Feeling Blessed

Happy Fall!

It's been a pretty good week here in Guiyang! On Monday they had an opening assembly for International Week. I mentioned in my last post about our speech... in Chinese. It actually went okay I think! Sylvia was standing next to us so she kind of helped us along which was nice!

None of my classes were cancelled this week like they were last week but I feel like it went by pretty fast. Thursday night was a blast! So the 3rd and 4th graders participated in "The Voice of Weiming" which was a little singing competition where each of the classes performed a song in English. IT WAS SO CUTE! They did songs like "You Are My Sunshine" and "Do Re Mi" with little choreographed moves to go with them. For one song the did a little break dancing (kinda) and it was just hilarious! I loved it. Lindsay and I and some of the other English teachers were judges. It seriously just warmed my heart seeing these kids performing so well in English. I don't even teach the 3rd and 4th graders but I still felt so proud!

Well, I also mentioned in my last post that we were asked to perform at this... Lindsay and I sang along to "Let It Go" from Frozen and the kids went nuts! I was kind of nervous but the music was loud enough that I couldn't hear myself sing so hopefully it sounded okay... Haha. But it was actually a lot of fun! We felt like rock stars or something with all the kids standing, cheering and singing along. I'd say we were a big hit ;)

Judges table

Lindsay leading all her kids in "Hello Goodbye"

It got too dark to take many pics :(

They're the cutest

Here is a link to one of Lindsay's videos. She taught all her students "Hello Goodbye" by the Beatles during class the last few weeks and the teachers loved it so they had them all sing it and Lindsay got up to lead her kids. It was suuuper cute!
Weiming school singing Hello Goodbye


On Friday, we went to Walmart in search of Halloween stuff. I can't believe Halloween is this week! I am really excited though! On Thursday the English teachers are doing a Halloween party for all the kids and they want us to help with a lot of it. Throughout the week I will be teaching my students about Halloween and doing crafts and games. Then Thursday night we are taking the students around to all the classrooms to go trick-or-treating. I am not entirely sure how that is all going to work yet but it should be fun! I can't wait to see all the kids dressed up! Me and Lindsay are probably going to go as cats.. of course :) :) There was a little Halloween section in Walmart with some costumes and decorations, but we couldn't find cat ears :(

On Saturday night, a teacher from our school, Daisy, invited us out for shopping and dinner. It was a lot of fun! She isn't an English teacher but her English is very good! She said she watches American TV shows and listens to American music and that helps her learn English. She is the music teacher at our school. Anyway, we met her at the mall, did a little shopping then ate dinner at a restaurant that serves a Guiyang dish called silk babies (siwawa in Chinese). They are thin rice pancakes that you fill with different shredded vegetables, wrap it up and add some soupy sauce stuff. They are really yummy actually! They school cafeteria served them once but they weren't as good as these ones. Anyways, it was a good weekend! Daisy wants to hang out again sometime and introduce us to her Canadian friend that teaches High school in Guiyang so that should be fun!

She definitely ended up ordering too much food for the 3 of us... that always happens!

And that about sums up my week! I can't believe we have been in China for over two months now! I have been thinking back a lot lately on my whole experience so far. It is crazy to think of my first day in Beijing and how new and different it was. Or to the first day teaching and how nervous I was! Now I feel pretty comfortable living here and I have grown to love my students so much. It is also amazing to reflect on how much I have been changed by this experience over the past two months. I feel like I am gaining a whole new perspective of the world and my place in it. I have learned so much!

There is a quote from Mark Twain that I absolutely love and I am finding it to be true.

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."

I am so grateful for the opportunity this experience is giving me to broaden my view of the world and give me a new perspective. This experience has not just pushed me out of my comfort zone but full on thrown me out of it at times. But that is how we grow. That is how we learn about others and ourselves. I have found that I am capable of more than I ever thought I could be. Something I never would have learned without going through an experience like this.

My students especially have taught me that it doesn't matter that we don't speak the same language. It doesn't matter that we live in different cultures or eat different food. They don't care that I look different and talk different than them. They just care that I am there for them. They just want me to listen to them even though I don't always understand. They just want me to encourage them and smile and say hello. It doesn't matter if I didn't spend hours on my hair or that I wear the same few outfits each day. They don't care about that. When they hug me, they just want me to hug them back and show them that I care. These sweet 6-9 year olds have taught me a very important lesson about what really matters.

