If coffee doesn't wake you up in the morning, China's smells sure will!

Well hello everybody! Ni Hao! Gosh, China is fantastic! I just got back from the capitol city of Beijing! It was so much fun! My group of nine people left Wujing Tsing Ying around 8:00 in the morning on Friday (which was the National Holiday day) and made the hour bus ride to the station. Oh boy was it an experience! We got on the bus with all of our luggage and within the next stop the whole bus was exploding with people! They were literally pushing and packing people into the bus where you were all up in everybody's business, I was pushed up on this 40+ looking man who smelled absolutely horrid. No deoderant, probably hadn't brushed his teeth in days.. or weeks, and he kept saying stuff to me in Chinese and trying to move even closer to me. YIKES! Imagine being in that horrible position for an hour, oh my goodness. My poor friends Lexi and Lexie had the worst experience of the bus ride because they were right in the congestion of the people pushing to get onto the bus. Every stop, you could hear little screams from them because they're so small and they kept getting their faces smashed into the window. Let's just say that one wonderful thing about speaking another language that most Chinese people don't understand is that you can talk about people in front of them and they don't know what you're saying! Well, and the Chinese people can do that to us to, but oh well! Anyways, after we got to the Bus station we waited for our sleeper bus for the 16 hour bus ride to Beijing. While waiting, we saw multiple sleeper buses and we were so excited! Clean white sheets, plenty of room to lie down, your own bed, nothing could be better than that! When it was our time to board the bus, the lady told us to follow her and as we were passing all of these really nice buses, I kept sayng to myself "this is going to be great!" It was like walking down the different floors of the Titantic, really nice and ritzy, nice, so-so, and in the distance I saw a green bus that I thought, "everything will be great as long as that green piece of garbage isn't our bus", you guessed it, it totally was. When we got on it, you could pretty much see the bed bugs living in the infested beds, there were about 30 beds crammed in the bus, and there was a squatter on the bus but it didn't have a door! At first I just wanted to cry, but I thought to myself, "Well, you can be miserable the whole time and not lie down, or you can embrace the bed bugs, lice, and who knows what else, and have another great China experience!" I am sure glad I changed my attitude! It was one billion times better than my horrific train experience! I was able to pretty much lie down straight and I was able to put my ipod in and fall asleep for an hour or two. After 3 hours on the road, the bus pulled off and we had no idea what was going on. I really wanted to use a real bathroom that wasn't on the bus so Brittani and I followed these Chinese ladies and found a.... bathroom? Imagine this, it was legit a hole in the wall. A dark cave, if you will. We walked in and the smell was like being hit in the face with death. Everything was covered in at least an inch of dust, dirt and spider webs, and there were 4 stalls that were 2 feet high, with no door. Steeling myself for the unthinkable, I went to a stall and found that it was a trough, AND that was piled high with things that I will not mention. After a couple more horrible bathroom stops, we stopped at the best one ever. We were about 12 hours into the trip and stopped at a truck stop. I walked into the bathroom and what did I find? Dirty dirty stalls that faced eachother with no doors, again! I made myself go into the stall, and the awkward thing is that as you're squatting in your stall, somebody is squatting right in front of you, looking at you! AND to top it all off, the Chinese women were forming a small group trying to get in line for my stall and were trying to look at me while I'm doing my business! It was absolutely horrendous! As we were driving, it was about 1 a.m. when we hit traffic to Beijing.Our driver turned off the engine and the air conditioning and went and slept in a bed! We sat there for hours sweating and completely oblivious to what was going on because of the language barrier. We arrived in Beijing 24 hours later around 11 a.m. on Saturday and we broke off into groups. My group was Jessica Booher, Lexie, Lexi and myself. We were very tired from the long travel, but we got a cab to our hostel, the Leo Hostel, and took showers to wash the disgustingness of the bus off of us. Renewed and refreshed, we met up with Lexie's friend Andy who teaches English in Beijing. Andy took us to Tiannamen Square and it was amazing! It was HUGE! It is the largest public square in the world and it definitely did not disappoint! We started taking pictures and within minutes we had people taking our pictures, asking for pictures with us, and wanting us to hold their babies. Tiannamen square is next to the forbidden city and there are giant pictures of Mao everywhere! Since it was the National Holiday in China, everyone and their mom was off of work and traveling so the square was absolutely packed! After a fun night of dinner and clubbing, we went to dinner and woke up the next morning for an amazing breakfast of french toast. Around 1, we started our journey to sleep on the Great Wall! There were 12 of us in a 9 passenger van so we got up close and personal with everybody in the group. As we were driving through the city of Beijing, our van would die every 5 minutes! That was comforting as we were about to start the 2 hour journey to the wall! We named our driver Javier, we were about an 1 1/2 into the journey when we hit traffic, again! We were inching along for an hour or two and when we thought we were