Playing Favorites and BLC's!!!

So I decided to splurge this month and bought some BLC- bacon, lettuce, and cheese- sandwich!
It was so yummy and worth it for the money and time it took!! ha ha.

Last Bite :( all good things I guess must come to an end...
But it was soooo deliciouso!!
Sorry about the Creepy picture at the top!

My beautiful first graders! This is the class we call the "genius" class. They are a what the chinese call a "special" class. They know a little more than our fourth or fifth graders and they are only in first! BUT since they are so smart is a constant frustrating almost insane battle to keep their attention for 5 minutes let alone a 40 minute class! I love them outside of class, but teaching them, they are the hardest class I have. They are just too smart for their own good. Hailee is my favorite!! And she knows it! She remembered her name after the first week. I only teach them every two weeks but I go up to their class room for our thirty minute break time sometimes and chase about 50 of them around the school. Its a blast! Hailee is named so because she reminds me so much of my littlest sister Hailee back at home. They both have a mischevious side them. The Hailee in my class is actually one of the class clowns. Its a good thing I like her so much or she would get on my nerves a bit....

Hailee!! After every class I teach with her in it, she stays after and asks if we can take a picture together. My camera has been broken for a while but I got a new one, so she was really excited.

Gotta love it! and i do!!!!

Two Lefts Do Make a Right!!

This past months hasn't been full of too many adventures but Ive still loved life in China as much as ever. Finding out more and more stuff about myself, others, and relationships with so many different kinds of people.

I am so blessed to be where I am right now. Being influenced by so many people of different culture and background. Different ways of thinking and doing things. A different language spoken out of every mouth and different ways that love has been spoken. No one can live this for me. This is my time to live this dream, and that is what I am trying to do.

I get to experience something not too many people get to experience in their lifetime and I am truely grateful for it. I get to breathe in the poluted air and love it. I get to taste the bitter food and crave it. I get to live with rodents and fear for my well being, but at the same time find it awfully amusing. I get to put my life in iminent danger everyday riding my bike to school on the chaotic roads of China a scream with glee. I have the opportunity to shake hands with monks and get hopelessly lost in rural town China.

I get to live in an apartment made of hand laid bricks mortered together with water and dirt and a little cement mix covered witha a think layer of drywall and still look forward to coming home each day. I get to say "hello" back to each and every asian that is excited to be able to speak the little english they know in the small amount of time they have of passing us. I get to cross the street like I am playing frogger and I am all out of quarters. I get to sleep on a bed you would only think was made out of metal springs and nothing else and still be thankful I even have a bed.

But the best thing of all is that I get to spend 5 days out of every week with the BEST part of China: their children!! The kids are so excited to see us whenever we show up at school, walk into their class to teach, come to sit down at their table for lunch, pull out a camera, or even say hello and smile at them. They swarm us with their love and even though we cant exactly speak eachothers language, you know that they love you with out words. That is something I will deeply deeply miss when the time comes for me to leave. These kids have made my life and my trip isn't even done yet. I came to teach these kids english, but they have been teaching me so much more and they continue to do so every day.

Rat Hunting Adventure

Gotta love China with all of its new adventures around every corner. The morning of this video, the boys swore they saw what looked like a rats tail in the toilet. We didnt see much else of anything for the rest of the day so we let it go. Well that evening, to our surprise, and to some peoples horror, we found the little vermin in our apartment. Armed with a butcher knife and a mini ironing board, the boys went to work. Mister Jace courageously went after this animal while Brad, bravely helped get the animal into harms way of the butcher knife. After the whole ordeal, I can only imagine what the whole apartment complex was thinking. You would have thought the whole lot of us were being murdered. This was a our first experience with uninvited guests in our apartment and Im sure it wont be the last. This video contains the death of animals and blood so please be warned!

Chinese Cemetary

This video is clips of the local cemetary. The pictures and videos were taken about a week after a national holiday where they go to the graves of their families and set off fireworks and talk to their ancestors. They also have a feast with their families. The cemetaries are very dirty and very unorganized. You bring your own head stone and make your own outlining of the bodies. The ceremony for when one dies here is when they die, they keep the body in the house for 4 days for the viewing. The number 4 represents death. Then they carry the body out to the streets and everyone is dressed in white, white represents death, and they dig the hole and put the body in the hole. And cover it back up again.

Makeshift Kickboxing

Ive really wanted a boxing bag for a while to get out the stress Ive accumulated and to burn some of the pounds off from the constant carbs and stuff we eat; with all the bakeries, potatoes, rice, everything cooked in oil, etc. One night I just decided I needed something that could take a couple of punches, even if it was from a girl. So i tore everything off my bed and pulled my mattress up and put it up against my wall. Perfect! I put on Fort Minor "Remember the Name" and went to town. It felt so good just to punch something! ha ha I promise I am NOT a violent person. My roomate couldnt help but join in!!

The mattresses in china are pretty dang crappy. I can feel every single spring when i sleep, the mattress wasnt any nicer on my nuckles. No pain no gain baby!!

Adventures of being adopted into a Chinese Family!

I had the privilege of being invited by one of our favorite teachers from our school to go to a barbeque. After some of the accomodations were changed last minute, we went to a fellow teachers apartment. Dinah, our favorite teacher who is always very sweet to us and very excited about working on her english, took us, along with her son Chucky, to the apartment. The husband picked us up and we found out that he loved Kareoke! Everyone in China does, but little did we know that he had a huge system in his apartment.

He was nice enough to get some american songs, such as Celine Dion, Brittany Spears, and really old school loves songs so that we could sing them. We werent sure what to expect but as soon as we got there we knew it would be a great time!

Dinah is in the purple, Chucky in the orange, April (she let me give her a new english name :D) in the black, and Mrs. Zho in the grey.
We had a great time play fighting. I let Chucky beat me up pretty good! I had no chance against the little guy and his amazing moves!

I
I ate sooooo much food. My belly was sticking out. So I pretended i was pregnant and they thought it was hilarious. But yet they kept feeding me! I dont think i had had that much meat with out a lot of fat, the whole time ive been in China!

This is our 2 wonderful hosts! Neither of them spoke english. Mr. Zho could understand a little from all of the american war movies he's seen. Mrs. Zho was an amazing cook! She was the sweetest lady and it felt like being home. By the end of the night we were calling Them mama and babba

They lived on the top floor. It was pooring rain. We had the BBQ on the patio part that was coverd and the city lights were hidden by the buildings accross from us.

MEAT!!! You have no idea how good this looks to a carnivour american girl who has only eatin meat the size of her thumb!

We kareoke'd it up baby! even though we sounded horrible they absolutely loved it! Celine Dion My Heart Will Go ON!!!!!