TYPHOOOOOOON-week 10

It's been a normal week in China...HA. I don't think that phrase will ever be normal. It's always an adventure here. Sunday we drove 2 hours to a district church conference. It was awesome and they gave us free food so it was a true church event.

Monday was Tays birthday! We usually go out to eat for birthdays so Tay chose a new restaurant on our block called Dr. Tastys pizza. After that we went home had some cake and played some games! 

The rest of the week was a little hectic. I had 2 exams, a discussion, assignments annnd our student evaluations were due on top of the normal lesson plans that are due every Thursday. Thinking to myself Monday when I was going to get my exam done for Geology I was stressing out a little because of course I still had a lot of studying to do. I went to bed with the thought It will work out dont worry about it. Tuesday morning at 6:00 our phone started ringing. The phone in our apartment is right next to my bed so I rolled over very confused who would be calling us at 6 am. Well, it was our coordinator Celina telling me that there was a typhoon and teachers will not come to school because it was dangerous. So, we had a whole day off. I was so thankful for that freak typhoon. I was able to study for my test and I had time to take it. Annnd I aced it. Gotta love those typhoons. Also took some great family pictures. 

The rest of the week was full of cute kids and vacation planning. Do the dates October 1-8 mean anything to you? No? Well to the entire country of China it means National Vacation Days. Pretty much that means everyone in China has the week off. Everyone. Imagine trying to book a flight or hostel in America when EVERYTHING is sold out and the prices and triple what they normally are. Literally we have standing tickets for an 8 hour train ride. How do all the planes and train beds in the country get sold out? National holiday. That's how. Okok I'm done with that raging now. 

After that rage please enjoy these pictures of my adorable kids. 

These actually aren't my kids we do some extra teaching every once in a while on Saturdays to promote new schools in the area so this was one of those days. 

We had quite the Friday night. Celina-Chinese cocoordinator-or-the one who keeps us alive in China-China mom. Ok. Celina when we first got here told us about a guy named Allen(we thought his name was Aaron until Friday) who has been driving teachers to school the last couple of years to practice his English. He is one of the smartest people I have ever met. So Allen lives in our neighborhood and drives us to school. Well this week Allen told us his company was doing karaoke and wanted us to come. He told us the time then said he would like to also take us to dinner before his treat. So we knew Allen was wealthy because he lives in a nice neighborhood and has a nice car. I don't think we realized how wealthy he was. He took us to a very fancy Chinese restaurant, paid for our meal and our taxis. A couple of his co-workers were there and we found out Allen is a big  deal! He works for the government I guess and also has his own business on the side and is very respected not just in Zhongshan but in Guangdong. He even was the main speaker at Southern China University's orientation where he let us know he got a standing ovation.  He's a rad guy. 

Saturday we had to go to walking street and get ice cream. What else. 

First week of the semester+Shanghai

First week of the new semester..check! Last week was not as crazy as I was expecting so that was good. It was so fun though! I love the new kids already. It is going to be a great semester. Fun fact. When the Chinese teachers tell me the kids are going to change for outside time it actually means they are stripping down to there underwear and running around in just that. The first day this happened I could not stop laughing. Here I was standing in front of 20 5 year olds in just their underwear doing some jumping jacks...China. Also I just saw this picture on the ILP blog and died because...this is my life. Like really. I have learned that my lessons will never turn out like I planned and every single class will be different. 

After a week of teaching we had our first/second vacation! Our original plan was to take a train to Shanghai then after about a day and a half take a bus to the Yellow Mountains. Well, by the time we were going to buy our tickets the Yellow Mountain tickets were sold out. So our group split. Half went to the Avatar Mountains and half went to Shanghai. I went to Shanghai. We left the school at 11:45 to catch our train to Guanzhou then the Metro to the East railway station then to Shanghai. Well, because again we were a little late buying tickets we had to have the hard seats on the way to Shanghai. Our train left at 6 and we were supposed to get in at 10. Well, our train broke. We got in at 1. 19 hours on a hard seat. 19 hours. Tears were shed. Lots of tears.

But we finally made it to Shanhai and found our hostel. The Dock Bund Hotel. Because we were a little late making reservations and just because our trip was all jumbled up in the first place, me,  Clara and Kenny were in a room together while Tay, Maegan, Shalee, and Kelita were in another room. The first thing we see when we walked into our room was two guys in their whitey titeys changing. Hostel life. I witnessed things I did not want to witness in that hostel. But hey they did offer us their left over wine one night.  And we were super close to everything. After we got all ready we went over to The Bund then to the Financial building, which is a extremely tall building with a glass walk way observatory. SO COOL.  

The next day we went over to the Yuyuan Garden and the City God temple where me and Shalee got our Sunday worship on. We asked for Mushu. Sadly we didn't get Mushu.

 

We spent the rest of the day bartering on accident and walking away with things we didn't realize were buying. Me and Shalee got these sweet necklaces. They translate to "Don't Hesitate" which is funny because we definitely hesitated to buy them.
As we were deciding which necklaces to get Kenny was just walking around when she came back she looked dazed and told us she spend over 500 yuan.

Laughing we asked what she spent so much on she looked at us seriously and said, "A necklace..and ALL the Buddhas."  Then as we were walking the lady chased her down to buy another necklace because she was such a good customer..it worked. She bought it.  Just shut up and take my money China. That night we went to Nanjing Rd which is HUGE and crazy and I spent like 30 yuan on a tiny bag of M&M's and regret nothing.

We saw a huge circle watching these people dance we were in the back so we couldn't really see so we decided to do our own dance. In 30 seconds we had just as big as a crowd watching the white girls dance. Then it became a game to see how fast we could get a crowd. With the help of our sweet lasers we bought on the street (easily the best purchase) we had crowds in like 20 seconds. Not just like a couple people watching us from a far. Like 50 people taking pictures of us as we did stuff in the middle. Too good.

 

Monday we only had limited time so we went to the Jade Buddha temple together then split up. Enjoy this cute picture. 

Me, Clara, and Shalee kind of just got off at a random stop on the metro and found the coolest little park thing..it was quiet. Like silent it was creepy. China isn't silent. And there were people selling kites so we flew a kite for awhile and walked around and some how we found the famous pearl market where you can buy a bunch of knock offs for super cheap so we spent the rest of the day there before heading back to our hostel to go catch a train!

We had to pack so much into  a small 3 day trip but it was so fun! I LOVE SHANGHAI..I LOVE CHINA. But I am ready to get back to teaching!