getting somewhere, we stopped again! This time we stopped for half hours or hours before we moved again and I saw everything imaginable! People were parking their cars, getting out and walking towards 'the wall' and many people were just getting out on the side of the road and going to the bathroom! Oh China. Around 8 p.m. in one of our hour long waits, we decided to have fun, so we played truth or dare! My dare was to run across the Chinese freeway that was next to the road that we were on! It was intense! Around 10:30, and eight hours longer than we thought the trip would be, we pulled up to where the Great Wall supposedly was. We were told when we signed up for the tour that they woul give us blankets, sleeping bags, and tents and when the man pulled up he just gave us a blanket and told us that he would pick us up at 10:00 the next morning! We were shocked but decided to make the best of it! We started the climb up to the great wall and soon we saw that the Chinese man was leading the front of the group. He lead us to a castle part of the wall and we found the tents and sleeping bags in it! It was a wonderful surprise! We left our stuff and went on an adventure of exploring the wall around 11:30. That wall is super steep! Its the best butt workout ever! We got to a high peak and laid down to star gaze. I have never seen so many stars and such a beautiful sky! We saw many shooting stars and it was a moment that I will never forget in my life! We slept for a couple of hours and woke up for the sunrise. It was magnifiscent! Because we arrived at night, we did not see any of the wall except what we were on, and it was wonderful to wake up and see it winding through the mountains as far as we could see! After sunrise, Lexie, Andy and I hiked along the wall further and it was amazing! The part of the wall that we were on was restored but not touristy so we had it all to ourselves! We hiked around 5 miles and we hiked the entire mountain to see the other side! On our way back we ran into an old man who told us the history of the wall and he kept repeating over and over that we must not forget how many gave their lives up for the wall and that we should never take it for granted. It was wonderful to hear such an interesting and extensive story from somebody who truly loves everything about Chinese history. After we packed everything up and headed for Beijing it only took us 2 1/2 hours to get home! It was wonderful! After we showered, we headed to the Silk Market! It was heaven to me! Seven floors of shopping, yes please! Each floor was different, shoes, purses, clothes, silk, pearls, everything you can imagine! Every aisle chinese merchants would ask you if you wanted Gucci, Prada and call you Pretty Lady and literally try and pull you into their stores. Lexi and I spent most of our time together and went to the Silk Market 2 days in a row because it was so big! We always told people that we were from Canada to get better treatment from the people! haha I spent lots of money, but it was so much fun to barder with the Chinese people and get great prices! One of the nights of shopping all four of us went to dinner at AMAZING Mcdonalds! It was the nicest Mcdonalds ever! All of the workers were dressed nicely, they had a person playing a piano, it was legit. While there, we saw alot of really tall and attractive men come in, it turns out that they were players for the Kentucky Bisons, an A.B.A. team that was playing in Beijing for the week! We ate dinner with them and they were so hilarious! They were absolutely horrible at bardering with the Chinese people, so we taught them what we learned from our two days at the Silk Market. 1- If you are sworn at in Chinese, way to go. That means you got a good price. 2- If you like something, don't say it or show it! They will say a ridiculous price if they know you like it, also, they won't go lower in the price if they know you want it. 3- If you are asked how much you paid for something, say a lower price than what you paid, usually you can get more for the lower price from the 2nd merchant. 4- WALK AWAY! Once, twice... five times! Everytime the price will be lowered! 5- Call the Chinaman's bluff. "Pienza", liar in Chinese, is the best way to get their respect and hilarious to watch the shock register on their face at being called out in their language. We did so many fun things in Beijing! I absolutely loved it! There were many many funny experiences that happened while there, for example: I found out that when I thought I was saying beautiful (Meili) in chinese, I was actually saying little sister (meimei)... that explains the weird looks that I would get from the mothers when I would said about their babies. Also, Lexi and I trying to get home from the silk market with huge Northface back packs full of stuff that we bought and bags in our hands. We tried to get a taxi home, but we realized that Chonwenmen sounded like every other chinese name so our taxi driver made us get out in a random part of the city and we took the subway to Andy's apartment! Luckily it wasn't far, but we looked pretty ridiculous trying to put our huge Northface backpacks and bags on the conveyor belt for the security bag check. Anyways, so many funny and amazing experiences and sights to see in Beijing to write about, but I must press on to my teaching! I am glad to be home in good ol' Changzhou! I am so thankful to walk into my class and have my kids hug me and tell me how much they've missed me, I'm thankful for the amazing people that I've met here, I love China. I'm sorry it took me a week to write this post and that it isn't as long as my others, but I promise there will be more to come in the near future! Oh and by the way, it's super hard to upload pictures here.. I will try very hard to get more up. Please have patience! Wo Ai Ni! I love you all!

