12/20/12
It has seriously been almost over a month since I have last blogged!! I’m sorry for not keeping this blog very updated, but after awhile I just forget to keep all of you informed, but I will be home soon so I figure I will just tell you the great experiences in person :). Wow, time has really flown by!!! I can’t believe in about 10 days I will be getting on a plane to go home. Time has really went by fast here!! It seems just like yesterday I woke up at my aunt Mia’s house in SL got in the car with my mom, lyndsi, Oaklie, Alex, and Brandi and headed for the airport. I could hardly wait to start my adventure. Now it’s coming to an end, and it’s really all bitter sweet. Sad to leave all the great people I met and made a huge impact on my life, but good because I’m over excited to see all of you (I had to count sheep last night in bed to get me to fall asleep, no lie. I kept thinking about coming home and being with friends and family….and eating costa vida…). But I will type a lot more about that when I’m on the plane heading home, I have 17 hours to talk about what an experience china has been for me, so I will post that blog when I am home.
It seems like I have been incredibly busy lately, lots of hanging out with teachers, American friends, and crazy foods (might as well eat the weirdest things while I can right??). So here’s some memories that I have made over this past month
-little boy peeing his pants in my class because he was so excited about doing the hokey pokey, or because he was too lazy to just go. You be the judge of that
-eating turtle, pigs blood, goose kidney, goose bowel, goose liver, and duck kidney. They also offered us to eat pigs stomach and pigs tripe, but we thought it would be best to not try that one
-going to a club in Zhenjiang with our good friend lyne and her husband. Club stories never end well, we will leave it at that
-we went to another wedding and watched the bride and groom kiss for like 3 minutes on stage. Best wedding kiss I had ever witnessed
-teaching kids about christmas. It really has been such a fun lesson to teach. They all get so excited about it.
-having my hair pulled out after class because one boy thought he might make a blonde wig…not really. But her probably could have with all of the hair he kept pulling out.
-going to lyne’s house and hanging out with her family. It really felt like home. We watched some basketball AND got to sit on a rug that was like carpet. They don’t have carpet anywhere here, so when they had that giant rug we were more than thrilled
-coming home in a taxi and hitting a man on his bike, running him completely off the road, and nearly throwing him into the Yangtze River. He came back yelling at the taxi man, but no emotion from the taxi man. He just kept his eyes on the road and didn’t even acknowledge he was there he was a safe taxi driver
-hanging out with the cutest 3 year old cocoa. I seriously want to take her home
-introducing the Chinese to sour foods, since they don’t have like ANY here. Their faces were priceless as we made them eat a sour skittle
-going to Zhenjiang and meeting the nicest man, Steven. We were having a hard time getting a taxi, so Steven came over and helped us get one. People really are gat here
Those are just a few of the great memories, but it’s all I could think of right now. What a blessing it is to be here. Tomorrow we are going to cook our Chinese friends French toast, eggs, and hash browns….mmmm. Friday lyne and Linky are taking us to Pizza Hut in Zhenjiang. Then Sunday we are leaving for Xi’an to go work in an orphanage until Thursday. That is where I will celebrate my Christmas, so I’m way excited about that. Then the next Monday I go home!
Shout out to lyndsi and Stetson who just had their baby girl today!! So excited for them. I haven’t actually seen pictures yet, but I’m sure she is beautiful!! Riata Lee, welcome to the family, I can’t wait to meet you!
