Wow we are idiots!!

So Jessica and I wanted to cook something and we don't have a pan and our head teacher was gone... (we usually borrow hers) our cookie supplies are VERY limited! it pretty much sucks...but anyways... there are two pans for all of us to share so we went to Aaron and Nicks room (they are our buddies) and there door was wide open... so we walk in and no one is there so we go into their kitchen to see if they had a pan...well they did and we were so happy!! WE WERE GOING TO HAVE AMERICAN FOOD!!! YAY! so we grabbed the pan and booked it out of their room... lol well jess and I were in socks so when we started running and went turn the corner we both slipped and rammed...well ramming is putting it to nicely... it was more like a head on collison with the door! Our heads hurt so bad...and other body parts...but to make matters worse the door was this chinese persons door so i don't even have to get into that story! lets just say AWKWARD! It was awful!! Oh my gosh it hurt so bad! I was rolling on my bed in pain! my hand hurt so freaking bad and for the next couple of days my hand was serioulsy so swollen! (have you ever tried to use chopsticks with a swollen, brusied, jammed hand!!!???) it's not very easy and it killed! I would have used a fork...but they don't believe in them!! but talk about an Instant Karma!!?? right!

My litte Kids! :)

This is Ben! the cutest little boy ever! I love him! he is my little helper. He Speaks really good English and when he comes to class he always comes and gives me a huge hug!!! :) Whenever he sees me he always yells "Teacher Teacher!!" it makes my day! I love all the kids!

This is my little Annie! She is so cute. She is very quiet. I named her on the first day of class because some of the students are new and they don't have English names. So I named a lot my my kids after the nieces and nephews! :) Anways Annie cries for her mom a lot... its way sad but the funny thing is she doesn't talk to anyone unless she knows you really good and even then she won't talk sometimes... She rarely comes to class because lets just put it this way... She is just like cute little miss Annie Bennett!!! having the kids named after the fam helps me a lot! :) I miss you all!

This is Elizabeth and Alan! They are both so cute! Alan can be a little trouble maker and he loves to speak Chinese and he makes fun of you to all his friends. Its quite annoying but when you can get his attention and get him involved in the lesson he is a pretty good student! He knows a lot of English because he has been in the program for a long time now! Elizabeth is darling! :) Her English isn't that good but she works hard and ahh I just love em all! :) You will be seeing a lot of pictures of my kids as time goes on!

The pavilion!

this is the pavilion we went too! Its on walking street (a huge shopping place!) its pretty fun! Jessica me and our friend Aaron all went. It was really fun! There is was this huge plaque of its history but we couldn't read a freaking word because it's all in chinese and of course...no one here speaks it! its frusterating sometimes! (sorry I couldn't get the pictures to stand the right way! no matter how many times i changed it...it always goes back! It's way annoying! so sorry!

The word "hike" means..."stairs"... part 3

This was pretty intense!... we had to hike down this way steep part of the hill and so I thought hey! I will make things easier and just swing from tree to tree all the way down! (it didn't get me very far!) :)

This is the tenple I talked about in the story part I wrote

(My friends Seantay, Tiann, and Kristy)

So mom! remember how you said pole dancing was GREAT excercise!!??? Well I decided to take your advice and whip my body into shape! :) lol I love you mom!

(ps sorry this whole hiking thing is in incriamtes! it wouldn't let me put it all on the same thing...)

The word "hike" means..."stairs"... part 2

This is us "pondering the moment!..." (and catching our breathe..) but this view was about the 1/4 of the way up... pretty crazy! We still had a long way left to go!

This is at the top and we are looking down at our "little Zhongshan town!" it was way pretty and we were really really high up! This is the whole group that went with us!

The word "hike" means..."stairs"...

Me and Tiann gettin ready to go on the Hike! So apparently the word hike in china means just a bunch of stairs!! I'm thinking... why didn't anyone tell me this!

So we started hiking on this little path and we thought...hey this will be pretty easy! :) well so we climbed up this big rock and started taking pictures but when we got down and walked around the corner...oh boy! did we see what we really got ourselves into! I was thinking to myself.."You have GOT to be kidding me!!?"

