KRISTY DABB

SALSABRATION!

2009-12-10T11:34:00.000-08:00

Every year the Multicultural Club puts on this show called Salsabration. There is plenty of singing, plenty of dancing, and plenty of new food to try. My room mate Diana did a traditional Mexican dance in it this year. They practiced for so long and worked so hard on it. They did such a good job. Diana is such an incredible dancer.

Diana also has a stomach of steel. They had a jalapeno eating contest and she at four of them! I would have died.

Diana and her dance teacher/ friend. She is so funny. I get a kick out of this lady.

This is the Diana Fan Club. We all had such a good time.

After the show there was dance instructions. Diana was trying to teach us how to dance and move our hips. She kind of compared it to doing the hula hoop. Sometimes I would look up becuase I would get off and I always looked up at the perfect time to see Shalese trying to figure out how to do it. She would stop, think, put her hands on her hips and start to do the hula hoop then get back into it. I thought it was hilarious mostly because I had to do the same thing. We still joke about that sometimes. Let's face it we all looked ridiculous but we loved doing it!

Our Fall walks

2009-12-10T11:04:00.000-08:00

This is the classic cemetary lane that I love to walk through. Alright I admit it I like walking through the cemetary. There is nothing wrong with that is there? I just had to put a picture of it in here because it is so beautiful.

It was a perfect sunday afternoon and we decided to go for a walk. We decided to go to a park a couple blocks away to swing on the swings. It should have only taken us fifteen minutes to walk there but it took us an hour and a half... we got a little distracted. We just kept finding things to take pictures of. We found this swing. I don't know who's house it was but we had a good time on their swing. Michie and I are reliving our high school dance pictures. It was a precious moment.

Here is another precious moment. Michie finally showed her undying love for the trees. Breanna confessed her love for leaves and Diana... is doing something funny. I think maybe she is grabbing a branch. Who knows. Love these girls!

Just chillin in the leaves. That is what you do in Logan apparently.

This is my favorite treee so we had to get a picture before we got on the swings. Shalese popped up just in time to jump in. Jami was the only one of our room mates that wasn't there. She was in Switzerland at the time just having the time of her life.

It was a good day!

whoo... I caught up!

2009-05-04T01:18:00.001-07:00

As you can tell by the next 6 posts there has been a lot going on here in china. I am sorry for not keeping up with my blog. I just get overwhelmed every time I think about doing it. Luckily I got sick on the last day of our vacation so instead of not moving and completely miserable I got to update my blog and still feel miserable. What is the deal with my body lately?! I have been sick more often in the past 4 months then I have in the past 5 years.
I am sorry for the order that some of the posts. I kept mixing them up so it might not make as much sense. You probably should just look at the pictures and not read what I typed. I feel like my vocabulary has taken a hit since we have been here. We have to use really simple words to be understood by anyone. And the little grammar ability I had has gone down the drain. So just keep to the pictures.
Well, I am going to stop doing all this jazz and go lay down for a while. Have a good day!

My Chinese Family

2009-05-04T00:48:00.000-07:00

This is Jenny and Brian. Brian is Pan Su Xiang's (bus lady) son. We went over to their house again on Sunday. We had a good time. As we were talking my name came up. I was telling them that I just need a new chinese name because the characters are too hard for me to write and it is too hard for me to say correctly. I hate the confused look I get every time I say my name. Everyone always thinks my name is a type of tea because I can't ever get the tones right. I am officially renamed. My name is Liu Chun Hua. We changed mine and Seantay's sir name to Liu because we decided we should just be family. It made me so happy to see how excited Jenny got as we told her our idea of changing our sir names. When Brian came home he renamed me to be Chun Hua. Chun means/can be used to describle spring, a fresh start, lively, or lovely. Hua means/can be used to describe royalty, to save or help grow. I love it! So we are officially a part of the Liu family. I am so happy!

Our cute little mixed family. As I think about it I am amazed at how a little thing like talking to a lady on a bus can lead us to such awesome people. We have become such good friends and now we are family. I am so happy for the opportunity we have to get to know them better and do things with them. They are so incredibly good to us. I hope we can help them as much as they help us.

