Here I Come.......

I will be home soon!!! Wish us luck as we take our last adventure through China, ferry across to Hong Kong, find our way to the Hong Kong airport, weight our luggage, get on a plane and travel to Taipei, switch planes and travel to Los Angeles, arrive on American soil (I LOVE THIS COUNTRY :) go through customs, get on a plane and head for Salt Lake City arriving at 7 p.m. tonight. It is going to be a long day! Love you all!!!

#1 Favorite Thing I Love about China - My Students!

My all-time favorite thing about being here in China is the the reason I came.....the kids!!! I have loved spending time with them and getting to know them. They understand us more than most Chinese people and they have taught me more than I have taught them. I truly fell in love with these kids and I will miss them so much. What a rewarding experience this has been!!!

Me and my students. Look at those adorable faces :)

Well, maybe these faces aren't so adorable!

#2 Favorite Thing I Love about China - Shopping

The shopping here is fun!!! We go shopping pretty much all the time and every time we go out someone has to buy something. The Chinese people are very talented and take a lot of pride in the things that they have made by hand. They are usually selling these items on the streets. If you walk by them without purchasing the items they holler after you yelling, "cheap, cheap." They know that American word very well :) The shopping is very cheap and just last week I got two pair of shoes for $15. I am going to miss buying things for cheap. I can definitely say that between the six of us we have helped out the Chinese economy. Pray for me that my suitcases are not overweight!

A street market where they sell their homemade items.

Street vendors selling fruit and vegetables.

Nothing stops us from shopping...not even the rain!!!

#3 Thing I Love about China - Spa Treatments

We have definitely spoiled ourselves in China. We love having pedicures and manicures and it is not expensive at all. The Asians are very good when it comes to the pampering services. More than anything I loved getting my head massaged!!! The Asians spend about 30 minutes just massaging your head, it feels so good and it makes me want to fall asleep every time. When they are done with that they straighten our hair. They don't straighten it with a straightener, just with a brush and a blow dryer. They are amazing! They can make my hair straight but it only lasts for about 10 minutes until I go out into the humid weather, then it goes back to curly. I will not miss the humidity!

Me, Mandy and Jadie getting ready for our pedicures.

Guess who's feet belong to who? Unfortunately, my feet are the swollen ones. My body does not like the hot, humid temperature.

The finished manicure.

This is the part I love and I can fall asleep every time.

Here I am with straight hair.....for about 10 minutes :)

#4 Thing I Love About China - Birthday Parties

I have also enjoyed Chinese birthdays! Our first encounter of a Chinese birthday was Ryan's birthday in February. He is one of our students and his parents wanted to celebrate in the evening at the school, of course, with the American girls. Birthdays here are full of food, friends, family and red bean angel cake. In our time in China Lindsey, me, Jadie and Mandy have had birthdays and we have celebrated each of our birthdays in a different way! Every birthday Annie brings us a cake. At first we were scared of the cakes because we thought they were going to have red beans in the middle but Annie has taken good care of us and she gets us cake with fruit in the middle.

Ryan's birthday party. We are surrounded by friends, Ryan's family, red bean angel food cake and lots of food.

#5 Favorite thing about China - The Bakery

One of my favorite things about China has been the Bakery!!! We visit the bakery every time we go to the supermarket, which is pretty much everyday. America has better sweets than China does by far. The Chinese people do not have a sweet tooth but they do know how to make some awesome bread!!!! All of the bread isn't that good, some of the breads have meat and red beans on top and in the middle. We have learned to stick with what we know is good. Here are a few of my favorites, yum yum!!!

Here is our favorite little bakery which isn't far from where we live.

The newest add to my list of favorite bakery items. It is made with egg and that is about as far as I can explain it.

This is also a favorite. It is a sweet wheat roll with seeds on top. It looks very american but I have never tasted anything like this back home.

This is my all time favorite. I cannot explain this one either but it taste like coconut. I am going to try to smuggle some home for my family, I hope they make it!

5 Days and Counting

I cannot believe that I have been in China for 5 months and it is now time to complete this adventure. These last few days will be busy ones as I have much packing to do, last minute things to do and places to visit and many goodbyes to say. It is definately a bitter sweet but I am looking forward to seeing my family at the airport on Friday, sleeping in my own bed, eating American food, going back to my job at the clinic, getting my haircut and colored and going to the doctor. Yes, I know that sounds strange but I am looking forward to going to the doctor so that I can start feeling well again. I am taking my cousin Mandys idea and going to highlight the top 5 things I have loved about China...This is hard as their are many more than 5. Enjoy and I look forward to seeing you all very soon. Much love, Raychel

A Saturday Adventure!!!

Chinese grocery store. It looks pretty American except for all the asians and the interesting fruit and vegetables.

