Valentine's part two.

Why am I so excited? Let me tell you...

Annie and I had walked down to the supermarket to get some things for breakfast. We heard some weird music and saw all these valentine's decorations. We had to go see what the big deal was. We got there just in time for the last performance. This guy was doing the weirdest dance I had ever seen. The only way I can somewhat explain it is by saying it was a Chinese tribal dance. It was so cool!

We were about to go when Annie said, "I really want a picture with him but I am too scared." It took us about 5 minutes to decide if we should leave or go get a picture. Finally we came to the conclusion that we are white and we can do what ever we want and they would think it was cool. Seriously compared to some of the stuff they have done to us this was nothing. So we walked up and I took the picture because I was too scared.

Then this dancing chinese guy's clan wanted us to come up on stage and get a picture with them. They were all screaming in their cute accents, "Two English people!" I heard one guy say, "Woohoo! The two english words I know." I thought that was really funny. They were all so excited that we were in our picture. Dancer guy was red the whole time. SO FUNNY!

Basically two hobo american girls went to the grocery store, saw dancer guy dance, got roses for valentine's day, got pictures with a bunch of random people and were really excited about it.

This is why China is so awesome. These random weird things pop up all over the place. Our room mates thought we were dumb for being excited about it but if they would have been there they would have been excited about it too.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Ok, look at this kid... just look. He is so dang cute. Luckus here is modeling our Valentine's fiesta. We made heart shaped sugar cookies with our chef Michael. We made them heart pouches so we could put the valentine's we made them in there. They loved the sugar cookies.

Michael, Annie, and Seantay making the cookies. I just have to say that our cooks are the best ever. They are always making special accomadations for us and making us american food. Like today we came down for lunch and we had the usualy vegetables, chinese something something, and rice. But we looked to our right and guess what it was? Speghetti with actual tomato sauce! We were all so excited. Then they made each of us a dumpling! I was nervous that Kate was going to faint because she was so happy. They are too good to us.

Well they are all supposed to be blowing you a kiss so just pretend that you just got 30 kisses blown to you.

Here are some cute pictures of the kids in my class. We made Valentine's for their parents today. It was so fun to see how into it they got. There was no rushing them today their valentine was going to be perfect.

I have 5 kids in my class during this rotation. This is Celine, Tony and Mandy. They are doing some good posing right here.

Walking Street

This is Seantay, she is the new girl in town well in our group. We were walking around in some of the back ally ways and saw this dragon/lion dance so we stopped and got a picture. I love this picture because of the little girl right behind Seantay. She just popped out of nowhere, ran into Seantay and fled the scene screaming and laughing her brains out. There were a bunch of kids just having the time of their life running around these dragons.

Tiann and I getting a picture of Zhongshan.

We took all the new people to walking street the first day they were here. Walking street is this fun shopping street with all a bunch of things to do. This time around we walked up a road we hadn't seen before and found a bunch of cool buildings. Yes, we are all chinese can't you tell.

The Lantern Festival

We are in China at the best time possible. We were able to see the Chinese New Year and be a part of all the traditional things they do. Then we were able to see The Lantern Festival. They had this incredible parade/celebration signifying the last day of the Chinese New Year. This parade was right outside our school on the main road. We heard a bunch of ruckus and decided to go check it out.

We walked out to the street a little late so there weren't any good places to stand where we could see the parade. So we started out standing on these weird stump things that they have all over the sidewalk. We had so many people stop and try and talk to us. Of course we were in a million random pictures. This is just one of those awkward pictures with people I don't even know.

We finally got smart half way through the parade and just charged up through the people and sat on the curb. Front row seats oh ya. We got way more attention there than was needed. As soon as the reporters and newspaper photagraphers saw us they immediately turned around and started taking pictures of us instead of the parade. I get a kick out of these people. Hello China!

This is a dance I just did not understand. These people would dance around to the beat of this huge drum, fill their mouths with alcohol, then spit it into the air or at each other at the same time... I personally would not want to be completely soaked in alcohol, let alone have someone spit it on me. I'm sure there is some reason behind it but we didn't know what it was.

Here are some cool pictures of the dragon/lion dance. This is probably my favorite thing to see. They are so good at making these dragons look real. The dance is a bit creepy but cool at the same time.

Fou Shan

Check it out! I made my own pot! I have always wanted to do this and I finally got to. I thought it was going to be really easy but I was wrong. The lady that was helping us kept laughing at us becuase we screwed up so much. It got to the point where she just hung around waiting for us to mess up. We finally made the pots, we got our names written on them in caligraphy and then they put the pots in a kiln that has been there since the 1500s. SO COOL!