"The Stairs of Death Hike"

2009-05-04T00:07:00.000-07:00

Kate and I went with Celina (our native coordinator) and her husband on a hike this saturday. Apparently there is only one hike in Zhongshan and it is this one. I felt bad because Kate wasn't going to come if it was the same hike we went on a couple months ago. I told her it probably wasn't so she decided to come. I hope she doesn't hate me for the rest of her life. eek!

Up and up and up... they never end!

Kate, me and Celina. Hooray! We made it to the top! It wasn't as smoggy this time so we were actually able to see the city below.

Andrew, Celina and I. It was fun to spend some time with Celina outside of school. I really admire how level headed she is. I love talking to her and hearing her opinions about things/life. I just felt bad that we couldn't talk to her husband as much. He didn't know too much english and my chinese... well we all know where my chinese leads me. It was a lot of fun.

Chen Na's wedding

2009-05-03T23:37:00.000-07:00

Jenny was so nice and invited us to her friend's wedding. It was very fun I was glad we got to go and see what it was like.

This is the deep fat fried, gutted, baby pig they brought out for us to eat. I don't know why this surprised me but the baby pig thing threw me for a loop. I wanted to crawl under the table when they started cutting it up and put a piece in front of me. I was strong and ate it... along with the usual crazy chinese food. I am so glad I haven't gotten sick from all this weird stuff I have been eating since we have been here.

The parade before the food came out.

HERE COMES THE BRIDE...AND GROOM. This is the beginning of the parade to the front of the ball room. I don't quite understand the car but it is cute. My favorite part about the car is the two stuffed animals on the from of the car clapping hands as they drove.
Jenny, Angel, Seantay, Chen Na, and me before the party began. Chen Na is so cute and nice I am so glad she was ok with us randomly showing up to her wedding uninvited. Doesn't she so pretty?! She had four different gorgious dresses she wore. The wedding was really nice. You could tell a lot of plannning went into it.

What happens when I speak Chinese...

2009-05-03T22:48:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I was got on the bus and sat next to this really nice lady. She just kept talking to me even though it was obvious that I didn't understand a whole lot. We finally got down on the level where I was understanding... more. We talked the whole bus ride. And when I say we talked I mean tried to talk the whole bus ride. She lives in the same community we do. We got off and kept walking and talking. She took me up to her room and showed me some pictures, where she worshipped, and some ancient medical tools that looked like they had been used in world war 1. It was really random but fun to see. We left her apartment and she walked me up to my apartment. When I was getting ready to go inside she kept saying we should get together for breakfast. I said, "yes, yes, that would be good."I was thinking ya sometime we will get together but she was not saying "sometime" we should get together. She was saying "On sunday we should get together." I am stupid and just kept saying yes without really knowing what she was saying.
Sunday morning came and I just got out of the shower and was enjoying sitting on the couch reading when the doorbell rang. I thougt it was one of the girls from downstairs but I opened the door and it was her! She kept motioning for me to go brush my teeth and wash my face so we could go. I didn't know what else to except to invite her in and go get ready. I went into my room to change. Annie was just waking up and I said, "Annie that lady from the bus is here. I don't know what we are going to do or where we are going. All I know is that food will be involved and you are coming with me!" So she got ready real fast and came. Seantay woke up around the same time and came with us too. We just blindly followed her just hoping for the best. She took us to her apartment and we tried talking for a while until she got a phone call and she motioned for us to follow her out. We went outside and got in this little golf cart with this lady we didn't know. The lady ended up being her daughter in law and we went over to her house for breakfast. And the best part was that her daughter in law, Jenny, speaks a little bit of english so we were able to get some things clarified. It was an interesting morning. We had a good laugh about the whole crazy situation when we got back.
In Jenny's living room. They live in a very nice house. They even had a back yard with grass!

This is Pan Su Xiang the lady I met on the bus. She is an awesome lady. She was a doctor for 40 years and she had 5 kids. Yes, you read right 5 kids. She has traveled all over the world and is determined for me to understand her when she is speaking Chinese. I am so grateful she keeps talking to me even though she knows I hardly understand a thing she is saying. We were all able to learn a lot that day. The main thing I learned though was to make sure before you know what a person is saying before you say yes to something.