The movie tickets are pretty American looking, except they are written in chinese :)

On Saturday all of the girls went to a hot spring but I wasn't feeling good so I stayed back with Jadie. Jadie and I didn't want to hang out in our apartment all day so we went out, we had no idea where we were going or what we were going to do. We went to the supermarket, the supermarket is HUGE!!! It has 4 floors, the first floor has lots of stores like clothes stores and bakeries, the second floor is the supermarket, the third floor is shopping and the fourth floor is shopping, a movie theater and a smoothie place. As we were wondering around we went to check out the movies, we noticed they had movies in English like Transformers 2. We got our tickets to see that and as we are sitting in a normal American-looking theater the previews for Transformers 2 comes on, we thought that was weird to play the preview for the movie we were about to watch but it is China, we didn't think much about it. Come to find out we were not at Transformers 2, we were at some other movie that was in English. We got out of there and we noticed that Transformers 2 doesn't come out until the 23, we were just a little early:) We ended up going to Night at the Museum 2 which was in English with Chinese subtitles. There were about 10 other Asians at that movie with us. They also have the traditional american movie popcorn although their portion of popcorn is not like America's portion of popcorn. Their popcorn size was very small. I like going to places in China and compare it with with America. America has better, more comfortable theater seats, better portion of popcorn and no subtitles at the bottom of the movie, this was a very fun adventure!

MANDY'S BIRTHDAY BASH

For Mandy's birthday on Saturday we went to the water park in Guangzhou, the water park is next to the Safari Zoo and the amusement park so it was a breeze to get there. It was a hot day, the weather said it was 98 degrees plus humidity, it was a good day to go and we could actually see the sun, usually the sun is covered with pollution. The kindergarten's vice principal's daughter came with us, her name is Agnus (I can never remember her name for the life of me!) she is 19, in high school and she speaks English very well. She was very quiet, she probably thought it was weird hanging out with a bunch of white crazy girls. The water park was huge, they had a little kid section, water slides (body slides and tube slides) a lazy river and other things! We were waiting in line to go on a slide and the line was taking forever! To keep ourselves entertained we played hand slap games like "Say, Say Oh Play Mate" and "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." I guess we were entertaining not only ourselves but other people as well! There were 3 Asian guys in front of us, who knew some English, and they wanted us to teach them, so we did. They were very funny to teach, they were concentrating so hard! We were at the water park all day and surprisingly no one got burnt! It was a fun birthday bash!!!

THE ADVENTURES OF YUANGSHOU

The city of Guilin

After playing in a pool of mud!!!

The rice fields - they were so amazing!

On the bamboo rafts that took us through the beautiful cliff mountains in the background.

This weekend was our last vacation! We went to Yuangshou which is a 10 hour bus ride. We took a sleeper bus there, I have decided that sleeper buses are the way to go, you go to sleep and by the time you have woken up you have reached your destination. When we got off the bus there were huge mountains around us, they weren't actually mountains, they looked more like cliffs! They were amazing! We got there Thursday morning around 6, we got to our hostel and figured out what we wanted to do for the weekend. We took a bike ride to the mud caves, we walked around in the cave, played in a pool of mud and laid in a hot spring. That night we went to a show on water, the Chinese know how to put on a good show! They had lit up the cliff mountains in the background and there was singing and dancing, it was so awesome! On Friday we took a bus to the rice fields, I thought the rice fields were going to be lame and as I was walking up a million stairs I still couldn't believe I was doing it. As we got to a resting point and we could look out over the valley and see all of the rice fields, it was incredible! I couldn't believe how much time and energy this place takes! We met a couple yesterday who were doing the same tour as us, the guy, Stepheno, is from Italy and the girl, Alex, is from Spain. They each know 4-5 different languages and they just travel around to different countries teaching languages. They were vegetarian so they invited us to a vegetarian restaurant, I was scared at first but the food was delicious! We ate bamboo (which was surprisingly good) and a lot of different veggies. We had so much fun hanging out with this couple and I couldn't believe they weren't sick of us! By the time Saturday rolled around we were all pooped! We went on a bamboo raft down Li River. It was relaxing and it was an awesome view, we were surrounded by the cliff mountains! We ate lunch at Lucy's Place, all of our friends who have gone to Yuangshou earlier have told us to go there and I'm glad we did! I ate the american style chicken strips and we all had a fried banana with ice-cream and chocolate drizzled on top! It was yummy! That night we hopped on a sleeper bus at 7:30 and got home Sunday morning at 5 a.m., that sleeper bus was hard to sleep on because I was holding on for my life, the driver was going about 100 MPH down a windy road. This trip was pretty fun, it is awesome to see the different parts of China because each place that we have visited has been very different.

