random ramblings

This is the jiaozi place that we go to multiple times a week.  A few days ago I was sitting there, patiently waiting for my food and the restaurant owner came out and pointed at me and said something in Chinese.  I held up my hands and shrugged I don't know.  He went back inside and came out with a magazine in his hands.  He opened it up and pointed to a picture.  That picture was of me and the other teachers that are here with us.  It was a picture of the first day, at the opening assembly at our school (right before I almost passed out).  I had the microphone in my hand, giving my introduction speech.  There was a pretty good sized paragraph next to the picture.  I wish I knew what that paragraph said.  And I also wonder what other magazines or news papers floating around China have my lovely, or not so lovely, picture in it...

Most of you aren't familiar with hot pot, because I wasn't before I came here.  Well, it is fantastic and one of my favorite things.  There is a new hot pot restaurant on our street so, of course, we had to check it out.  It ended up being a lot cheaper than we thought it was going to be so we decided we needed to go back.  The menu is all in Chinese so, like always, we just point to what people have and they also just pick a few things off of the menu for us.  Everyone usually gets a kick out of it and it usually works out great for us.  Except for all of those times that it doesn't, but we won't go there.  Well, we really like these long white mushrooms in our hot pot but we didn't exactly know how to order them and not everyone gets them so we can't always just point to them.  We decided to go to the supermarket and purchase the mushrooms ourselves.  We would keep them in our purse and then just toss them into our hot pot once it was on our table.  It was a genius plan.  All until we got there and they actually decided to order these mushrooms for us.  Which is great but now we have a bunch of mushrooms just hanging out in our fridge and no hot pot for them.

We met a lady on the bus the other day.  Her name is Lauren.  She majored in English so we actually could communicate with her fairly well.  She invited us to have dinner at her house a couple days later.  Another example of kind strangers.  We hardly knew her and the next thing we know, is that we are at her house eating dinner (a dinner without tofu!) with her and teaching her how to braid hair.  We also had to walk around for about 30 minutes to find the perfect spot to take a picture.  In the meantime, the we ran out of light.  So really, the her perfect pictures turned out terrible.

The school never informs us of any of the activities that are going on at the school.  We are lucky if we find out that our kids are having a performance of some kind.  One of Shelby's classes was cancelled because they were practicing for something.  We were able to find out that they were practicing for a performance of short Chinese stories that they were going to put on that night.  We love to see our cute little students in action so we decided that we would go watch them.  I wish I could have understood what was going on but due to the language barrier, I had no clue.  It was almost like watching a silent film but with pretty terrible acting going on and words that I couldn't understand.  They were cute nonetheless.

This week I was able to teach a class of 8th graders because one of the other teachers that we are here with wanted to see what it was like to teach younger kids.  I quickly jumped on that idea.  But he didn't know what he was getting himself into.  He happened to ask to teach my worst class and I wasn't going to tell him that.  He was shocked at how terrible class went.  Apparently he couldn't control them at all and they were out of control wild.  This is not news to me and I am glad that he got a true glimpse of what Shelby and I do every day.  His 8th grade class, on the other hand, was actually fun to teach.  The students sat in their seats and there wasn't any yelling or fighting going on.  It was fantastic.  The students were sad when I told them that I wasn't going to be their teacher from now on.  A little part of me kinda wishes that I could teach them for the last month.  Even though, I love my little monkeys to death, it was a nice change of pace.  

walmart

There are Walmart's in China.  They are pretty similar but they sell some different things.  For example, chicken feet.  Lots and lots of chicken feet.  Frozen chicken feet, chicken feet in a bag, bins of chicken feet, chicken feet sitting on ice, and even black chicken feet.  They also sell a bunch of weird meat that no one should want to buy, or even look at.  Sometimes you have to hold your breath when you walk past the meat section.  But I am grateful for Chinese Walmart's because you can actually buy some semi normal things there.  Like oatmeal and honey, which has because our staple breakfast here in China.

I suggest you check out the following link to get some good pictures from some Chinese Walmart's.  It will be well worth your time.  Maybe.  I can't really promise you that but you will get to see a glimpse of what I see when I walk into a Walmart here.  Thank you Buzz Feed.

things they only sell at chinese walmarts

huangguoshu waterfall

Apparently the Huangguoshu Waterfall is the largest waterfall in Asia.  So, we went.

It only took us about three buses and about three hours to get there, but it was worth it.  There was a lot of sweating going on throughout the day.  Every inch of my body was dripping sweat and all of the clothes I was wearing were drenched.  So, if the pictures look like I was dying, then the camera captured the moment perfectly.  If I happen to look normal in any of the pictures, then we were lucky and we should be grateful that the camera wasn't able to pick up my sweaty mess.

I am still amazed at how nice people are here.  I probably wouldn't have been able to survive thus far without the help of complete strangers.  A man came and found us after we got off the bus and gave us the low down on how things worked and what time we needed to be back to catch the bus back.  We saw him later that day and he said, "Oh good, I am glad that you guys made it.  I have been thinking about you guys all day wondering if you were able to figure it out."  So nice.

Also, when we got off the bus and were buying our tickets there are people stuffing ponchos in your face wanting you to buy them.  They wanted you to buy ponchos for the five drops of water you will get on you.  Maybe they should actually visit the waterfall and see that you don't exactly get drenched with water.  Sweat, yes.  Water, no.  Anyways, this little Chinese man followed us for more than 10 minutes trying to convince us, in Chinese, to buy this poncho from him.  We tried to inform him that we were hoping that we would get wet.  While he was trying his hardest to get us to buy the ponchos that we didn't need, he showed us where to go to get on the bus and to buy our tickets.  He was nice to help us out even though we didn't buy his poncho.  Maybe I should have bought that poncho from him...

We decided to go the taxi route to get to the three different scenic spots.  It was the same price as the bus and taxis are a much better option, if you ask me.  On our way back, our taxi driver felt inclined to listen to English music because he had two Americans in his car.  Turns out Asians love the Eagles.  Well, this taxi driver Asian loves the Eagles.  So we rocked out to Hotel California on our way back to the bus station.  It was fantastic.

Picture overload...

{cucumber snacks}

{bonzi garden}

{and me posing with the back side of water!}

Enough pictures, right??

The Huangguoshu Waterfall was the most exciting thing that happened this week.  The rest of my week was just my normal Chinese life.  My dad said that my "normal" life is also worth blogging about because it isn't normal to everyone else.  So, here we go...

I have taken up dancing with the ladies in front of the supermarket.  It is always one of my favorite parts of the day.  Who wants to start this up with me when I get back to America?  I promise you that you will have a good time.

We decided it was a good idea to go to our friends restaurant and ask for their specialty.  Never again will I think that is a good idea.  We ended up with tofu.  I should have known.  The Chinese people love their tofu and I won't ever understand why.  We stomached as much as we could, pleaded that we were so full, and asked for a container to take the rest of the food home in.  That food didn't make it home.  It made it to the nearest trash can that was out of their sight.  Horrible?  Probably.  

I was riding the bus the other day and I looked down and saw a back full of dead chickens.  DEAD CHICKENS.  Their feet were hanging out of the bag too.  I won't ever understand the Chinese obsession with chicken feet either.  So gross.  

My classes are going just about the same as they always have been going.  Loud, noisy students that don't listen to a lick of the lesson.  But they are adorable so I still love them.