I know that my next two months here will be full of new challenges and adventures and I am looking forward to all of it! I think I have finally made it past the "what in the world am I doing here" stage and am on to the "I never want to leave this place!" stage. (Okay, that's not true, I still do miss home. But I might be bringing 400 Chinese kids home with me because I'm going to miss them a ton...) Haha :)

Anyways, it's going to be a great week! I can't wait to celebrate Halloween with my students. I love and miss you all!

Happy Halloween!!!

Just Another Week in Guiyang

Hey!

So the last week and a half after getting home from Chengdu have been pretty routine. We had to teach last Saturday so we didn't have any grand adventures that weekend. Lindsay and I just went into town to do some night market shopping on Saturday night. 

School this week has been good and bad. Good because some of my classes kept getting cancelled for various reason which was nice! Bad because the teachers have been busy and I had a lot of classes without a teaching assistant in them. It is reeeally hard for me to control the class by myself. I had to discipline a lot more harshly than I like and yell a lot more than I would prefer... So hopefully my teaching assistants will be there everyday next week!

On Tuesday, my last two classes of the day were cancelled because the 1st and 2nd graders were doing some reading/performance something or other. We watched them do little performances and stand up and recite things. It was pretty cute seeing all my little ones performing. It was also fun because some of Lindsay's students sat by us and did our hair.. haha. 

These are some of the older students playing some cool gourd instruments

Love these little ones!

Finally got a selfie with my favorite little boy in the world!

My new friend Daisy having a party with my hair.. :)

She even added one of the bows from her hair 

Using my phone to take selfies :)

I found out all my classes were cancelled on Friday which was awesome! Some of the parents were coming to the school to observe and that changed the schedule which I guess meant I wasn't teaching my normal classes that day. Lindsay just had one class she still had to teach. When she was done we decided to head into town again. We did a little shopping, ate at Pizza Hut and then went to Carrefour to get ingredients for dinner on Sunday. I finally decided to clean up my kitchen and use it! We are making pasta for dinner and no bake cookies for dessert. We were able to find all the ingredients in the imported section (except vanilla extract). Oh, and on the bus home we met a guy named Steven who was studying English at the University here in Guyiang. His English was excellent and it was fun to talk to him for a little while!

One of the teachers at our school invited us to go out on Saturday but had to cancel so me and Lindsay decided to check out the bird, flower and antique market. It is always an adventure when you have to get on a new bus and hope the route takes you where you want to go! But we didn't have any trouble finding so it worked out :)

This place was huge! And really crowded! It was made of alleys and alleys of vendors. And this place had everything you can think of! Birds, flowers, antiques, bunnies, dogs, turtles, crafts, housewares, food, art. Everything. It was so fun walking through it! It was sad to see the poor condition of some of the animals though :( While we were here we met another guy who spoke English! He was talking to Lindsay for awhile before I met him but his name is Johnny and he makes some cool wire jewelry. He did try to ask for our WeChat (but neither of us has WeChat) and then our Skype names but we didn't want to give that info to a stranger so we declined... but he was very nice and also had really good English!

Cute little bunnies everywhere!

So. Crowded.

Gorgeous ceramics!

So we found THE cutest puppy I've ever seen! It took all I had not to buy him and bring him home to keep me company in my lonely apartment!

Cool bird showing off its wings right when I took the photo

Turtles of every size!

Mmmm.... brains.... how delightful.

Today we went to the boy's school for church. It is always so confusing taking a cab there because I feel like the drivers never know where it is and we don't really know how to direct them. But somehow we made it there and back! Then me and Lindsay made our pasta dinner and it turned out pretty good! Compared to cafeteria Chinese food, it was amazing haha!

Yay for the imported section!

Pasta, fruit salad and sparkling grape juice

They didn't set quite right but I'd say we did pretty good for having no measuring cups!

Now time for lesson planning... yippy. This week at school is International Week and I guess there are all sorts of things going on after classes. Sylvia asked us to give a tiny speech on Monday.. in Chinese. What. We've been trying to practice it this weekend but I have a feeling we are going to butcher it! Hopefully everyone gets a kick out of our horrible Chinese speaking abilities. Also, she asked us to be judges for some sort of talent show on Thursday.. and then want us to perform. Looks like we will be making fools of ourselves all week! Haha we think we are just going to sing along to "Let It Go" from Frozen because a lot the students love it and know the words. So hopefully we can get them to all sing with us!