We went to the ZOO, ZOO, ZOO!!!

On Saturday we went to zoo in Guangzhou. To get there we had to take a motor taxi, get on a bus, take the subway then another bus. The Chimelong Safari Park was right next to the Chimelong Amusement Park that we went to a couple months ago. The zoo had two sections to it, one part was a normal zoo where you walk around the other part you took a train and it was a safari! The animals were on open plain with no cages! It was so awesome! We saw cheetahs running around with giraffes and zebras! This zoo had every kind of animals from flamingos to anteaters (grossest looking animal ever!) white tigers, koalas and PANDA BEARS! This was the coolest zoo I have ever been to. I even got to hold a month and a half old cheetah, it was very soft. We weren't planning on spending all day at the zoo, but we did and it was worth every minute.
A yucky anteater

Me holding a baby cheetah :)

What China is known for - the panda bear!

On the safari train ride

Me very close to a giraffe

Cute koala

Birthday Pictures!

My cake Annie brought me

Blowing out candles!!!

Birthday away from home

Yesterday was my birthday, my roomies made me breakfast which was very unexpected and delicious! The kids were so cute when they found out it was my birthday, they sang Happy Birthday to me about 300 times. That night Lucky's parents wanted to take us out to dinner to hear about how Lucky's English is going. Lucky is a cute 4 year old who loves to bite, pinch, scratch and pull hair. She is a wild child but she is adorable! The kids we teach come from very rich families so when they want to take us out to dinner we know we will go to a nice restaurant. Sure enough we went to an awesome restaurant, probably one of the nicest we have been to! Dinner is like a 3 hour event every time. The Asians like to chat and they eat very slowly, I was ready to go but then the waitresses brought in a cake and sang happy birthday to me, it was fun sharing cake with Lucky, Lucky's parents and some Chinese teachers! We came back to our apartment and watched Bride Wars then Annie brought over another cake!!! Having a birthday away from home is really weird but my roommates made it a lot better:)

More Pictures!

Silk Market=girl's dream

Me and Mandy's olympian jump

Jumping on the Great Wall, showing my sweat and glory.

AMAZING!!!

Cartwheel ON the Great Wall!

Pictures!!!

Chinese Acrobats, they are amazingly gross!

Mandy and I in front of The Forbidden City.

The Temple of Heaven.

Tianemen Square.

On the train to Beijing the people under us shared some jelly things with us, they were interesting...

My adventures of Beijing and Xi'an!!!

We got a 6 day vacation and we decided long ago that we were going to spend the 6 days in Beijing and Xi'an. We left on Thursday afternoon, traffic was bad and we almost missed our train, we made it within seconds, we seem to cut things close a lot-it gives me a heart attack every time. We took a sleeper train to Beijing which was only about 22 hours long! It was so nice! The beds were comfortable and I slept pretty much the whole time. When we got to Beijing it was about 5 PM, we met up with 3 other girls from ILP and we went to Hard Rock Cafe!!! It was so good, I have never seen so many white people here in China! There were so many of them in Beijing! On Saturday we went to Tianemon square and we couldn't see Mao's body because it was closed! Then we went to The Temple of Heaven, The Temple of Heaven is where the emperors made sacrifices-there were a lot of beautiful and very Asian looking buildings. We went to the Forbidden City, I loved the Forbidden City! It was so fun! Mandy slipped on the side of the stairs and fell and cut her elbow, the Asians were concerned and we just laughed, it seems like we are always making a scene. That night we went to an acrobat show-holy cow! These Asians we saw in this show were amazing! They were so flexible and very talented! I couldn't believe all of the stuff they were doing! It was so gross and amazing!
On Sunday we booked a tour with Ben, a very nice Asian, he took us to a part of the Great Wall that is not touristy. We first had to hike a mountain for about 30-45 minutes to get on the Wall, the part of the wall we were on was crumbly and very old, there were trees and bushes growing on the part of the wall we were on! It was only 700-800 years old-not that old Ben said. It was a 4 hour hike on the wall, what a workout, there was a part of the wall where we had to climb it, not walk up the stairs but climb up the stairs, it was so cool! We then checked out the Bird's Nest, where the 2008 Olympics were! We saw that on TV not too long ago! Then we went to the Silk Market-whoa I loved that place, I got Silver Jeans for $15! The Silk Market has about 4 different floors full of random stuff. One floor has silk, another floor has pearls, one floor has jeans and clothes, it is a girls heaven:)
On Monday we went to the China and Beijing museum but everything is closed on Monday because that is their religious day-lame, why can't they do that on Sunday like everyone else!? So we just spent our day spending money at the Silk Market which was very dangerous but very fun! Then we got on a train to Xi'an, we had hard seats for 12 hours-it was torture! I will never ever take a hard seat train again. I didn't sleep at all and everyone was so miserable! Xi'an was a very relaxing trip, we did what we wanted on our time-it was nice and not rushed. We went to the Terracotta Warriors, those were so cool!!!! I couldn't believe it! 2,000 years ago and some were still in tacked! I loved it! That night we went to a light/water show, light and water danced around to music, it was very entertaining! Yesterday we only had time to go to the Drum Tower then got on a plane to go back to our apartment. This trip was amazing and I really want to go back someday to visit all of the places I have missed like the Ming Tombs and the Summer Palace.

