One thing I've learned about china

If there's one thing I've learned about china, it's that nothing is planned! sometimes it feels like while people are in the middle of doing something they have this idea so they say hey lets do it! and they do it. things change all the time, nothing is reliable! for instance, our vacation days! haha they have changed yet again. instead of leaving Wednesday through sun, we get mon and Tuesday off too! exciting right?? kinda. we already bough our train tickets and can't exchange them so we are still leaving Tuesday night for Beijing. but good news, we don't teach all week! haha but the bad news was we had to teach today (Saturday). it's exciting cause i have next week off, then i teach for a week, and then i have off another 10 days! when i come back from that vacation i will have hit the half way mark...crazy huh?!

Another example of this, yesterday while teaching it got pretty hectic! only half the kids showed up! so we were all excited cause 2 teachers taught 1 class and they each had like 6 kids in them. it was going great till all of a sudden, 40 min into teaching, the other kids came running in! we had no idea where they were or what they had been doing. all we knew was that we had to teach them. so, we pulled kids into rooms, split up the teachers and tried to teach, but failed miserably. They were all wound up and could not keep still or keep there mouths closed! ugghh. it was a very long day. i ended up not teaching at all. we kinda just played games with them which was a lot better than trying to teach.

Kelly came into our room and was like hey, want to go to the beach??so we got ready and were excited and we asked who else was going and said no one. haha she had only invited us (cause were her favorite!) i felt to special! her fiance came with us and we even drove in her brand new car! it was fun, we just played around in the water for awhile. the beach here is weird! like it never gets deeper? i feel like i can walk forever and my feet never leave the sand. well afterwords we all went to dinner and then we had to go back the the school for a meeting. But the funny thing was, was that i don't think Kelly was allowed to take us places like that? when we were walking she asked us to put our towels in our bag and she was wearing a dress and heels. haha she was trying to pretend like we weren't doing anything! The principal even walked by and we had to wait in the parking lot. hahaha it was pretty funny..i felt bad tho cause i definitely don't want to get her in trouble, but we had no idea!

So our branch president came from Beijing to visit us this weekend! His wife and son came, and they took us to dinner Saturday night! it was really sweet of them. after dinner we had an adult session of conference, to get us ready for Sunday. which today, we had out stake conference


















Here is my new dress I bought!

Teacher, Teacher!

205! That is the total amount of stairs it takes to get from the front of the school to my board (my bed). yes, I counted!

Anyways, my first vacation is the 22nd of this month, and we decided to go to Beijing! I'm so excited. it is a 5 day break, but i'm not sure of everything were doing there yet...i will give you more details.

The other day i found a McDonalds! I have never been more excited in my life to eat there. i was literally jumping up and down giggling when i saw they had fries, hamburgers, ketchup, and McFlurrys!!! I ate everything on my plate even though I didn't think i could eat it all. i have never been that full in my entire life!! it was pretty much the best lunch ever!

Teaching is going...uhm? I don't really know the word! every day is different. I swear the kids are bi-polar! some days they are little devils and i yell and put them i time out, and i give dirty looks, but some days they are angels! they are so good in lessons and they participate, and it is so much fun!

for example, Wednesday. i swear i put half of my class in time out because they are just out of control! I made this one girl cry because she got put there, and this other kid just about made me swear to never have kids! he was being sOoOoOO bad! he wouldn't stop talking, he was making animal sounds, he was touching and hitting everyone around him, and by the time i took away all his stars, i was fed up! i grabbed him and yanked him from his seat and started dragging him to the hallway to call for someone to take him away. but no. (this kid is probably the same, or heavier than me) he plops himself on the ground and starts panicking with fear in his voice he starts to yell NO CHINESE TEACHER over and over and over. (the Chinese teachers don't mess around...) by the time im finishing yanking him to the doorway, i am completely exhausted, ad he is almost in tears. (by this time all the other students are silent and staring in amazement, probably at my super strength because he is so massive!) well, i bend over and grab him by the shoulders and say if you promise to keep your hands to yourself and don't say aNoThEr word i will let you stay. he immediately got up and ran to his seat and was silent the rest of the class. yes, i felt terrible, but he deserved it!

Today however, was amazing. the kids were so sweet and i actually had fun with each of the students! this little boy named Tony started tickling me during opening so i tickled him back...not a good idea. soon everyone around us had joined in and they were attacking me with there little fingers! it was cute, but they should have been paying attention. another kid was messing around with some boys around him while the rest of us were singing a song, so i went behind him and grabbed his arms and made him do all the movements. soon, people were shoving him out of the way so that i would help them with the movements...(i should not be allowed to sit with these kids!) after opening Ringo ran to me and held on to my stomach and would not let go! so, everyone followed. we were trying to get kids to there classes but they were all hanging on me. i don't think the other teachers like me for playing with the kids...but what can i say?? I am just the favorite!

i am in charge of rotating the kids to there next classes. so today while rotating a group of girls huddled around me and started feeling my stomach..weird right? it gets weirder. so after trying to get them to line up and failing miserably, they all start chanting something in Chinese over and over. they chanted what sounded like a curse or something the entire way to their next class. luckily, we passed Kelly and I asked her what they were saying, and this is it. "teacher teacher you are so pretty, teacher teacher you have become so skinny!" I laughed so hard when Kelly told me that. these girls are so cute! i want to take one home! but peter said no...haha i hope they will continue to get better for us now that they know what to expect.