We also stopped in to see this Ancestor Temple. It was so pretty in there. We didn't know that they still used this place to worship so we were walking around taking a bunch of pictures of all these cool things. We got into trouble by Amy, our chinese friend. We probably just offended all of China in one hour... sorry.

we are so spoiled... part 2

Alan, the man on the far right of the picture, is one of Jane's friends. He took us to this cool park/museum, to lunch, he took us to his parents house and showed us off, then to an amusement park. He even got us ice cream. I was in heaven! We are SO spoiled!

While our head teachers were frolicking through the pretty "girl flowers" Kate and I decided we would run in the back of their picture. While we were running really fast to get in the picture we didn't realize that we were crushing bee hives in the process. The bees were not so happy with us. Luckily we got out of there before they attacked us. whoo!

We are in bamboo lane...cute.

After the museum Alan took us out to lunch and then took us to this amusement park. There were so many weird things to do there. We had time to do one thing so we did the huge beach balls on water. It was INCREDIBLE!

I was in a ball with Katie. We had a lot of fun if you couldn't tell by my hair. I would tell Katie to stand up so we could do flips together and get to the other side of the pool. She would start to stand up and before she was ready I would throw myself against the other wall and she would go flying. I got the biggest kick out of hearing her scream and fall over. She fell for it so many times!

We are so spoiled

This is a cute picture of my room mate Tiann and out little friend Kevin. Kevincame to our school during his break from school to practice his english and now he is one of our buddies. He loves being the only boy with 11 boys that give him all the attention in the world. He is really talented and has been teaching us Tai Chi.

This is Tiann, Amy and Annie showing us their cool bowling stances. Amy is from a city that is about 2 hours south of Zhongshan. She is here on holiday and we have all become good friends with her. This was Amy's first time bowling. Every time she hit a pin we would all start cheering for her and she would start jumping around. It was so fun.

Debbie and I just enjoying watching everyone bowl.

This is Jane's mom. She doesn't speak any English but Amy was sitting next to me during lunch so I had a translator. She kept trying to tell me about her grandson that is going to school in the U.S. I didn't understand everything she was telling me but apparently she was trying to get me to write down his number. That was interesting. I love this picture because every time we would take a picture she would snuggle right up to you. She is an awesome lady!

This was quite the day. Jane, the bond institute owner's wife, took all of us out to lunch. She got us so much food. She took all of us bowling. Then her friend wanted to take all of us out for dinner. And we got a ton of food again. I was in heaven. They are so good to us.

A Day in the Chinese Cultural Theme Park

This was a sweet zip line we were able to fly down. I loved watching all the chinese people swing around to see the screaming white girls flying through the air.

There were a bunch of these statues of weird animals and we couldn't help ourselves. We had to get a picture. I don't even know what half of them were.

This is our original group. Three girls left to go to another school this weekend. We miss them!

cool bridge though eh?

The sick shrimp!

We decided that we wanted to really be Chinese one night so we were going to learn how to make an authentic meal. We all agreed on homemade potstickers; therefore, we needed shrimp. Ok, let's talk about shrimp/meat in this China place. They don't have meat in the grocery store. You have to walk down this dark alley into this stinky meat market. They have chicken coops, fish farms, raw meat sitting out everywhere, stray cats and dogs, and rats running around. The meat market is just all around grose. Annie was nominated to be the meat girl. She came out with this bag and just asked me to hold it for a second. The shrimp were still jumping! Apparently the lady just scooped the shrimp out of the water and put them into the bag. By the time we got home they weren't jumping any more so we just figured they were dead. We started pulling some out to get them ready for cooking and all the sudden those creepy little legs start moving... You bet we were all screaming. I don't want to admit it but I was definitely screaming. There had been about five that were still alive so we moved them to the stove to boil them. I don't know why we didn't think just boiling them in the first place. Once we put them into the water they came back from the dead. We had shrimp jumping onto the floor and onto the cabinets. They were going crazy and so were we! It had been two hours since we had gotten them. How could they still be alive? They never quit! We eventually cooked them and got rid of their heads, tails, and those creepy little legs but it took us about an hour and a half to stop screaming and do it. Longest dinner preparation ever. ugh. I hate those stupid little legs.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

This is just one of the many random pictures we have with chinese people. I just really liked this one because you have all these short chinese people and then Amy.... She is a tree compared to them!

This is just a portion of the crowd around us. Take this picture and imagine this wall of people all around us.

On New Years day they had these cool dragon parades and had fireworks everywhere to scare away the dragon/bad luck for the next year. It was really cool to see. I think my ear drums are damaged for life. I think every chinese person in that city lit about three each. They never stopped.

This is our group. The chinese lady and guy in front came with us on our trip. They were so nice and helpful.

Annie and I just going crazy with the sparklers.

Chin yin Quila!