I have been in charge of arts and crafts and for arts and crafts we have been working on caterpillars, putting them into a paper cocoon and painting coffee filters for the wings. When the wings are dry I’m going to transform their caterpillars into butterflies. This video clip is my home class, their English is aMaZiNg and they are the cutest class I think, other than Mandy’s. In the video clip they are making the cocoon to put their caterpillars in. Listen to the way they say cocoon, it is the cutest thing! Ray is the one in pink, he is very smart and he is the “leader” of my group, all of the kids follow him and do what he says. Wendy is in the white shirt next to Ray, she use to be a little trouble maker, I don’t know what happened to her but now she participates and she enjoys learning. Lake is the big boy, he is a teacher’s pet and he has a very wild imagination. Peter is the small one, if there was a crowd of our students; Peter is the first one I look for. Peter has my heart ever since day one and I love him! He is cute, he makes me laugh and I want to take him home! Lucy is the one next to me, she has a very spunky attitude and she is very fun. Rebecca was missing today, Rebecca is half Spanish/half Chinese-she is beautiful, very funny and she loves the teacher’s attention. These kids are so cute! I love them more and more everyday! They are so smart, I couldn't ask for anything better. Enjoy!

Pictures!

Cousins! Here we are at pagoda park! We look like tourists, we bought those shirts at the supermarket for cheap cheap cheap!!!

This is the pagoda on the hill-so beautiful!

We went under that bridge in the background coming out of my head-we are talented on paddle boats even though the Asians were telling us what to do:)

At the hospital getting blood drawn. I think that was a clean needle they used...

This picture is funny-Something is out of place here. This tells people who is next in line to pick up their prescriptions.

Pagoda Park

Today was a fun day! It might be Jadie's last weekend in China so we did fun things today. We went to pagoda park which is just down the road from us and as we were walking there there was a lady selling jewelery on the side of the road. We stopped and bought a couple things from her, I love to buy things here because they are so cheap and everything is beautiful here! The pagoda park is a beautiful park with a pagoda that sits up on a hill and there is a lake, we (Mandy, Jadie and Emily) rented a paddle boat and spent the afternoon on the lake. As we were paddling on the lake there were Asians following us on their paddle boats or there were Asians on land taking pictures of the Americans in the paddle boat. Occasionally we would have Asians yell at us and tell us how to paddle-they are very helpful Asians even though we already knew how to paddle. I swear they think we don't know how to do a lot of things. After the paddle boats we went to Little Italy. Little Italy is the place we went for Lindsey's birthday-it was so good so we went back and I got the same thing I got last time. Tendon, bone and fatless chicken with potatoes-very delicious! Then to top it off we went to the bakery! I love the bakery and I haven't had it in a while so it was especially delicious tonight! I love China and I am glad I'm here, it is cool to see different cultures and how they do things!

Crazy day!

Yesterday was a crazy day! I went to the hospital because I have been sick for 8 days now, come to find out I have enteritis, inflammation of the small intestines, and they gave me a lot of different pills to take and some powder to put in my water. I hope the medicine works because I am sick of being sick! Last night Susie and Jimmy's parents took us out to dinner. We figured they would be pretty rich because they have 2 kids in this top notch kindergarten. Sure enough we get to the restaurant and it was nicer than the restaurant the mayor took us to! They put us into a single room, there were about 7 Chinese teachers, Ryan (we went to his birthday party-his mom is a teacher) was there and Susie and Jimmy's parents were there. They asked us what we like to eat, we told them we liked fried rice, pot stickers and veggies. Sure enough they brought out fried rice, yummy non-fat meat, pot stickers, veggies and shrimp with the head and legs still on! Fish food freaks me out! One of the last things they brought were sweet rolls, there rolls here are sketchy because you never know what's inside of them. They usually have meat in them and it just ruins the yummy sweet roll! Come to find out there was brown sugar inside of the sweet rolls! They were my favorite! Good thing I won't get those ever again, that could be dangerous. When we go out to dinner it is usually a 2 hour event, they love to socialize! I loved getting to know Jimmy and Susie's parents, they are a cute family and they are very nice, down to earth people.