So when we walked around thet corner we saw the FIRST set of stairs we were going to hike up and it was going to be like this all the way up! it was awful! The chinese girl we went with (Gloria) said it was an estimate of over two thousand stairs! shoot me now! i didn't sign up for this! ;) it was a three hour hike (2 hours up and an hour down) the reason why it was only an hour down because on the way down there was hardly any stairs and mostly a rough path. but still!

So Tiann and i took a million pictures that day because we needed so many breaks! lol everytime we stopped to catch our breathe we took more pictures so we didn't look weak! After the first 3 things of stairs thats when we started taking tons of pics! Tiann and I were completely dead after the first thing of stairs.... only 1,899 stairs left to go! :) p.s. this was the WORST idea we ever had! It was really smoggy that day but when we got to the top it was beautiful! thats when it was worth it! When we got to the top there was a little chinese temple so that was kinda cool. I guess people hike up there all the time to worship and to their Ti Chi (aka yoga) and Gloria said that mountain is where they make the soilders run up the stairs... I could barley walk let a lone run them! but it was actually way fun! :) they asked if we wanted to do it again sometime... i said i would think about it!!! that may be a once in a life time thing! lol

I'm pretty much a China celebrity!

When Jess and I went to the light ceremony we had an hour to kill so we went with our chinese coordinater for our school we teach at her name is Gloria... she is way cool! anyways.. She took us to this historical site and we were walking up tons and tons of stairs and when we got to about the fourth floor these girls asked us to be in a picture with them...so we thought hey why not!!! After that someone else came up to us and asked us the same thing...so again we took a picture with them. This went on for about 15 minutes! there was a line of people waiting to get their pictures with us! it was so funny! So I ask myself....Is it my personal charm and magnatism or is it my blonde hair and white skin??? I will let you decide! ;) My bet is my blonde hair and white skin!

I'm NO chicken!

This is our cafeteria food! Yes...this is in fact a chickens foot! (Michelle....I know you will just LOVE this!) ;) So hello! i'm in China! of course there is all sorts of weird stuff here and I got to try it! It took me awhile to take a bite out of it because I just kept staring at the bumpy skin and the bones...ugh it was so gross looking! Finally I just closed my mouth and took a bite...and to my suprise...It tasted like chicken!! :) Really it wasn't bad but the whole ligament and spitting out the bones started getting to me so that will probably be the last time I eat a chickens foot!!! They also had pigs blood there but I couldn't do pigs blood AND the chickens foot! plus...thats just gross! But my next food I will try will be dog!!... ;)

Home Sweet Home!! :)

My closet to share with two other girls!! yay! The closet is right against the wall (left side) when you walk in and the bathroom is right across from that and then its our room...

This is my bathroom! notice the drain is just on the floor! no seperate shower or nothin! There is however a shower curtain so we were lucky! :) (sorry the pic is tilted i could get it so stand the right way! its way annoying!!!) anyways you get the idea! :) EVERYTHING gets soaking went whenever we shower! its awful!

This is my bedroom, family room and dining room!! All combined into one for our convience! ;) (really...my whole apartment is as big as my room!!) The bed with the pictures on the wall is mine!

This is my little washer! you have to restart it for EVERY cycle!! like the rinse cycle, wash cycle, sping cycle etc...

This is my super fast delux dryer!!!...not! It actually takes at least 2 days for my stuff to dry and it will only take longer when the weather starts to get hotter. its way humid over here!

This is my kitchen! Its about the size of stephanies bathroom! (the one with the tub in it!) So thats it! my home sweet home!! :) (well away from home anways...)

My first day of teaching!

Today was my first day of teaching! yay! One down...150 to go! (something like that) The kids were SO cute!! :) I already have fallen in love with them! I teach kindgerten and they are ages 3-5 and 5-7 so its pretty fun! Some of the kids are new to the program so they don't have English names. My teaching partner Aaron and i got to name them today! :) I was naming after the neices and nephews! It will help when i get home sick! :) But anyways...for my first lesson plan we made monkey puppets and then I had a a crocodile puppet already made (it was so cute!!) I colored the sock green and then broke off the prongs of a plastic fork for the teeth. then after all of our monkies were made I taught them the song "five little monkeys swinging in a tree"they loved me chasing them with the crocodile puppet! So if I had to rate myself i would give myself a....7.5 or 8 out of 10 lol just kidding! I got a lot of work to do! its harder then I thought it was going to be. But I think i will just LOVE it and its turning into the best thing i have ever done! :)

I'm the "man" of the house?!...