Wish us luck!

Trip to Chengdu!

Hey friends! Chengdu is awesome!

The boys came over Friday evening and we all got a taxi to the Guiyang train station. That place is crazy busy! I was a little worried about navigating the train station but it all went surprisingly smoothly! We found the ticket office, got our tickets with no problems and were able to find our boarding platform. Our train didn't leave until 8:11 so we had a couple hours to wait. We took a T train with hard sleepers. There were 6 beds per compartment, bunked 3 high. It was really nice because we pretty much just slept for the whole ride which was about 10 hours long. 

Just Lindsay posing in her train bed

Chris got the unfortunate top bunk... both times

We arrived in Chengdu around 7:30 in the morning and took the metro to our hostel. We had to walk about 20 min, but we found it! I loved our hostel!! The staff all spoke English which was definitely a plus! It was decorated really cute and hipster-y and they had a little cafe. Most of the people staying there were young, college-age travelers. A lot of backpackers. It was just such a cool and chill atmosphere! And I also thought it was pretty clean. Not bad for $11 a night! The boys got checked in but the people in mine and Lindsay's room hadn't checked out yet so they let us keep our stuff up by the front desk while we were out. 

The Loft Hostel

Front desk

Sweet art in the cafe

We were planning on going to an archaeological site museum so the boys decided they wanted to walk the 40 minutes there but me and Lindsay opted for the metro. We thought we got off at the right stop but unfortunately, we couldn't find the museum! My phone was dead so we couldn't get in contact with the boys so we decided to just do our own thing. We were going to set time aside for shopping on Monday, but we decided to do that instead of the museum. We took the metro to the city square and geez there was a lot of shopping! Chengdu also just seems so much cleaner than Guiyang and Beijing and so many people spoke English! There is a pretty big expat community there as well; I just think it is a more westernized part of China. There was a McDonalds and Starbucks on every corner. Seriously. Anyway, we walked a lot, shopped a lot, ate a lot and had a good time! Oh and we found a whole store just selling lucky cats... It was awesome!! 

Can you spy the giant panda bum?

Giant ice cream puff!

Yum yum!

I think the statue is bowing but it looks like he's leaning in for a kiss..

Tianfu square

Mao is everywhere..

We headed back towards the hostel around 4 or 5 to check-in and because it looked like there were some cool shopping streets nearby that we wanted to check out. First, we ate at the hostel's cafe because they had American food! I had a burger and Lindsay had a chicken sandwich. Then we walked around the coolest little alley's just full of vendors selling cool stuff and food. We ran into Chris and Evan and had to explain that we couldn't find the museum .. oops. Oh, and I ran into one of my students!! Small world right? She seemed pretty surprised to see me too, she got all shy when I tried to talk to her. We were pretty tired so Lindsay and I headed back to the hostel, showered and headed to bed! There were four beds per room and we met one of our roommates named Matilda. She is from Sweden and is traveling all over China giving tours in different cities as well as working on her thesis for her Masters in ecology and sociology by studying feng shui gardens. She is also fluent in Mandarin. Her last tour was an 18 day (I think) biking tour. Anyway, yeah she's so cool!

Nom Nom!

Caramel/sugar art!

It's awesome!

Our beds

Our room

The next day (Sunday) we got up early to go to the Panda Research Center. We actually booked this tour thing through the hostel that included a breakfast sandwich, transportation and entry into the Panda Center as well as transportation/entry to the Sichuan opera that evening. So we took a van to the Panda Research Center and spent about 3-4 hours there. It was awesome! Crowded... but awesome! The pandas were super cute and we got to see quite a few of them. They also had red pandas which look like a mix of panda, fox and lemur. They were really cute as well! 

These panda pics are for you Hannah Dalton! :)

Entrance

Just chowing down on some bamboo

The camera focused on me instead of the panda.. awkward... 

He's really just loving life right now

It's a feast!

Climbing trees

Baby pandas!!!!

Aaaand nap time.

Such an interesting looking animal!

Look at that tail!

Someone's coming to feed them

Cute face :3

After we got back to the hostel, we began walking towards a nearby park called People's Park and got lunch on the way. The park was pretty! There were a lot of people sitting around, drinking tea and getting there ears cleaned. I guess that is a thing here! You pay someone to clean out your ears! None of us wanted to try that though. One of the English teachers at our school also told us that eating rabbit head was a local delicacy in Chengdu. Gross. We saw people selling them all over and they looked so nasty! Supposedly the brain is the best part.. bleh. None of us tried that either... haha.