We ended up having a really fun morning. It was just surprising. We actually ended up making some more plans with their family for the next week.

The lion dance competition

2009-05-03T21:39:00.000-07:00

I am glad I got this picture of Seantay because this is the perfect look of pure amazement that I was feeling. This was one of the coolest things we have been able to see!

Ok, I did a bad job at downloading these in a good order so just bare with me as I tell this little story. Then we will get to the competition. These little kids behind us we so cute and so we kept turning around to play with them. One time Katie was playing this game with them where she would hide behind the chair and pop up to scare them. Their reactions every time were so funny I was laughing really hard. So as I am laughing Seantay yells over to me. "Hey you guys are on the t.v.!" So I looked up at the big screen and there we were. Katie was hiding behind the chair and I am just laughing my butt off. I GOT ON THE BIG SCREEN! I have never been on the big screen at anything!

The competition was incredible! There is two guys underneath this costume and they have to do this routine on these poles. I couldn't believe the things they were doing! They would get on top of each other and do all this footwork from pole to pole. They would even do these cool jumps from pole to pole. I was so nervous for them the entire time I was letting out these involuntary screams. I am glad it was noisy in there. I would have been really annoying to everyone around me. IT WAS SO COOL! These pictures don't even do it justice.

Candice, me, Katie, Seantay and our Kung Fu teacher Spring. Spring is so good to us. We have been able to do Kungfu for the past 3 months, 3 times a week, for free. We have learned a lot. I really enjoy it. I especially love the kicking. I have come to a couple of conclusions about myself. I was born to be in the mountains and I was born to kick things. I can't get enough of either one. I miss the mountains so much. Ok, I have learned more about myself than that while I have been here...I promise!

Chinese night... karaoke style

2009-05-03T21:00:00.000-07:00

This was a really fun night. It was so fun being able to get to know all the teachers more. It is hard to really get to talk to them or be around them at school. I was surprised at how much everyone opened up. YES! it is about time!

Chinese people love to go do karaoke. I was so excited that we finally got to go for chinese night. We know a couple of chinese songs so when ever one would come on we all would start screaming and jump up to sing. This is just one of those moments when we were all really excited.

Cute little Tina and Seantay. Tina is one of our coordinators. She and Candi teach us Chinese every monday, tuesday, wednesday, and friday. They are so good to us all the time. I am so grateful for all the hard work they put in for us to have a good experience here.

Aiki and Tina just doing their thing. You should have seen some of the dance moves that Aiki pulled out. She is quite the little dancer. I have a lot to learn.

Katie, Debbie and Annie. You gotta love that coke mixed with a bunch of spazes!

Coke a cola... our saving grace from the tea and alcoholic beverages. I wish I liked it because every time we go out with our friends they always make sure we have as much coke as we can drink.

Jasmine and Amy. These are two of the many people that I just wish I could talk to about more in depth things than "what do you like?" "I have this many people in my family." I hate being so limited! Jasmine is the lady over all the Chinese teachers and is an incredible lady. I am really lucky and get to be her chinese friend. And Amy is one of the great Chinese teachers for the little baby class.

The Rice Terraces

2009-04-11T23:14:00.000-07:00

What is this?.... This is what we saw as we got out of the bus. We drove 4 hours to see these rice terraces but instead we drove 4 hours to see a cloud as Annie so realistically put it.

Luckily the clouds rolled out about an hour later. It was clear for the time we were there then as soon as we were getting on the bus the clouds were coming back in. We are so lucky!

The Rice Terraces. This was just one side of the mountain that was covered in them. It was quite the site to see.

Right when we got off the bus all these ladies flocked around us trying to sell us everything they had. This little lady wasn't as pushy but she stayed right by Debbie's side the whole 5 minutes we were there. She was so cute I just had to get a picture of her.

Oh, the animals we have held...

2009-04-11T19:24:00.000-07:00

Check out our little crowd. When we were getting our pictures with these birds it felt like you were getting a photo shoot from a handful of Chinese people. Debbie and Annie actually got them to "Oo" and "Aw" with their posing skills.

A waterbuffalo...

Weird birds that were going to peck my eyes out at any moment.