So today when Jessica went to get something out of the cuboard there was this nasty HUGE cockroach! I heard this bloody murder scream so I ran in the kitchen to see what the heck was going on... well It was the cockroach. She wouldn't get it and I couldn't just let it crawl all over our food! ugh.... so I put on gloves and went to kill it and I dropped it on accident and it was sqirming all over the place...so then I started to scream and it was awful! Eventually I got it! It ended up to be a sweet victory! My two baby roomates called me the man of the house because I killed the cockroach... I'm not sure I want that title because I don't know if I can kill the future cockroaches of my apartment!!! but I will admit...it was a SWEET victory! :) (sorry the picture is blury) There was no way in heck I was going to get close enough to take a picture! I zoomed in as far as I could!

"The Geniuses of funny!"

We met this Chinese girl named Olive (she sat by us at the dinner thing) she was hilarious!! Anyways Jess and I were bored so we were taking pictures and making funny faces and she was laughing so hard!!! She was almost rolling on the ground laughing! And all she kept saying was "You are the Geniuses of funny! You do a good job on teaching me how to make a funny face!" So we asked if she wanted to be in some pictures and she got all excited! she wanted us the teach her how to make a funny face (however you do that) and so we showed her how to do a "grr" face in the picture. lol so lets just say if we teach the kids like we thaught her how to make a funny face we will be AWESOME teachers....hmmmm.....well maybe!? But the funniest thing about this situtaion was her laugh...it was the funniest laugh i have ever heard! :) (It could get annoying if we were around it for to long though...)

Fondu?...hmm I think not!

So this other ILP school invited us to dinner and we had this fondu type thing i guess you could call it...!!! I didn't catch the name of this interesting dish!! It may have been called a hot pot but i'm not sure...i wasn't much for it...all it was was a boiling pot of water and then you put all sorts of raw meat and vegetables in it and let it cook...ugh! i didn't like all those flavors mixed and it just wasn't that good in my opinion!! There was lamb, fish, cow stomach, this meatball crap (it was not a meatball in my opinion! it was way sick!!) and other meats. The vegetables and potatoes were good though! but good news! Iam getting really good at chopsticks and i can pick up and eat just about anything!! (and spencer will appreciate this....i am actually holding them the right way!) he kinda gave me crap for that before i left! but anways this was my first interesting china dish i've had! the others have been really good!! :)

Hong Kong Temple!

I wanted to go to baptisms for the dead in the Hong Kong Temple but i have to wait till we come back through Hong Kong because i forgot to make an appointment...oh well it will give me something to look forward to!! Anyways! We asked about 10 people where the Hong Kong LDS temple was and no one and any idea what we were talking about, if Buddha wasn't in it...it didn't exist! So we thought we would take a taxi because taxi drivers have to know everything!!! well he kicked us out 10 minutes into the ride because he couldn't even understand us! finally someone knew where it was and they tried to give us directions...so we hopped on the subway and about 20 minutes later we got off. She said to turn left and it would be about a 5 min walk...well we walked for about 20 and still nothin!! It was even a huge hill we hiked up...we were all sweating!! so we started back down and right when we went to get back on the subway Hannah (our other friend) saw the angel moroni!!! so we got to see it!!! and the lady was right... it was about a 5 min walk...but only if we took a right! ugh! but it was still awesome!! ")

The subway! (Hong Kong)

My first massage!

We got our first massage!!! :) the original price was $238 HGK and I talked her down to $150 (that included a foot detoxer, 45 min body massage, and a 30 min foot zone!) it was AWESOME!!! they put on a show for us. this dragon came and danced for us and a chinese band played! it was way fun!! The Chinese people were way funny and way nice! When we get to China it will be way cheaper but we were sore from traveling..so we got one now! The lady in the pic was the one i made a deal with. She was so so nice. afterwards she showed us around and helped us find our way back to the subway and showed us where to go and such! it was way fun!