Tomorrow is teacher appreciation day! i guess all the teachers have tournaments with basketball, badminton and ping-pong? We are invited so I'm hoping it will be pretty fun!

Karaoke in China and an praying with the Monks

I am still doing pretty good here! I'm finding new things all the time! I got a jacket that I love, and a couple more shirts and a dress! I'm having good luck with clothes here. I love shopping and I don't even feel bad cause it's like $2 for a shirt! I'm lovin it. I haven't had to take anymore money out yet, i think I'm set for a long time! (well hopefully!)

Tonight was tons of fun! We went to a karaoke place and jammed out all night! The building was gorgeous! It looked like a hotel or something! I guess they take karaoke seriously here! hahaha We had our own private room with sound proof walls, so we blasted every song! We had pretty much every song we could ever want to sing to, AND we had strobe lights and flashing lights and a huge comfy couch and it was all just amazing! I'm excited for tomorrow, we are finally going to the temple! We leave early in the morning at like 8. yes this is early! I've finally stopped waking up at 6 every morning.

Teaching is going OK! We got our first evaluations and Lauren said I had one of the highest scores! That made me so happy because I thought it hadn't gone that well! I'm still teaching arts and crafts this week and next and then ill switch to something else. some of the kids drive me crazy. they are out of control! i put a kid in time out today because he wouldn't stop making animal noises and he was distracting everyone and touching everyone around him! i felt a little bad after wards.Today I was teaching a class and i asked them what my name was, and one of the little kids said Lady Gaga..! haha I busted up laughing and then the kids got out of control. some of the things they say is just so funny! Today peter (the Chinese boy) was really emotional and he started crying and kept saying he wanted his mom and he missed her. is was so cute..he's the cutest little boy!




We finally went to the temple!! it was soo pretty there. but it was nothing like i expected?? idk for some reason i thought it would be just one building and really clean and idk something like our temple? haha but it was nothing like that! it was still soo pretty though. it was surrounded by beautiful mountains that had fog all around then, and they had amazing flowers everywhere. they also had really weird statues of people..? i took tons of pics of those!

There was this cool water show thing there also! i guess its the biggest water show in Asia? When i heard that i got super excited. (but it wasn't that impressive..) it was actually kind of weird. there was this big Buddha thing and it spun in circles and then it opened and this naked baby Buddha came out with purple smoke....haha it was really weird. and then these statues breathed fire and I don't know the whole thing was weird!! but kinda cool at the same time!

after walking a bajillions flights off stairs we finally made it to this little temple, kinda off to the side, and there was this massive Buddha stature in it (with a swastika sign on it's chest...weird?) and there was a monk in there praying on these little cushion things, so me and Sarah joined him! well kinda. we definitely weren't praying to Buddha. it was kinda a cool experience to be honest. i knelt down by myself and finally had some quiet and my own space. i hope that's not sacrilegiouss...!

It was kinda funny cause me and Sarah went to buy and ice cream cone and when we turned around, our group had disappeared! they totally left us. so we walked around eating our ice cream and saw a tourist group walking around, so, we joined them! it was pretty funny because everyone laughed at us and i know they were thinking to themselves where did these white people come from?? the tour guide spoke only Chinese, so when we followed everyone we just pretended like we knew what he was saying, nodding our heads and such! i couldn't help but giggle to myself!

so i made a terrible mistake! the other night i was at the supermarket, and there was this stand and the people were making what looked like a pizza-burrito! so of course to our excitement we all got one!! i was soo excited for something other than noodles and rice. well it wasn't that bad tasting, but it wasn't as good as i was hoping or either. i swear 3 minutes after eating that thing my stomach started grumbling and i knew i was in trouble! i knew i had to get home fast! all that night and the next morning i had THE worst diarrhea Ive ever had. so i decided i was never eating that food again! me and Sarah went to the market and we found some bread, peanut butter, jelly, butter, and milk! so pretty much i will be eating bread for the rest of my 4 months. we want to make tortillas here..lol does dad have a recipe? we also want to make salsa! i need dads recipe for that too!!

i am going to try to call tomorrow after i teach will be like 8 or 9 at night your time! i hope you are all doing good, i miss you all!