A CAMEL! We wanted to have a ride on it's back but instead we got to hold the string. Oh well, we got to pet it so that should count I guess.

Monkeys! It was so cool to actually be able to hold a monkey. These monkeys were quite the posers. Their feet feel so weird. I was scared they were going to pee on me the whole time but I left without any pee stains on my clothes.

We all have this new goal to get pictures with as many animals as possible. We crossed a lot off the list this trip. We are still looking for a place that has elephants and baby tigers. Hopefully we can find them somewhere. However, as of right now I am pretty happy about the monkeys.

The bike ride to the mud caves

2009-04-11T18:51:00.000-07:00

This Banyan tree is huge and incredily old. There are areas of the tree just covered in little red envelopes put up there by women with babies. When ever their little babies would cry at night they would go put the little red envelopes in the tree hoping that by doing this that their babies would sleep that night.

In front of the huge Banyan tree.

This is just another example of the beautiful mountains in Guilin. I couldn't help but feel like I was in a Dr. Suess book the whole time I was there.

We biked for most of the day. It was so nice to be in the middle of all these beautiful mountains and wide open spaces. I loved not being in a crazy city for one day.

Our Awesome Group!

2009-04-02T06:38:00.000-07:00

Our group with some of our native coordinators. We have all become such good friends. Celina is on the left of me, Candi on the right, Cherrie and Eden are in the hole... We are missing Tina, Kari, and Linthy. They teach us Chinese every day and help us with anything that we need. They are lifesavers!

On Monday we all went over to the park to take a bunch of pictures because it was Tiann's last day. This is our full group from left to right... Seantay, Kate, Tiann, Annie, me, Debbie, Candice, and Katie.

This is a picture of all of the kids we teach and the Chinese teachers.

After opening when all the kids found out Tiann was leaving they all rushed over to give her hugs. Half of the kids were crying all day because they were so sad she was leaving. We are going to miss her.

Sanya

2009-03-19T04:57:00.000-07:00

I WENT SURFING!

Lindsey, Kate, Mandy Amy and Emily. We were just waiting in the van for our surf instructor to get over his drug high so we could go back home. He was a funny man.

SURFING! This was definitely the highlight of the trip. We drove for two hours to this pretty beach where the waves were bigger and there weren't any people. We surfed all day. It would have been the best day of my life if I hadn't been sick. I would have gone out so much more. It was still a blast.

Jeanette, Debbie, Katie, me, Annie and Kate just enjoying ourselves on the beach.

There was a guy just walking up and down the beach with this alligator. The last day Katie stopped him and forked out the money to get a few pictures with him. One by one we all got the courage to do it. He loved us because he got a lot of money from us and it gave him some good publicity. BAH! I KISSED AN ALLIGATOR! My excuse is that I was sick... I wasn't in my right mind.

The Journey to Sanya

2009-03-19T04:32:00.000-07:00

This picture of our head teacher, Debbie, explains exactly how our trip down to Sanya went. It was only supposed to be a 12 hours away but it turned into a 24 hour death trip.

Annie's face kills me in this picture. At this point we had been on a claustrophobic bus for17 hours and now we are on the ferry where we sat for another 2 hours just waiting on the harbor. When we actually started moving it was another 2 hours until we reached the other side because we stopped out in the middle waiting to come it. We don't know what the hold up is. We just wanted to get to Sanya.

Here is our second sleeper bus where we spent another 4 hours. So all in all we spent 17 hours on a bus, 4 hours on a ferry, and another 4 hours on another sleeper bus. We decided to pay the extra money and fly back home. The flight only took an hour it was beautiful.

Cute pictures!

2009-03-12T06:08:00.000-07:00

This is Travis. We affectionatly call him the "Mofia boy." He just is so mischievious. Sometimes he spots you from across the room and slowly sneaks over to you. He never loses eye contact until he slips his little hand into yours. Then he won't let go until he absolutely has to. Goll! What a cute kid.

Jennifer and Kenny. I love teaching this class because they get so excited. The best is when they do their exercises. They do these cute little routines. Jennifer loves to shake her bum. I love watching them.