Horrific Squatters, Concussions, Water Buffalo, and Mud Caving!

Hello Everybody!

Wow what an amazing experience to be here in China and to have the opportunity to travel around! This last week I spent time in the beautiful cities of Yangshou and Guillin which are in the Southwest of China and are known as the "Heaven" parts of China. We left our wonderful school of Wujing Tsing Ying International School at 3:00 p.m. after our last classes and got on the hour long bus to the train station. When we arrived, we boarded a bullet train to Nanjing and it was so nice! We each had our own seats that reclined and space to to stretch our legs. It was an hour and a half long ride and when we arrived in Nanjing we had a 5 hour layover. A group of seven of us wanted to explore the city, so we set out of the station and found a beautiful city square and lake overlooking the downtown skyline of Nanjing just as the sun was setting. While we were watching the sunset with hundreds of people on the docks, we found a paddle boat place and after a half an hour of charades and hand gestures, we were on the boats! We paddled out in the middle of the lake and did a show of Disney songs for all of the people while they were taking pictures and waving to us. Before we returned back to the dock, we did a REAL CHINESE firedrill boat swap! It was so much fun because I almost did the splits between the two boats! After our adventure on the water, Jessica and I stayed out in the city square and saw some lights spinning in air above us. We went to check out what they were and found that they were little light helios that used a rubber bands to project them into the air. They were awesome! Jessica and I had a really fun time playing with them and we accidentally started a show with all of the people wanting to see what the foreign white girls were doing. The guy selling them spent some time teaching us how to perfect our skills and then he gave them to us for free because of the business he got from it! After our 'show' we realized that there was another show going on! A water/Bellagio type show on the lake that we were just on! We went and sat on the deck/dock and watched the hour long show with the beautiful city sky line in the background. After such an amazing night, we got on our 27 hour train ride to Guillin and it was definitely an experience to remember and very eye opening to the ways of China. Imagine this, three people to a bench with a straight back and no padding, no arm rest dividers, no leg room whatsoever and no air conditioning! It was pretty hard trying to sleep when you have Chinese people next to you and not being able to sleep on their shoulders, but like my mom says "Everything is in the morning," and boy was she right! In the daylight we could see the beautiful Chinese countryside! Since it was a 27 hour train ride, we ate alot of Chinese cup o' noodles and as much as I tried to avoid it, I had to use the squatter on the train. IT WAS HORRIFIC! Words cannot describe the smells, the unidentified liquids on the floor, sometimes I wish I could bottle up the smells of China and send them home to people. They are like being hit in the face repetitively by death, babies diapers, and the reptile and giraffe pavillions at the zoo. To pass the numerous hours that we were on the train, we played card games, mind games, deaf karaoke, what if, and drew tattoos on eachother. We arrived in Guillin at 12:00 A.M. a day and a half later, drove the hour and a half drive to Yangshuo and we split into our groups. In my group I had Nicole, Brittani, Jessica, Maddie, Wayne and myself and we stayed in the Showbiz hostel which was way nice! All six of us shared a room, slept on bunk beds and had WESTERN TOILETS! Hallelujah! The next morning we woke up to find the most beautiful view I have ever seen in my life from our window! Yangshuo is a really small town, with one main street called West Street with lots of little shops and great shopping! After a short visit to West Street, we hired a taxi and headed to a beautiful mountain called Moon Hill. We named our driver Charlie and he was a very happy man who didn't know any English except "hello". As we drove into the parking lot a group of peasant women started chasing us and hitting the vans windows! All of us were freaked out and pleaded Charlie not to stop, and not to open the door, but he did while laughing. When we got out of the van, the women started to fan us individually and followed us around. They then told us that they were going to hike the whole moon mountain with us and fan us the whole way. They totally did! My lady was awesome! She was 77 years old and was a trooper hiking, taught me Chinese, and smiled the whole time. There were 860 stairs up the mountain and when we got to the top of the mountain I could not believe my eyes! We reached the top just as the sun was setting and it was magical because we had a 360 degrees view of the entire valley. After we got to the bottom of the mountain, I paid my wonderful helper Connie and we left home for a fun night of dinner, shopping and clubbing! The funny thing about clubbing in China is that once you walk into the club, nobody is dancing and all 100+ pairs of eyes are on you and with in moments that you start dancing, you are surrounded by Asians! It is so much fun! It's almost like being back in the good ol' states because they mostly play American music, but it's way fun when they play their chinese rap because they usually have choreographed dances for each of the songs! The next morning we rented bikes to do a little exploring in the countryside of Yangshuo. We took a 2 1/2 hour bamboo raft cruise down the Li River which we thought would for sure sink with the weight of all six of us plus our bikes, but it didn't and it was wonderful because we saw fishermen, multiple water buffalo, cranes, and of course the beautiful mountains. At the end of the cruise we pulled off by this country town, and it was so HOT! Across the bay we saw a group of kids cliff jumping into the river and we wanted to do it because we had heard nothing but good things about swimming in the Li River. We walked around and parked our bikes and set off to find the awesome cliff jumping spot. After wandering around for about an hour, we decide to swim over to the cliff jumping spot instead of going through all of the thick trees and bushes. Brittani and I were the first to get in and start swimming and we quickly realized that there were many jagged rocks in the river and the cuts and bruises on our legs confirm it. As everyone was getting in, Brit and I swam over to a couple of rocks and got out to try and find our cliff jumping place when we saw a GIANT piece of poo in the water where we were just swimming! Everyone was really grossed out, and to top it all off Maddie saw some leeches in the water. So... we decided that we probably should get out of the water, but we were stranded in the middle of the river with no choice but to swim back to shore in the rock, poo, and leech infested water. Swimming back was hilarious! Jessica and I started swimming together back to the beach and it was alot harder because we were swimming against the current and our flip flops kep floating away. At one point we tried to swim over to a rock to take a break, but I could not get myself up on the slippery rock. I kept getting water in my mouth, Jessica was holding my foot trying to keep me from floating away, and we both were laughing so hard that Jessica broke her 2nd pair of flip flops and I gashed my leg open on a rock. Good times, good times. We used a ferry to take us to the other side of the Li River and we started what we thought would be a little bike ride home. It was 20 miles! But, it was the most beautiful views I have ever seen in my life. We were surrounded by the mountains covered in mist, we passed women working in rice fields, multiple cemetaries, and men guidingwater buffalo. After our amazing bike ride and cliff jumping crazyness, we went to bed early... ish and we woke up bright and early for our amazing fun filled day! We left our hostel for our amazing western