hilarious girl, I just love her and she was being so funny about it! We had too much fun, I’m just loving it here with the group I’m in!

A day at the beach

Today was quite a fun adventure! Gen, Kim, and I got up a little early to make it to breakfast and then we all headed to the bus at 9 with one of our adorable native coordinators ViVi. She teaches at the school we teach at so she helps us out there and around town and is also our Chinese teacher to learn the language! She’s very cute and always puts two V’s up by her mouth whenever she introduces herself or just for fun randomly, its her trade mark, “Vivi!” haha. Anyways, we hopped on another bus once we got into town that took us to the coast which I believe was about an hour and a half or so. The first part of the ocean we saw wasn’t really a beach at all so those of us that weren’t close to Vivi didn’t hear that we had to get on another 15 min. bus to get to the actual beach. It was pretty funny because we were thinkin, what in the world are we going to do all day at this beach that isn’t even a beach?? Haha. We took some pics and then went to find some lunch and shopping. We then went to the beach which was actually not much better than the one we first saw…we got in the water and swam for a little while. When we got out the hairs on our arms were brown. Yes, brown. And not just on our arms but everywhere. The water was filthy apparently! Me and Emily found a hose to wash off under but everyone else just sat in their gunk. It was really weird for me cuz I thought the ocean was the ocean no matter where you went but that isn’t the case. Gen told me that you can’t get in the ocean in India because that’s where they dispose of their waste. I’m pretty sure China’s water is pretty close to that dirty as well. So it wasn’t that pleasant of an experience for all of us but we had tons of fun anyways. We were only at the beach for a little over an hour and then we found an underground mall that went on forever! I was expecting it to be maybe 20 small shops but I was way wrong!! It was really fun. We all kinda got separated since our group is so big but were always with at least 2 other people and met up at KFC at 7 since our bus was scheduled to leave at 7:30. Gen, Emily, Emily Hunt, and I (I gave them the name M&M accidentally a few weeks ago by saying Em…and Em! I think it’s great though!!) were together for most of it and we found some pretty interesting stuff! We went to a sit down restaurant in the underground mall that served pizza!! We ordered two garden vegetable pizzas and guess what was in it with the veggies…apples. It was delicious!! I seriously loved it haha. It sounds so weird but it was so good! I was telling them that we’d have to go home and tell the Americans about this…they agreed. We also had a funny experience while we were there. Half way through sitting there a man was seated on the table next to us and said Hello in English to us right when he sat down. I was sitting directly next to him so I obviously wasn’t looking at him but M&M were saying under their breaths that it looked like he kept trying to scoot closer to our table and kept talking to himself. Well, can you guess what he was doing? Practicing his English to get ready to talk to us, of course! He asked us what we were doing in China, what we thought of the country, and if it was our first time there. We talked with him and introduced ourselves for a few minutes and then our food came so he let us eat. Well, about 5 minutes later he leans over again and says something that I could really comprehend but it sounded like, “No spaghetti” a couple times and then a few more words after that but I couldn’t figure it out. So I told him, No this is pizza and the Emily’s both laughed a little so I think he got embarrassed. But what he had said was, “Your spaghetti smells good!” He meant pizza but totally put the wrong English word in there so we were all a little confused for a minute haha. It was funny though. I have to give him props though because if he was telling the truth, he had only studied English for a year and was really good at it if that was the case! We also had one of the guys in the market try to get our attention and have us come into his store by saying, “Come on baby!!” This was when we were with almost the entire group and we all burst out in laughter!! He knew he was being funny…I think, if not he realized it afterwards!!

Oh vacations...

We haven’t had school the past two days with it being the weekend so we’ve had a relaxing but fun time around Zhongshan. We were supposed to be going to SanYa this weekend, which is a beach supposedly like China’s Hawaii 15 hours away from us, but there were not any available transportation options for us so we decided we’d make the best out of staying here for one of our vacations! We’re planning on going to a close beach tomorrow and maybe a zoo Monday or Tuesday but we’ll see. Yesterday we went to Walking Street where I found some cute new shoes and 3 new shirts with the total price of…drum roll please...12 U.S. dollars! Haha but seriously, shopping here is AWEsome!! Today we went and got massages at this hair salon just around the corner from where we live and it was amazing. They washed our hair which was like a 15 minute process of massaging and all that goodness and then got a full on massage and our hair blow dried straight for less than 3 dollars! That might have to become a monthly event…or maybe more wink, wink. The rest of the day was filled with trying out the Chinese versions of pastries, which most of them were really good, and trying to get good things we saw Chinese people order but we didn’t know where it was on the menu. One of us tried to ask them where it was on the menu, ordered it, and it was a drink instead of this ice cream stuff…totally wrong thing. The funny thing is that most of the menu had English on it too but obviously that treat was not on the English menu! I didn’t really care cuz I wasn’t going to get one anyways but it was pretty entertaining to watch. Other than that we just hung out and played some night games on the school grounds until we got kicked out haha…woops! No worries, the guards weren’t mad at all, that’s just their job and we didn’t know it was time to leave.