11/28/12
Before I start I just want to say how much I love china and the experiences I have learned here. I wouldn’t have traded this for anything! I have really loved being here, but I knew this day would come when I miss Christmas. When I found out I a coming home the 31 I was a little bummed that I would be missing Christmas, but it was only one day so it would be fine. After being here in china I realized its not just one day that I miss its the whole holiday season. I love listening to Christmas music, watching Christmas movies on abc family, decorating the house, looking at the lights, delivering neighbor gifts, having the towns decorated in fun Christmas things, and most of all spending time with family. Around thanksgiving time I was like yes Christmas music! But when I started to listen to it I had to turn it off because it just didn’t seem like Christmas at all. I tried listening to more Christmas music after thanksgiving, but i couldn’t do it without tearing up. We all watched a little bit of the Santa clause with Tim Allen last night, but ended up just sharing our fun Christmas stories together. This morning while cleaning my room I turned on pandora Christmas station and the song ill be home for Christmas was playing, I thought oh yeah, what a great song to be playing right now. But this remix of the song was different it has soldiers speaking in it saying how they miss their families and they are wishing them a merry Christmas. That’s when it got to me, I’m so lucky right now. I may not be in America at this time for a fun holiday season, but at least I can come home six days later. The soldiers who are out there have been away from their families for a long time, and will be for longer. A lot of them also have kids that they will have to miss watching them open presents. I don’t have kids, but with Hudson and brystol being at fun ages I get sad just to think I will be missing them opening presents and doing fun things for Christmas…I can’t even imagine missing your child Christmas. I guess what I’m trying to say through all of this is that yes, I’m going to miss the holiday season, but I really need to be grateful for what I have and the opportunities that have been brought to me. To start off the holiday season I would just like to say how grateful I am for my country and those who fight for us. I’m also grateful for my family and all that they have done for me. They have all been so great to me while I’ve been in china, I’m sure it gets annoying with me face timing them almost every day ;). Lastly I’m grateful for our savior and the sacrifice he made for us. There was another christmas song on pandora that I loved and its called Joseph’s lullaby by mercy me. I suggest all of you to listen to it, such a great song! I hope all of you have a great holiday season!!
11/25/12
Well life in china has been going GREAT! I’m sad that I will be going back in me month, but it will be good to see my friends and family again. Teaching is still going good! I have the days when I just want to slam the meter stick on desks like the Chinese teachers do, but I tend to keep my cool. The more I teach these kids the more I’m going to miss all of them…well most of them. Some other things that have happened is, thanksgiving in nanjing, some church visits over the weekend, some great shopping, Shelby and marissa coming to visit (the girls we met in Beijing), dinners with our students, and making great memories with the girls I’m living with here. Enjoy the pictures!!
11/21/12
We finally went to our first Chinese wedding!! So one of the English teachers in me and Jessica’s school invited us to her wedding, and it was a BLAST! Weddings in china are a complete party!!! When we first got there we were introduced to Alex, the grooms brother, he spoke way good English AND he actually had a sense of humor with what we said. I don’t know if I have mentioned on the blog before about how Chinese people don’t really understand my weird sense of humor, but Alex knew the slang of our language so it was a lot of fun to talk to him. Anyways we ate some dinner, some crab which I really don’t like here, and we had other weird food that I really didn’t like. After the dinner the real party began. The announcer of the wedding sounded like he was announcing a basketball game as he was announcing the couple walking down the aisle. Balloons erupted everywhere and it was a HUGE party. After the marriage ceremony the had many different performers, from an exotic belly dancer to a magician. It really was a good time. They also had all 6 of us girls from yangzhong sing a song for them, so we sang marry me by train. Me of us are real great at singing, but the Asians seemed to love it so we didn’t really care. After the song we hung out with Alex some more, took pictures, then went home. Chinese wedding can now be checked off the bucket list! 🙂
11/13/12
I’m not the type of person to really get excited over animals, or dinosaurs for that matter, but when an amusement park is involved I am! A bunch of us in the Nanjing branch planned a trip to go to the dinosaur park in changzhou this past Saturday. We were all coming from different cities, so we just said the time that we would meet at the front of the park and go from there. None of us in our city have phones (we ran out of minutes) so if needed, no one could get a hold of us. We woke up Saturday morning to a lot of rain and clouds. We had no way of getting a hold of anyone, so we figured they were all still going. We woke up early to begin with, and we had a pretty late night, so we were not in the mood to really go. We told the others we would be there, so we went to the bus station and rode the bus for the 2 hours. Once we were going we realized how stupid we were for even going. Jessica said, “won’t the rides be closed down since its raining?” I responded “well in America they would, but in china I doubt it so we are probably good.” Obviously they close rides down in America for a reason when it’s raining…maybe so we don’t all die?? We get to the amusement park and see the park. It actually looked pretty fun, so we were glad we went. Obviously the boys that were supposed to