breakfast, and during the meal an old woman came up to our window and offered to take us to the mud caves of Yangshuo. Maddie, Brittani, Jessica and I went with Esther (the lady) and rented schooters and she took us on a n off roading country adventure on the way to the caves! It was so much fun because we got to meet local people, pet water buffalos, and a local farmer tried to givce each of us a baby chicken! When we got to the ticket place of the mud caves, all of us were hanging out when we met our cave guide named Ling Ling! She was awesome because she started dancing and taught us a dance! And to make things even better, our 63 year old tour guide Esther started to break it down too! She taught us a little chinese song with a hula type dance with it! It was awesome because all of the other tourists came over and we started a dance party while waiting for the bus to take us to the cave. After we arrived and all four of us were seated in our sweet bamboo boat, they seated a a late 20's Chinese looking lady in our boat and it turned out that she was American, her name was Helen and she was from San Fransisco! She was awesome! Helen was visiting her family in Shanghai and she hung out with us all day and taught us chinese! After our boat ride into the cave, we got out and had the awesome experience of exploring it! Many parts of the cave had really low clearance and on our way in to the cave I hit my head really hard. Strike one! As we kept getting deeper into the cave, it opened up and there were pools that we could swim in even though the water was freezing cold! In the pool we met this AWESOME couple from London named Neil and Beth and another couple from Portugal and Spain. All 9 of us stayed together throughout the cave exploring and on our way back through the cave I hit my head again! After my 2nd hit, I think I got a slight concussion because Brittani and Jessica said that I couldn't stop laughing and speaking gibberish. After spelunking, we went to the mud cave. It was so much FUN! When stepping in the mud, it was a little weird, but we soon were all covered in it! I was the first to go down the mud slide and in the process of navigating my way on the slippery mud surface, I slipped and face planted! We were pretty beat up from the Li River the day before, but this day takes the cake for multiple battle wounds! When in China, right? After so much fun in the mud caves, we went to the hot springs and those were wonderful! We each had our own individual holes in the rocks that we could lay in and we had unlimited time to relax! When we returned back to the ticket booth and saw our wonderful Esther waiting for us, it started pouring rain! We were about half an hour away from our hostel so we started the wet and awesome drive on our scooters! Even though we were all chilled to the bone we made a game out of the drive home and gave eachother scores for how big of a splash we could get with the puddles as we drove through them. It was such a fun day! On Wednesday we woke up to find that it was still raining! We knew that we had to leave home to Changzhou from Guillin (an hour away from Yangshuo) the next day at 4:00 p.m., so we decided to have a chill day and get massages to celebrate Moon Festival Day! Brittani and I set off in search of a massage parlor and we found one right next door to our hostel. It was so sketchy! Brittani and I were not about to spend money for a 'crap' massage, and as Brittani said, "I don't want to stay here unless I take my clothes off!" haha it was very awkward trying to communicate to them that we were leaving and finally just got up and left. We went in search of a massage parlour and we found an amazing one! Our room overlooked the river, they gave us silk pajamas, and it was an hour and 1/2 of pure heaven! They massaged every part of our body, even our face and ear lobes! They even had the bars on the ceiling so they could massage and stand on our backs, and the best part was that it was only $10! After our massages, Brittani and I were so relaxed that we could barely keep our eyes open! We went home and slept for 2 hours no problem and when we woke up, Brittani, Nicole, Wayne and I decided to go to Guillin for the night and celebrate Moon Festival there! We got to our hostel around 9 and we set out to walking street to get some dinner and go clubbing! For dinner we went to this super swanky restaurant with leather couches for seats and we ate by candlelight! It was pretty darn good! They gave us a beautiful assortment of fruit and Brittani and I got our first pizza in 1 month of being in China! After our $5 dollar dinner, we hit up up the clubs and it was so much fun! They called us up on stage to dance and we met some fun chinese people! After a wonderful night of dancing, the next day we went back to walking street for breakfast and nothing good was open or cheap! While walking around, we met this Chinese man named Tom who was awesome! He helped us get tickets for a river cruise and he found us the BEST place to eat ever! We had an amazing breakfast of strawberry french toast and hot chocolate! After we ate, we found out that Tom teaches art at a University in the Province so we went to one of his galleries and he is talented! I couldn't help but buy one of his pieces of the Yangshuo mountains and he gave us amazing cheap prices! After we left his art studio, Brittani and I wanted to get pedicures so Tom took us to a salon and translated everything that we wanted to get done! I thought I was going to get my eyebrows waxed, but apparently in China they don't wax, they shave! I was mortified but she made my eyebrows look really great! Oh China. For our pedicures, they soaked our feet in rose water and made our feet pretty. Tom sat with us the whole time and helped us translate that we wanted to get chinese characters on our toes of love and happiness. After one of the ladies did one of Brittani's toes, Tom said that the ladies weren't good enough so he painted our toes and held the fan for our toes to dry! He's awesome, good old Tom. After saying bye to our new friend and going on our awesome river cruise, we headed to the train station and almost missed our train! We sat as a group, but Brittani and I had the pleasure of having tickets by ourselves and having 80 pairs of Asian men eyes staring at us for the 27 hour train ride. Seriously, imagine this, if we sneezed, adjusted our seat position, talked to eachother, we would have everyone standing up around us craning their necks to see what the white girls were doing. If I looked out the window, everyone would look out the window to see what I thought was interesting, if I wrote in my journal, they would look over my shoulder and watch me write. At one point of the journey, I had a guy sit down by me who could speak a little bit of English and I started writing in my journal and he had the nerve to lean over me and tell me that I misspelled a word. I was so bugged! The entire trip Brittani and I shared the bench with a young chinese woman and we hoped that she would get off the train so we could lay on eachother and have the bench to ourselves, and when the time finally came, a guy who was sitting on the other side of the car yelled out and started sprinting towards us and told me to scoot over. So much for being comfortable and having our own bench! Oh chinese men, why don't you wear deoderant? After a very long and more great and unforgettable moments of M.A.S.H, Pit, alphabet games, and with unidentified liquids in the squatter, we arrived home to our beautiful city of Changzhou and our wonderful school. It is so wonderful to be home and to see my kids! Since we've been home it has gotten alot colder and now we have to wear scarves and light coats! Fall is here and the leaves are changing! I can't believe that I have lived in China for a month already, time is flying and I am having the time of my life. I am so thankful to be here, and I leave to Beijing for another week vacation tomorrow! I'm sorry it took so long to get this post up, I promise to be better about writing when I get back! I love you all and I hope you're doing well!