This is the little baby class. They are all 2 or 3 years old. Bubbles were a big hit! There wasn't even one that was crying.

Nathan... our little smiley boy.

It's raining it's pouring. This is Emily is her cute rain gear.

Church Time!

2009-03-12T05:46:00.000-07:00

Seantay and Jessica... So cute in their dresses!

We met up with the other teachers from Xiaolan for district conference in Guanzhou. After the young adult session (which consisted of two girls that actually lived in China and the ILP teachers.) Elder Perkins and Elder Wan were nice enough to take some pictures with us.

This is the little bus that we rented out to drive us up to Guanzhou for District Conference. It was so much nicer than taking the public busses. The driver picked us up at our house and dropped us off right where we needed to be. Those bus drivers are crazy on the roads.

Katie and I had to get a picture with these lillies. They are BEAUTIFUL! I have to say I have been in heaven lately because there are a bunch of flower markets everywhere we go. I get to look at these pretty things all the time!

Our Crazy Hike!

2009-03-12T04:49:00.000-07:00

We are just practicing our Kung Fu skills on this innocent tree... Don't worry about it.

Seantay and I just showing off the hiking trail. It was straight stairs for 2 hours. I was a little sore the next day. It was so fun!

Yay! We finally got to the top!

2009-03-01T04:15:00.000-08:00

This is the "snake" we found on the sidewalk as we were walking to the bus. It is just plain out sick! Check out the size of that thing!

Valentine's part two.

2009-02-17T05:00:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-02-17T04:30:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-17T04:11:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-17T03:42:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-16T22:54:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-06T01:06:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-06T00:36:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-06T00:07:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-02-04T06:15:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-02-03T02:55:00.000-08:00

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!

our school

2009-01-28T04:37:00.000-08:00

This is the school that we teach at. It is so nice. The teachers are awesome to work with and the kids are great.

stretching for the day

2009-01-28T04:33:00.000-08:00

I don't know where the stretching poses came from but I liked it so I took a picture. Just incredible flexibility. They are so limber.

at the bus stop

2009-01-28T04:28:00.000-08:00

Here are some of the cool girls in my group. From left to right Kate, Amy, Candice, Tiann, Katie, Debbie, and Annie. We love the bus stop.

worried Debbie

2009-01-28T04:24:00.000-08:00

This is our head teacher

Debbie at the hot pot dinner.

She was really worried the

whole time. She doesn't eat

seafood.

Her quote of the night

was, "I'm meditating."

It was so funny watching

her face every time a

new weird food came out.

2009-01-28T04:22:00.000-08:00

Yep... I ate that.

Um... what is this?

2009-01-28T04:19:00.000-08:00

We had this hot pot dinner and there was a lot of weird things that I have never eaten/thought of eating before.

Cow stomach anyone?

sucker

2009-01-28T04:15:00.000-08:00

Well, I am officially known in our group as the sucker. I don't know how this happened. I was just walking across the street to give moral support and I came back with these weird fruit things in water. I don't even know what they are and when I got home and tried them they tasted like weeds. Dang it, I suck again!

sucker again

2009-01-28T04:11:00.000-08:00

This is sugar cane. You take a bite of this stick that feels like wood, suck out the juice and just spit the rest on the ground.

This is another purchase that I got ripped off. Those Chinese people are so persuasive... Ok, I am just stupid. They can't persuade me. I don't speak Chinese.

zzzz...

2009-01-28T04:07:00.000-08:00

Yes, this is my bed.

No it is not the most

comfortable thing in the

world but it will do.

I am not getting bruises

on my hips any more

so that is a good sign

right?

crazy badmitton man!

2009-01-28T04:05:00.000-08:00

Here we are... I think this was just a two hour session.

friends!

2009-01-28T04:00:00.000-08:00

The guy on the far left is the man affectionately called Badmitton man. He can seriously play for hours. He tries to give us lessons but we can't understand him. He still tries.

The other three are our neighbors. They are our friends. I really like them. We can't really talk to each other but they always say hi and try and talk to us in Chinese.

2009-01-28T03:52:00.000-08:00

Becky and Betty!

I'm in CHINA!

2009-01-28T03:46:00.001-08:00

Sarah Girl!