come didn’t show up because it was raining and it would be cold (the babies). Also, we were told that the cost of the park was 120 RMB. Turns out it is actually 200 RMB, so we were debating if we still wanted to go in. We asked some Chinese kids if the rides are still going they said no, but maybe later in the afternoon they would open up. People were still paying and going into the park, so we decided we were all ready there…might as well make the best of it. We went in and took some fun pictures around the safari part and messed around. We were having fun just walking around taking pictures and talking to the Chinese people. We walked a little further and saw a ride, with people on it (by this time it had quit raining and was just cloudy) we got all excited that there was a ride, and then we walked a little further and noticed there are A LOT more rides and they are OPEN! I don’t know why we didn’t notice any of the rides before while we were taking 50 million pictures when we could of been riding rides. Oh well! They had a ride similar to the rocket, and another one that was like the cliffhanger. There were other cool rides that were our favorites like King Kong and this indoor roller coaster. But the best part of the day was when we got to ride an ELEPHANT!! And I’ve always thought that it would be cool to say you rode an elephant. I didn’t really know what to expect when riding it, so I plopped myself on it. I then realized that the spine sticks out a lot on an elephant, and that did not feel at all pleasant. After riding around on an elephant the day was complete, and we were all glad went. The day turned out to be one of the best we’ve had in china. And we got to go home and brag to the boys about all of the fun we had.
Also, I’m typing this post in my office where another teacher is, she is chomping the heck out of this chicken foot that smells. In china if you smack or chomp your food that’s good manners meaning you really like the food. One of my pet peeves is chomping your food, so typing that post took a lot of concentration. On the plus side, Linky REALLY liked her chicken foot!!!!
11/9/12
It’s crazy to think that it’s all ready NOVEMBER!! This experience has gone by so fast! Life in china has been great these past couple of weeks. They have consisted of going to nanjing for church, a Chinese birthday party, dinner at some students houses, going to the park will all of the grade one students, teaching the students about clothes and making them model my clothes (they loved that), buying some weird bread stuff from the Muslim people, some shopping (or maybe a lot), finding some pig skin to buy….just in case you have a special occasion of Americans coming to eat at your house (ewwwww), making hand turkeys, and a visit to the farm with grade 5 (and having your students buy you a chicken, fish, some veggies, and some eggs) and I might add that all of that was pretty fresh!! The chicken they killed right there….in front of me and the fish was still flopping around in the sack on the bus ride home. When they say FRESH here they mean FRESH! I have been loving life lately and learning so much! Of course I’m sooo excited to go home and see my family again, but I’m still excited to be here in china with such great people. It is starting to get pretty cold here, so a jacket is definitely needed! The thing about chinas winter is, it’s actually not that bad if you have a warm building to go into after being out in the cold, but they don’t have heaters…anywhere!!! Also the schools in china are a lot different! It’s all like outside, so rather than having one big building with classrooms in it they have a ton of buildings with a classroom. It’s kinda hard to explain, but the point I’m trying to make is that it’s COLD teaching!! The poor kids fingers are always ice!! One day while teaching grade one the little girl in the front had her mittens and hat on and was shivering the entire class. I felt so bad for her!!! S no student in America should be hating school, they have it so much better! On that note, they should also not complain about school lunch, since they aren’t fed a chicken foot for lunch, yep that happened to me today! Also they through in some chicken liver and stomach, just because they like me so much :). Anyways, I will be seeing everyone soon! I might add that my mission all should be here soon! Make your guesses and tell my family!!
10/28/12
We decided to do a halloween party here at the foreign language school with all of our teachers and their kids. We went around and invited different English teachers from the different schools, and they all seemed to be pretty excited. Word traveled around the school like it does in grace Idaho, so by the end of the day I had students and teachers acting out that they wanted to come to the part has well. I was glad more people wanted to come, but that meant doing a lot more sugar cookies! On Friday me and kiffyn cleaned and decorated the school as much as we could. China doesn’t celebrate halloween, so we couldn’t buy any cute decorations, or halloween costumes for that matter. We had a cake walk (candy walk in our case), booming for apples, pop toss, and had the kids go trick or treating. The kids and the teachers came exactly at 7:00. They actually all came dressed up! Like I said there’s no halloween things here, so we were excited to see the kids were able to find stuff to make it more exciting for them. I was a 50s girl, but I don’t think they really knew what I was because the teacher kept asking if I was a princess. Why would a princess wear a poodle skirt? Good question, but I guess the 50s in china was a lot different. We also made sugar cookies for them, and they LOVED them. “One of the teachers said I’ve all ready eaten 7, and I can’t stop!” It might be a possibility we made some of the Asians gain 5 lbs that night, and I’m completely okay with it. The night went so good! Everyone had such a blast! The night ended with the girls teaching in Zhenjiang coming to visit us and staying the night at our school. We did some walking around the city in our costumes, a scary movie, and a little girl talk. It all made for such a great night!