Wo Ai Ni!

Wait, seriously am I supposed to eat that?

Wow, wow, wow! I'm sorry I haven't written in a couple of days, but life has been very very busy here in Changzhou! Let me catch you up on my life! Thursday was supposed to be our first official teaching day, but they decided to let us have a weekend of fun before we started! Thursday was our preperation day, we spent the ENTIRE day working on our lesson plans so that night we decided to go and explore the fun neighborhood by our school! It was a very humid and hot night and Nicole, Maddie, and I walked down the street and I saw in the distance one of the most magical sites ever to behold: the 7 eleven colored logo! I was so excited! We walked into the store and immediately I wanted to cry. This was not a 7 eleven with their amazing slurpees, it was an imposter! The great thing about going into the store was that I saw an old chinese grandma holding a very chubby butt naked baby and she tried to have me hold him, um... I'm ok. After our 7 eleven fiasco, we walked down the street trying to find a restaurant for dinner and after our many times of pointing to a random chinese item in restaurants and hoping that we'll like it, we decided to try and find a restaurant that has pictures of the different dishes. And boy did we find one! It was a hole in the wall and a little sketchy, but when I saw chicken I had to have it! I pointed to the picture and the chinese boy took down the order while Nicole and Maddie both got noodle dishes. While waiting for our food, they brought us this soup and at first we were hesitant to taste it after our 'burnt dirt' soup that we had the day before, but it was amazing! It was a chicken broth soup on crack! It had a ton of flavors and spices and cut up cilantro in it! After a half an hour of waiting for our food, we began to get worried that they didn't understand our orders, but they brought out Nicole and Maddie's dishes while I still waited for mine. Finally all of the employees brought out my dish with a big smile on their faces and a HUGE platter and placed it in front of me. What was it you ask? It was an ENTIRE chicken, cut up, and they strategically placed the severed head in the middle of the dish looking up at me. I could not believe my eyes! They all were standing there staring at me waiting for me to take a bite, and so I picked up the least fatty and bony piece and ate it. It was horrible! BUT, I composed my face and smiled and said "hen hou chi" which translates to very good eat. They then told me that it took so long because they killed and cooked the chicken while I ate my chicekn broth on crack. Wow, afraid of offending the people, I asked for my platter to be boxed up to go and I asked how much it was. It was 50 kwai! The most expensive thing on the menu!! But, before you freak out parents, thats only 7 dollars. After we left the restaurant, I gave the food to a homeless chinese man and we went home to the school. On Friday we started our weekend out with a bang! We decided to get our first chinese massage! We took a taxi to a spa and thought that our foreign coordinator King had worked out everything in Chinese for us, well, we were wrong. We (Brittani, Jessica, Nicole, Emily and I) walked into the spa, the women took us to the VIP room and asked, of course, what we wanted in chinese. Obviously not knowing chinese was a problem and I got out my "How to Survive in China" book and proceeded to try and explain to them that we wanted back massages. After about 25 minutes of pointing to a chinese phrase in my book, saying "Not a foot massage, a back massage", I had Brittany lie down on the couch and I pretended to massage her back. They FINALLY got it! Within minutes, they had each of us stripped down in the same room and lying on our seperate table/couchs. Boy, was it awkward! The lady that I had as my masseuse was named dmfiandlfaisdfne (ok, that's not her name, but how would I know!) but she said that I could call her Sally, and Sally did not hold back on putting pressure on my back! Ouch!! She spent most of the time pretty much grinding wheat on my lower back and a couple of times I almost cried because it hurt so much. After we got home, all of us girls could barely sit up straight because they killed our backs and now I have bruises on my lower back. Let's just say that we're not going back to that place again, but 9 us dollars for an hour massage is pretty darn good! Saturday Nicole, Brittani, Jessica, and I decided to go to this sweet amusement park that we pass every day before we went to go into the REAL downtown of Changzhou. We got off the bus and found the park after some walking and found that we were the only ones in the entire park! Of course we picked the most dangerous looking ride and we chose to ride the hammer! It is this giant pendulum looking thing that swings you up and back in circles. We paid for the ride and this little chinese man came waddling out and we quickly decided that we hoped we wouldn't die because the seat buckles were rusted and everything was really sketchy! Oh well, when in China right? We did it and it was amazing! We were thrown in circles, and just before you thought you were going to hit the ground, you would swing up again! After