These are my friends. Yes, I have made some friends in China. They are awesome and so helpful! Over the weekend we went out to dinner with Eoghan and Claire. I have mentioned Eoghan before. He is the guy from Ireland that we met on the street a few weeks ago. Eoghan introduced us to Claire. Claire's English is amazing! She is the cutest thing and I love her to death. Eoghan and Claire showed us around the city a little bit after we ate dinner. It was fantastic finally feeling like I had a little bit of a social life again.
Claire is the sweetest. The next day she took us to a flower and bird market. I am pretty sure that she made up a story of having to get flowers for her mom just so she would have an excuse to take us there. She felt bad that our apartment didn't have any plants in it so she took it upon herself to buy us some. See, I told you see was the sweetest. She also took us to the store and bought us a lot of little goodies for us to try. She takes such good care of us. I love her! She invited us over to her house to eat dinner with her family. She has a daughter, Anna, who is 7 and she is adorable. Right when we got to their house Anna was grabbing our arms and sitting us down on the couch. Before we could even sit down she was handing us a million little goodies for us to eat. Claire's mother made us an awesome meal. The Chinese people are so caring and treat their guests very well. They all said that we are welcome to eat every meal with them if we wanted to. (Maybe I should take them up on that offer. The cafeteria food I have been eating isn't my favorite...) I can already tell that they are going to become my second family while I am here in China. We brought them some gummy bears and Snickers for them to try. They thought that they were too sweet and I just thought that they were crazy!
I finally started teaching on Monday. I have been in China for over a month now so it was nice to finally do what I came here to do. Monday morning they had an opening ceremony where we were introduced to the entire school. We gave a little one minute introduction. After the introductions we were standing there listening to the rest of the assembly. I started to get extremely hot so I took off my coat. I still felt like I was dying and then all of the sudden everything got really blurry and I started to feel really dizzy. I turned to Shelby and told her that I was going to pass out. So instead of falling over, I purposely dropped to the ground. Yes, this happened in front of the entire school while the assembly was still going on. They then proceeded to take me to our office so I could sit down and drink some water. I felt a lot better after that. It seriously happened at the worst possible time. I made quite the introduction, right??
This is one of my classes. Really, they are the cutest kids I have ever seen and they have so much love to give. It makes me so happy to walk into class and everyone is jumping up and down and runs to the door to greet you with the biggest hugs. It is a good thing that they are so cute and that I love them to death because they are actually pretty terrible once class starts. I don't think that they know what quiet is. Everyone is so loud and in one of my classes there was actually a full on fist fight. I teach first and second graders. I am pretty sure that everything I say goes right over their heads. Sometimes they say something in Chinese and the entire class busts up laughing. Except for me because I have no idea what they said but I am sure it was something inappropriate. It is probably exciting for them to have a new foreign teacher so hopefully they will calm down as the weeks go on. I can only hope...
Life is so good here in China. Shelby and I were talking the other day how living in China doesn't feel real. It all seems like a big dream. It doesn't feel real when I am standing in front of a class of second graders teaching them a dumb little song. It doesn't feel real when I struggle to order dinner at a restaurant. It doesn't feel real when I am sitting on a crowded bus and can't understand any of the conversations going on around me. And it doesn't feel real when I am dancing with people in the park. I wish it felt real because I am living the best dream of my life.
This article describes what I am feeling so perfectly. So please read it and then come to China.
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