Dinner with the mayor of Xiaolan

We just got back from dinner with Jane, (the owner of the Bond Institute, she is very rich and she has a house in Canada) she invited our ILP group and another ILP group that lives about 2 minutes away from us, Jessica (the girl from Ireland) was there and other people who teach English for Bond not ILP were there. We knew that we were going to have dinner with someone from the "government" so we knew this would be a really really nice restaurant. We met at the Bond Office which is about a 45 minute walk, so we took a motorcycle which takes about 5 minutes. Then we took a really nice van, it was black with very tinted windows, the seats were soft, it smelled new and it had seat belts! I miss seat belts, all the buses we get on don't have seat belts, it is a comforting thing to have them. I felt like I was on a top secret mission being in that dark van. We get to the restaurant and it is amazingly nice! There were separate rooms where people eat in, we got our own room with 4 very large tables. When everyone got there an Asian translator got up and started welcoming us, he made me laugh because he has a feminine voice! He sounded like a feminine native Asian! He introduced us to the mayor and someone else who is important (he is so important that I don't remember) and told us to enjoy our stay here in China and if we need any "hairp" (which is help) just to talk to him. He was a funny guy, then the mayor got up and talked about how he likes us teaching English and to enjoy our stay as well. He didn't speak any English so the feminine Asian translated, it was so funny. Then we ate, it wasn't too bad, we had steak, fried rice, sweet and sour sauce, veggies and normal rice with chicken tendons on top (don't ask me why-they are weird). The not so good things black chicken, it was chicken but it was black and the inside looked like there was pepper in the meat of the chicken, it was good I just couldn't get over the blackness of it. I heard the fish and shrimp were really good but I didn't try it because I'm not a fishy person, some pork fat (they love fat) and some other things I wasn't too sure about. There was a guy on our table who was from England, he has been here for over a year and he was drinking his beer and wine and he had to go out for a smoke break. He was a funny guy and for some weird reason he knew we were from Salt Lake... They love to do cheers here, they walk around table to table with their wine glasses and say, "cheers, cheers!" I love seeing the different things they do in this culture, it is so fascinating. I love going to dinner with Jane, she knows everyone and everyone knows her, she has connections, she lives a pretty sweet life and I'm glad she likes to show off her American friends:)

Home Visits

Tonight we went on home visits, they told us this afternoon we were going to visit Jim, from Lindsey's class, and Peter from my class. I was pretty excited to see them, Jim is the most Asianist Asian, he looks like a cartoon character, he is so cute. Peter is my favorite kid, if there was a group of kids and I passed them, I would look for Peter, I like him a lot. Yesterday he moved closer to me while we were sitting down and he grabbed my hand and just held it for the longest time. So cute! So we went to Jim's house first and it was at a really nice apartment, big screen TV, a maid, nice furniture, it was just really nice! His mom knew some English and she was really soft spoken and really sweet, come to find out Jim is half Korean, his dad owns a business in Korea and they have a house in Shinzhen (where we go to church). Jim was really quiet and he just watched Ultra Man on TV the whole time, he is a good kid at school, very polite always says please and thank you. So after Jim's house it was Peter's turn, just kidding, the Chinese teachers who were with us told us that Peter's parents were busy tonight so we were going to Vinson's house, Vinson is Emily's kid, not ours! Oh well... We should have known plans would be changed. So we went to Vinson's house, I was expecting it to be nice but it was just average, it is probably nice for Chinese people but it was very messy and cluttery. We looked at pictures of Vinson's Beijing trip, while we were doing that Vinson's mom was cutting a fruit, I kept smelling a gross smell, it smelt like puke! I didn't know what it was, Vinson handed me a piece of fruit and I went to taste it and it tasted and smelt like puke! I couldn't eat it! It was too hard, it made me want to puke! Vinson is a good kid in class, he is quiet but he can be crazy if you put him with his friends. I think home visits are to show off the Americans, which I'm OK with because it is good to see the kids in their own environment. I had a fun time tonight, these kids are so cute!