we made a pact to ride every ride in the theme park before we leave in December, we decided to make our mission of the day to find the sweet DVD store that some people in our group had found the day before in downtown Changzhou. We thought that their instructions would be sufficient for finding the store, "It's a cross the street from the gold Mosque and there are mcdonalds everywhere", but we were wrong. We got on the bus at 10:30 in the morning and took a 45 minute bus ride to what we thought was exactly the place that the store should be. We got off on a stop and what we found was a HUGE outdoor mall with thousands of people, hundreds of stores, and a lot of beggers that will hit you if you don't give them money. We had lunch in a McDonalds! It was amazing to have American food! It tasted better than it does in America! While we were eating, we were able to listen to Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and Kesha! It was like I was home, except everyone around me has the same black hair color and looks alike. After lunch, we decided to get serious about finding the DVD store so we went out on the street and found the the gold tipped mosque and it was probably a mile away! We kept walking, taking different streets, sometimes dirt alley roads, and tried to get to the mosque. After about an hour and a half, we finally got to the mosque and looked for the dvd across the street. Ok, so just to let you know, this mosque is HUGE!!! It's the 2nd biggest mosque in China and there are many streets that are across from it, and after another half an hour of walking the side streets, we decided to go into the mosque and see it and all of it's beautiful grounds. It is gorgeous! I will post pictures of it, the grounds are breathe taking , it has a lake where you can rent boats, and I saw my first child just take off his pants and start to pee! Oh my! After our hour mosque adventure, we walked around more of the side streets to find the DVD shop and about 4 hours of walking and trying to find somebody who spoke english after adventures of Jessica being chased by a scooter, Nicole walking on tiles and getting China juice on her new shoes, and Brittani and I almost sweating our faces off, we found a DVD store! It was like heaven came to earth! They had every dvd imaginable and I bought about 30 different ones including all 3 of the seasons of the Big Bang Theory! On our walk back to try and find the elusive 302 bus, we found the DVD store that everyone else went to and it was right across the street of the stop that we got off 7 or 8 hours earlier! We all were so tired, happy that we had such a funny/crazy day, but we just wanted to go home so we decided to get a taxi back to the school. When we got into the taxi, we quickly became worried that we were going to be taken, kidnapped, sold into the sex slave trade as my brother so kindly informed me about before I left, but after 10 minutes of not recognizing anything, my amazing sense of direction realized that we were only about 4 minutes away from the school! He took us the short cut home! Thank goodness! Our "quick dvd run" turned into a 9 hour get lost in the city but it was totally worth it! That night after we got home, my head teacher Nick came and told us that we are going to church in the morning at a branch in the city of Nanjing, and what time did we have to leave? 4:45 a.m.! After waking up, we had an hour and half bus ride to the train station (standing) , a 2 hour train ride (standing) and a 45 minute subway ride (standing)! My feet were so sore by the time we got to the hotel that they held the services in that they wanted to fall off! After an amazing 3 hour block of church, we went to lunch with some of the BYU interns who live in Nanjing while they study abroad. It was so much fun! When the branch president asked us about coming to church every week, we told him that we couldn't and that it was too expensive for us to travel to Nanjing. He then said that he would pay for all 18 of us to come to church every week!! What a blessing to feel the spirit and take the sacrament every week! We got home from Nanjing around 7 p.m. and it made me so thankful to a church close by while growing up and made me never want to take it for granted! On Monday I started teaching! It was a very crazy day with many unexpected surprises but oh my goodness it is so much fun! I decided to decorate my room space themed, with planets, shooting stars, aliens, and a count down 5,4,3,2,1... blast off and the kids love it! I'm going to be teaching about 5 hours a day from 3 until 8 p.m., Monday through Friday and I have a primary class and an elementary class. I about 80 students right now, and I'm expected to get around 35 more next week! These kids are so cute! There are some kids who I believe are the devil's spawn, haha jk but I have some beautiful and really talented kids. I love my primary kids alot, but I absolutely love to teach my elementary kids! They are so much fun and they know a little bit more english so it's easier to teach them! I will make sure that I post some pictures soon, hopefully I can and will tonight after I teach! Wow, this sure turned into a long post! This is my life! I love you all! Wo Ai Ni!