We also walked to a nearby temple and walked around there for a bit. It was waaay crowded but there was a lot more cool shopping to do. Then we made the mistake of sitting to rest in front of a little pond full of lilypads because apparently it made the perfect background for all the people who wanted to take photos with us. We decided we should start charging $$ for photos! ;) 

Cool masks, like the ones they use in the opera!

Giant vegetable and fruit market

The lilypad backdrop to many random photos..

After the temple we decided to find a place to try hot pot because we heard Chengdu has some pretty amazing hot pot. We found a nice place and the staff was sooo nice and patient but it seriously took like 30+ minutes just to order! One of the staff members knew a little English but he had this translate app on his phone so it was a whole lot of back and forth, translating and trying to figure out what food we were getting! It was worth it though because it ended up being really good! We got a pot of broth that included spicy and not spicy and to put inside we got beef, broccoli, and some other veggies. The broccoli was my favorite! You just put it in the boiling broth for a bit then take it out and it was just so yummy! The restaurant also gave us a free dessert which was so sweet! I think it was some sort of flan? Not sure, but it was good!

After dinner, we headed back to the hostel to get on the van for the opera show. The opera was great! None of us quite caught on to the story even though they had some of it translated in English. But it was still very entertaining! My favorite were these guys all dressed up in these traditional masks and they would like wave a fan in front of their face and their mask would change, just like that! It was pretty sweet.

Outside the opera house

The cool masked performers!

Monday! We got up and checked out of our room because we weren't going to be back by 1 for checkout. Luckily they let us leave our stuff my the front desk again so we didn't have to carry it around all day! The boys got up early to go hike a mountain that was a bit far away. Lindsay and I ate breakfast at the hostel cafe then headed out to find this darn archaeology museum! We asked the front desk the best way to get there and she suggested the bus. She told us what stop to get off on and said it'd be close by. Well, we took the bus, got off at the stop, and still couldn't find it! We didn't want to waste all day looking for it so we just got a taxi and they drove us like 2 minutes to the museum. Hallelujah! 

Mmm... bread with BUTTER. Eating breakfast and writing some postcards ;)

Jinsha Site Museum was actually really cool! We got in for half-price with out student IDs. It is built around a site where archaeologists have dug up artifacts from about 3,000 years ago during the late Shang Dynasty. I didn't take a ton of pics but we had a good time walking through it.

The boys had told us about a cool art museum not far from here that has free admission. I'm always up for an art museum so we took a taxi there next (we didn't want to risk getting lost again). It was awesome! I loved it!! I didn't take any pics here but take my word for it, it was super cool! At least to art lovers like me.. :)

After that, we headed back to the hostel to get our stuff and then out to meet Chris and Evan at the square. We grabbed some dinner at a place similar to KFC then grabbed some food for the train ride home. Then we waited for a water fountain show that we heard they do every night in the square after sunset. It ended up being kinda lame. And they were playing instrumental Christmas music for some reason? Silent Night, Dreaming of a White Christmas... it was strange. Then we got back on the metro and headed for the train station. This time we got a little bit confused trying to find where to get our tickets but then we got them with no problem. The train didn't leave until 9:40 pm and this time it was a K train which is slower and makes more stops. 20 hours this time. We slept all night and spent most of the rest of the time dozing. We got back to Guiyang around 5:30 pm. It took awhile to get a taxi but we did eventually and headed home!

You can see Chris and Evan playing with the toy airplane Evan got.. they kept accidently hitting people with it...

Lame fountain show..

 

Well, classes went pretty well today! They schedule is so confusing though.. We taught Wednesday classes again even though we taught those last Sunday. And then we teach tomorrow's classes (Thursday) like normal but then teach those same classes on Friday and then we have to teach Friday's classes on Saturday.. what. Oh well! Oh and today my last class of the day was cancelled because they did some assembly about the Beijing opera? I'm not really sure why.. but some of the students did a little performance and they had some guests that I assume are associated with the opera come and speak. Not really sure what that was all about but hey, it was one less class to teach!

Wow, that was a long post! But it was an awesome trip and it makes me want to travel to other provinces and see other cities! Hopefully we can fit in another small trip sometime!