10/23/12
Another trip to Nanjing this weekend! All of us girls in yongzhoung decided to make our way to Nanjing this weekend to attend church on Sunday. On Friday we finished all of our classes at around 3:00, packed our bags, and left on the 3 hour bus ride to Nanjing. When we arrived we had to take subway line 1 to the intercrossing line 2 then had to get off at the gouzhou station. I’m basically a pro at subways now..I think they are the greatest invention rather than taking taxis all over. Grace Idaho really needs to invest in some! We finally arrived at the westovers around 8:00. The westovers are a family who are from Utah. They have 6 kids all under the age 16. About 5 months ago they all had to pack up and make the journey over to china. It would be such a hard thing to do, and now after living here I really learned to appreciate that mom and the things she has to do of her kids. China is NOT an easy country to cook at..especially for 6 kids. The things they were all used to in America is not there..like normal diapers for her 1 year old, since they don’t even use diapers in china. Their house is quite big, and extremely nice! It was so nice to be able to spend all weekend at their house and have things be a little normal for 2 days. Saturday we had to meet sister yu, the branch presidents wife, and she took me Bridget and kiffyn to the doctor to get a physical. I don’t think I have officially announced it on my blog yet, but yes, I’m going on a mission. My papers should be all done and sent in by next week! I can’t wait!! Anyways…the physical went good, there was definitely a language barrier, but sister yu was there to help with that. After the physical president and sister yu took us to their home to have some lunch. They had some lasagna, garlic bread, and salad all prepared for us. Oh man I was really feeling at home eating a fresh salad!! After lunch we visited with them for awhile about their lives..they are really amazing people who have been everywhere! After visiting for a little bit sister yu told us of an American grocery store that is located by the nanjing university, so we got on another subway and off we went. We eventually found the grocery store, and man it was great to see normal foods, except for everything being so dang expensive! Turns out it costs and arm and a leg to buy any American food in china. We did meet a lot of nice English speaking people in the store, so it was worth it. One girl we really liked and got her number so we could contact her for the next time we went to Nanjing, her name was Ocybell. She definitely had the southern accent! The first thing she asked us was, “have ya’ll seen any baked beans in here, I’m really craving me some taste of home”. She was such a hoot to talk to, so we wandered around the store with her for a little bit. It was becoming dark so we decided to head home. On the subway back to the westovers there was an African American on the subway. So in china if you ever hear someone speaking English you automatically look to see who’s speaking it, even if its 4 carts down on the subway, you can definitely hear it. Well we heard the African American talking on his phone in English, so we go ever to meet him. He introduces himself and tells us a little about him. His name is lotus, and he is from Africa here teaching English as well. He had a little bit of an accent, so we really had to listen closely to what he was saying…pretty much like everyone else who speaks English here! After giving him our number and talking with him we went back to the westovers and watched Matilda with the family. It was a lot of fun! It was great to be with that family setting that I’m familiar to. It was great to see my Chinese parents (president and sister yu) and Chinese American family (the westovers). 