How many americans does it take to tip over a motorized rickshaw?

Well hello everybody! Ni Hao! Another couple of days has gone by in the beautiful city of Changzhou! So much has happened in last little bit! Let me fill you in! My life has so busy the last couple of days with training, training, and more training! We've been learning the ILP training method and it has been a little bit challenging, but you can bet that I am trying my best! The school that we are teaching at is the Tsying International School of language and there are 1200 students here ranging from the ages of 3-12! I will be teaching the 'babies' (the 3-5 year olds) and the Elementary kiddos (5-8)! We will be teaching for about 4 hours a day, Monday through Thursday and we'll have 3 day weekends every week to travel if we wish! As teachers, we each get our own humongous classroom AND the building is brand new! I get to decorate it as I please! I am so blessed! The kids started arriving on Tuesday and they are absolutely adorable!! Every where I go on campus, the kids come up to me and say "HE-LLO TEACHA!" and anything else that they might know in English! Yesterday we had the flag raising ceremony with all 1200 kids and as they filed in they had huge grins on their faces, waved at us, and marched in their lines. It was so hot that day! The ceremony was about an hour and it was one of the 'rare' days that there was a blue sky and the sun was showing through the smog, and we were dressed really nicely in our dresses that by the end were soaked with sweat. At the end of the ceremony, they called our group on stage and they had 21 kids in uniform give each teacher a stuffed animal of the mascot of the world fair expo in Shanghai! How nice huh? The kids started school on Wednesday and we won't start teaching until Monday so we are getting our classrooms and lesson plans prepped! The kids live here at the school Monday through Friday and they have class from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. It is funny because everyday at the same time, we hear this marching music and we look out our window and they have all 1200 students outside on the track marching in lines and doing weird little dances and hand signals! I an already hear the comments dad, haha. I will definitely post a video when I get wifi and I'll be able to use my laptop. We have alot of down time here, and we have been spending our time venturing into town, playing truth or dare, playing games on the roof of our building, and playing tricks on eachother. We have had many adventures and it's only been a week that I have been here! On Monday, a group of 13 of us went to a huge market and my usual group of Brittany, Jessica, Nicole and I went our separate ways from everyone. We had our first 'American' food at KFC, and boy was it delicious... ish. We got chicken sandwiches and the meat was dark meat and mostly fat, ew. But the icecream was delicious! Bin Chin Ling! As we were walking around, we quickly discovered that we were being followed by these two little girls, everything that we did and said they copied, and it was so annoying! Everywhere we go, we attract alot of attention wanted and unwanted and the people treat us like we are movie stars, gawking at us, taking pictures of us, and honking at us non stop! haha It is hilarious! On our way home from the market with the group, it was so hot and humid that we all decided to pitch in for a motorized rickshaw... and what an experience that was! As all 13 of us were piling in to this 6' by 5' box on the back of a motorcycle, we were getting the last person in the rickshaw and it started to tip backwards! The chinese man on the motorcycle fell backwards and we almost died! haha not really, don't worry mom and dad, but it was definitely crazy! I had my first experience at a chinese Karoake bar last night and it was the funnest thing ever! We had a big group of 7 girls and we took a bus into town and got off on a random bus and just wandered around! Life here in China is so different! We went to a chinese restaurant for dinner and everything was in Chinese with no pictures so we just closed our eyes and pointed at something on the menu and tried it! Ashley got a dish with eyeballs in it, Nicole got a soup that tasted like burnt dirt, Brittany got a curry dish, and I actually enjoyed mine because I had one small piece of chicken(?) and the rest was all fat, ew. After dinner, we went to Karoake and it was so much fun! We couldn't find it, and we asked this old man about it and he was like 'Karoake?' and then proceeded to sing lalalala and shake his hips.. haha I love Chinese people. After we found it, we had a private room and got to sing our guts out of Backstreet Boys, Taylor Swift, Celine Dione, Britney Spears and more Backstreet Boys! On our way home from the city, we got off of our bus stop to find that the parking lot is turned into a giant fair at night! They have carnival games, food, and lots of fun little trinkets and toys! It was amazing! So let me fill you in on one of my main goals while I'm here, I am going to try and run 100 miles in China! (Not consecutively) It's a big goal, but I am ready to challenge myself! We'll see how it goes! I will be spending this weekend preparing for my first lesson on monday so please pray for me! I will be teaching Arts and Crafts for the next two weeks and I'm excited! If you guys have any good ideas on games, crafts, fun songs please let me know! Well, that's pretty much my life right now, so I love you all and I will talk to you soon!
Love,Lisa
p.s. I can now say 10 phrases in Mandarin and I can count to ten with the hand signals! Woo hoo! Wo Ai Ni!

Bad Squatter! Bad, Bad Squatter!

Wow, what an experience! Yesterday was my frist day in China nd I am definitely not in the United States anymore. I am going to be teaching English for the next four months in Changzhou with an ILP group of 22 (17 girls and 4 boys) LDS students. After a four hour bus ride from Shanghai to Changzhou, we arrived at our school and boy is it big! It could be a college campus! We go situated in our rooms and my roomate is named Nicole, she is really awesome. We have alot in common and I think we will have a lot of fun! We are in a room with two twin beds and you guessed it.. the infamous squatter! The beds that we have to sleep on are really short and they are more like crates, no padding whatsoever! The food is interesting and not too bad. We have alot of, RICE! It is my goal this semester to try everything that they feed us, enough to taste it and not die! They have fed us giant fish, my favorite.. the eye ball is a delicacy here, and lots and lots of cabbage, bean paste, and duck. I still haven't fully adjusted to this time change deal, with me waking up the last two mornings at 4 a.m. and not being able to fall back asleep until 6. Its really fun because I just sit there and ask myself "is this real life?" or I go and watch the sunrise. Yesterday was our first ILP training and it was very long, alot to rememeber! I am now the travel coordinator for my group so I will be able to plan all of the trips! Yes please! Its the best job ever! After our first meeting, we had a 20 minute break so Nicole and I went back to our room because she wanted to take a shower. As I laid on my bed, I heard a scream and I ran to the bathroom. As I walked in, I saw the worst thing possible: Nicole had accidentally broken the shelf by the connecting shower and squaater and my shampoo had fallen down into the squatter hole of doom! I was completely mortified! haha , but we got it right out and made sure to sanitize the whole thing. After lunch, we went into town to go shopping in the market place! What can I say about my frist China shopping exxperience? It was magical! The Yen is about 7 to every U.S. dollar so you can buy stuff for way cheap! In our shopping group we had me, Nicole, Brittany, Jessica and Madison and we had a blast! As we walked around, people stared at us, and we even had one guy come up and ask for a picture. While in the super market I had an old chinese lady come up to me and saying "blah blah blah blah", I think she thought that she was talking in english, haha bless her heart. I saw everything imaginable in the super market! They had huge fish swimming in tanks along with eels, snails, frogs, and turtles! Brittany, Jessica, and I sat and watched a man for 5 minutes because he was picking out the 'winning' turtle, poor poor turtle. We bought alot of chinese grocery food to see if there was a big difference between that and America, and yes there is! We bought some cheetos and grape soda, and it turns out that they were steak flavored cheetos and A1 (the steak sauce) flavored grape soda! They were really weird, but its all in the experience right? At one point, I went to go throw away something in the bathroom and there was a lady by the trash can with her baby son and the lady had him stand on the rim and she had his ...... ( I can't think of a polite way to say it!) in her hand and was directing him to pee in the trash! OH MY GOODNESS! I almost died! On our way back to the school we took a taxi and I will tell you, the Chinese people drive like madmen! They look at driving regulations as more like 'suggestions' and they drive fast, furious, and out of control! They don't drive in lanes, they honk every 5 seconds, and they almost hit bicycles and pedestrians like its a game! When we got back, a group of uswent up to the roof of our building and tried to throw rocks into the river, and we almost hit one of the chinese people on their bikes! We played alot of games, including this SWEET ninja game, and talked while watching the sun go down.. What an great way to end the day! Well, that's pretty much my life in a nutshell right now everybody! I love you all! Wo Ai Ni!