Funny story

Ok, these pictures are backwards and I don't know how to flip them around, this is the last picture, so the chicken head in the bottom picture we found in our dinner and Jadie thought it would be funny to take it to our cook, Spencer. She did (picture number 2) and he bit off the neck! We were shocked and grossed out, we didn't know he would do that! Crazy Asians and their chicken heads!

Karaoke Pictures!

These are our awesome awards. The principal is the short one in the middle, the lady next to me is the former principal and I don't know who the end lady is.

Waiting patiently for dinner.

Chinese Karaoke

So tonight was so fun! The principal of the kindergarten we teach at paid for all of her teachers (us Americans and the Chinese teachers) to go to a competition karaoke night. This afternoon we practiced a popular lovey Chinese song-we are pretty good. Then Annie wanted us to sing a popular Britney Spears song! Of course we said yes to that, it brings us back to our childhood! We chose Hit Me Baby One More Time-I remember all of the words and I haven't heard that song for about 5 years now!!! We got to the restaurant and we went into a huge room with a stage and karaoke set up at the front of the room. We got front row seats! We had dinner and a show, we were entertained by about 60 Chinese teachers. These Asians are crazy with karaoke-it is a new side of them we have never seen before. Dinner was pretty delicious, less fishy than other meals we have had. While we were eating everyone was singing and they wanted us to sing Hit Me Baby One More Time even though that was our competition song and the competition was not going to start until after dinner! So we sang it and it was a big hit! We sang pretty well! When we were done with dinner the competition started, it is really hard to pay attention when you don't know what ANYONE is saying. We were number 15 on the list, it took forever to get to us it felt like. All of the songs the Asians were singing all sounded the same! Very high pitch and loud. We got up and sang our Chinese song-I think they were shocked we knew that song! They all sang it with us! We thought we were done but they wanted us to sing Hit Me Baby One More Time again! So we did, it wasn't very good that time, we started too early then we were off. They still loved it though! After we sang they gave us an award for singing and a water bottle-haha it was so cute of them and our award looks very official! I love these Asians we work with! Even though we don't understand a word they say we still have so much fun with them! I had so much fun tonight, we are definitely taken care of here in China!

Look how long my hair is, this Asian was really nice and friendly.

Getting my hair washed! It feels so nice!

This picture was taken after church, this is our "way to humid face."

Eventful week

This past week was pretty good, it started out a little rocky, my package that my mom sent about 30 days ago never made it to me, I was bummed out about that, but don't worry, a couple of days ago Annie (the Asian that helps us) informed me that they found my package! It was a happy day! I love getting packages even though you can never trust the mailing system here. Yesterday we went to church to take the sacrament at the other ILP group's apartment. We haven't been to church for about 8 weeks now-it felt nice to go even though it is weird having church in an apartment. I miss going to church, I have taken it for granted, China has really taught me a lot about what I really do enjoy but never think about when I'm at home. I miss walking around with no shoes on, I miss carpet, I miss soft couches/beds and a whole bunch of things I can think about daily. Today was an eventful day! We walked all over town about 2 or 3 miles!!! Jadie is getting her wedding dress made here, so we picked up Jadie's wedding dress pictures to take to the lady who is making the dress. Then we went to the DVD store-we are really big fans of the DVD store, we love our movies! Then the best part of our day was getting our head massage!!! Mandy and Emily didn't want to go because they were too tired so it was only me and Jadie who went. It was amazing! They massage our heads for about 30 minutes then they do our hair! I feel bad for the person who did my hair because my hair is curly and it never straightens because of the humidity. Hair salons are weird here, the girls, there are some guys, wash our hair and then there are these older Asian males with long fingernails and button down shirts to show off their hairless chests do our hair. My hair is getting so long! I didn't realize how long my hair was until they straightened it! I'm glad Jadie and I got our head massaged today-it felt good. Thanks for reading my Blog! I will try to update it as much as possible!

Easter Day Pictures

My American food!!!

Look how good it is!

Our sweet rolls-they were yummy.

Our Easter baskets-we loved the Easter bunny visiting us.