10/4/12
National week has started out good! We left for Zhenjiang on Tuesday and met up with some other friends there who are with china horizons. It was a lot of fun to meet up with those people again! They all took us to this AMAZING noodle place. Later they tools us to this DVD shop. You can buy DVDs here for super cheap! Illegal, but cheap :). I bought a couple since they were only 1.50 US dollars we then headed to the train station to be on our way to Xu Zhou. When we first arrived it was late, so we went straight to our hotels. Oh and our good friend orange, one of the English teachers, came with us. Semis one of the sweetest Chinese ladies who speaks really good English. We met up with two of her friends when we arrived, Thomas, and kent. Kent doesn’t speak any English at all and Thomas speaks a little. They were the sweetest guys though. That night kent went out and brought some fruit to our hotel room to welcome us to Xu Zhou. He was so kind! On Wednesday we went to the tombs of the terra-cotta warriors. It was pretty cool…a little boring at times, but still fun to walk around and look at. Later that night we went out and did a little shopping and walking around. We went to a bakery to grab some dinner. Buying things at the bakery can always be questionable because not everything there is sweet….even if it looks sweet. Lets just put it this way…you are never sure what you’re about to out in you’re mouth, as that is for everything here in china. I found what looked like wheat bread (which they don’t have anywhere here) it looked delicious, so I thought I would try it. It actually turned out to be wheat bread!! It was the best thing I had put in my mouth! We also went to the dancing square there and found these teenage boy dancers. They were ridiculously good at shuffling, like hip hop shuffling. They tried teaching us how to do it, but it was hard! I was not meant to shuffle. It did bring in a crowd as we all looked like idiot white people trying to dance. The picture that is super blurry is with the shufflers. It was a great night out! Now it’s Thursday morning and only me and Bridget are going out today because the other two got sick. We are going to a mountain and a lake then later on we will be doing some KTV and shopping.
10/5/12
To start off, this blog might not make sense. There is just so much that happened tonight I don’t even know where to begin, and you might not find it as funny as me and Bridget did, but oh well! So the lake and mountain were really pretty and fun to go walk around, but the real party started when we went out to eat with Kent aka superman Thomas aka super B and of course orange. The restraint was very nice with great food. They had us walk around the other tables there and point to what we thought looked good. We actually did find some things we ended up liking. The chefs were so excited to have us eat their food they kept telling me to take pictures of them…they were a little too full of themselves. W began eating the meal with a cheers to being in Xu Zhou. All three of them had their beer, and me and Bridget had our orange juice. We cheered to it. We eat a bite then kent does cheers to meeting American friends. We cheer with him. The whole night they all continue to do cheers with us and they keep getting happier and funnier. After about 4 bottles we knew that they were going to be a lot of fun for KTV (Chinese karaoke). They kept cracking jokes to each other in Chinese. And having a grand old time. I was super full of orange juice and food that I can’t even imagine how they felt. Also a man here told us that their beer contains a lot more alcohol than America’s. the halfway through they talked about leaving so I took a picture of all of the empty bottles, so that picture with the empty bottles only shows half of what they drank. Later they started saying CHUG, CHUG, CHUG and of course me and Bridget go a long with it gulping down orange juice…BOTTOMS UP! After a little bit orange asks us if we have to go to the bathroom we tell her yes, but we can go later when we get to KTV. She said how about now. So we go to the bathroom, and she goes first. She comes out not looking too well and tells us she is over drunk. She goes back in the bathroom and is leaning against the wall. She runs to the toilet and pukes. She then shut the door and locked it. Bridget goes to get Thomas because we don’t have a clue what to do at a time like this! Right as Bridget leaves I here a loud crash and no more noise from the bathroom. Yes, she had passed out. I started to freak out a little not knowing what to do. I tried acting out to the people next to me that someone in the bathroom just passed out…HELP, but they just laughed at me thinking I’m crazy. I’m sure I looked crazy, but I didn’t know what else to do. Thomas and Bridget finally got back and we found someone with a key to the bathroom. We opened the door, woke her up and helped her back to the room we were eating in. She had a cut up chin and a pretty good gash on her hand. Thomas told us that maybe KTV tonight wasn’t a good idea. We agreed. Kent got us a taxi and rode back with us to the hotel. The night definitely didn’t go as planned, but it was still a lot of fun hanging out with some drunk Chinese people. We were able to cross that off our bucket list! :). When. Got back to the hotel we weren’t very tired, so we went out and did a little shopping ourselves. While we were walking around we witnessed a man on a motorcycle get hit by a car. No one really did anything about it. No cops, or exchanging insurance things, nothing. Just well I guess we should take him to the hospital kind of thing. Needless to say it made for a very unforgettable night!
lifeofhadlee 