Love,

Lisa

Bad Squatter! Bad, Bad Squatter!!

Wow, what an experience! Yesterday was my frist day in China nd I am definitely not in the United States anymore. I am going to be teaching English for the next four months in Changzhou with an ILP group of 22 (17 girls and 4 boys) LDS students. After a four hour bus ride from Shanghai to Changzhou, we arrived at our school and boy is it big! It could be a college campus! We go situated in our rooms and my roomate is named Nicole, she is really awesome. We have alot in common and I think we will have a lot of fun! We are in a room with two twin beds and you guessed it.. the infamous squatter! The beds that we have to sleep on are really short and they are more like crates, no padding whatsoever! The food is interesting and not too bad. We have alot of, RICE! It is my goal this semester to try everything that they feed us, enough to taste it and not die! They have fed us giant fish, my favorite.. I've heard that the eye ball is a delicacy here, and lots and lots of cabbage, bean paste, pig intestines, and duck. It is really hard when you're trying to smile and say that something tastes good when they are constantly sitting there watching us and our reactions to the food. I still haven't fully adjusted to this time change deal, with me waking up the last two mornings at 4 a.m. and not being able to fall back asleep until 6. Its really fun because I just sit there and ask myself "is this real life?" or I go and watch the sunrise. Yesterday was our first ILP training and it was very long, alot to rememeber! I am now the travel coordinator for my group so I will be able to plan all of the trips! Yes please! Its the best job ever! After our first meeting, we had a 20 minute break so Nicole and I went back to our room because she wanted to take a shower. As I laid on my bed, I heard a scream and I ran to the bathroom. As I walked in, I saw the worst thing possible: Nicole had accidentally broken the shelf by the connecting shower and squaater and my shampoo had fallen down into the squatter hole of doom! I was completely mortified! haha , but we got it right out and made sure to sanitize the whole thing. After lunch, we went into town to go shopping in the market place! What can I say about my frist China shopping exxperience? It was magical! The Yen is about 7 to every U.S. dollar so you can buy stuff for way cheap! In our shopping group we had me, Nicole, Brittany, Jessica and Madison and we had a blast! As we walked around, people stared at us, and we even had one guy come up and ask for a picture. While in the super market I had an old chinese lady come up to me and saying "blah blah blah blah", I think she thought that she was talking in english, haha bless her heart. I saw everything imaginable in the super market! They had huge fish swimming in tanks along with eels, snails, frogs, and turtles! Brittany, Jessica, and I sat and watched a man for 5 minutes because he was picking out the 'winning' turtle, poor poor turtle. We bought alot of chinese grocery food to see if there was a big difference between that and America, and yes there is! We bought some cheetos and grape soda, and it turns out that they were steak flavored cheetos and A1 (the steak sauce) flavored grape soda! They were really weird, but its all in the experience right? At one point, I went to go throw away something in the bathroom and there was a lady by the trash can with her baby son and the lady had him stand on the rim and she had his ...... ( I can't think of a polite way to say it!) in her hand and was directing him to pee in the trash! OH MY GOODNESS! I almost died! You can just imagine my face! On our way back to the school we took a taxi and I will tell you, the Chinese people drive like madmen! They look at driving regulations as more like 'suggestions' and they drive fast, furious, and out of control! They don't drive in lanes, they honk every 5 seconds, and they almost hit bicycles and pedestrians like its a game! When we got back, a group of uswent up to the roof of our building and tried to throw rocks into the river, and we almost hit one of the chinese people on their bikes! We played alot of games, including this SWEET ninja game, and talked while watching the sun go down.. What an great way to end the day! Well, that's pretty much my life in a nutshell right now everybody! I love you all! Wo Ai Ni!

Hold the phone, that is not a toilet.

Well goodbye Utah and hello adventure! Right now I am sitting in the humongous airport in Seoul, South Korea.. wow, is all that I have to say. After a 14 hour flight, I am exhausted but excited! The flight over was amazing! It was like I was staying in a hotel that was flying! They gave us blankets, slippers, and tried to give us lots of weird food.. hey, when in China be Chinese right? Oh wait, I'm not there.. yet. Anyways, I'm almost done with my journey, thank goodness. Sitting in one position for almost 15 hours is not one of my top 10 things to do, but its all in the experience. The moment I realized that I was not in the U.S. anymore: I went into the bathroom and they don't have toilets, they have squatters.(NOOOOO!) For those of you not familiar with the term squatter, it is pretty much a hole in the ground, and hopefully you can use your imagination to determine how you use it. Also, they have a little button that you push when you go to the bathroom that masks the noise, called the etiquette button. Oh heavens, I'm ready for this. I will keep you updated as soon as I get to China! wo ai ni! (As translated in my survival Chinese book) :)