The break in... and Thanksgiving!

Hey everyone!

Well, I'm just going to start with the bad news. I was awoken at about 5 a.m. on Tuesday morning by a burglar in my bedroom. I saw him only briefly as he was leaving my room after taking my laptop and phone from off my nightstand next to my bed. Luckily it took me a moment to figure out what was going on so he was gone before it really hit me what just happened.  Then, I panicked. I got up and went to get my Chinese phone from my backpack only to discover that he took that as well. I ran over to Lindsay's apartment and probably scared her half to death as I banged on her door. She started calling all of the English teachers numbers that was in her phone but no one answered. So we called my dad and he told us to try the police and to contact China Horizons. The police couldn't help us because we didn't speak Chinese.  We got a hold of China Horizons and he was able to get contact with April from the other campus.

April showed up nearly two hours after it all happened. I guess there was some confusion because she thought that it happened to Chris. So I guess once it was established that him and Evan were fine, she headed over here and called the police for us. While we were waiting we headed back to my apartment and found my stolen backpack left in the hallway by my door. We waited until the police arrived (shortly after) to touch the backpack. Luckily, my passport was still in there!! And my wallet, minus the cash, but I still had all my cards and drivers license. He also left the SIM cards to my American phone and my Chinese phone in the backpack. Took my umbrella and sunglasses though...

The police took a look around and they think my front door was pried open somehow. They checked security cameras but there was nothing. I have a feeling the thief lives on the same floor as me because it would have been easy to run back to his apartment without the cameras catching him and then easy to return my backpack. Anyways, the cops didn't do a whole lot I feel like. They took me, Lindsay and April to the police station to file a report. That took forever. While we there, Sylvia had the locks on both mine and Lindsay's apartment doors changed.

I didn't have to teach any classes that day so I talked to my parents for awhile and just tried to figure out what I was going to do about my computer and everything. Thankfully the school provided a new Chinese phone that can hold two SIM cards so I can still text people in America with my T-mobile SIM card! And they are loaning me a desktop computer to put in my apartment for the rest of my stay so I don't have to worry about trying to purchase a new laptop here. They put it in on Friday.

So yeah. I have been staying the nights at Lindsay's because I'm still pretty freaked out about it all. I'm trying to just get back in the groove of teaching and everything but once it gets dark out, I start to feel uneasy about being alone. Hopefully I will be okay to stay on my own soon but in case not, at least I'll be going home in a month! I think this whole thing + the holiday time has made me pretty homesick, but I am going to finish out my time here as best I can!

Speaking of holidays, it has been pretty fun teaching my students about Thanksgiving. All my classes have been making hand turkeys and they love it! They kept calling them chickens or hens though... they don't really eat turkey in China. It was pretty funny. I showed them this cute little turkey song and they would all dance along, it was hilarious!

For Thanksgiving dinner, Lindsay, Chris, Evan and I went back to the American restaurant, Grandma's kitchen. Lindsay and I got some really yummy burgers and the boys got pizza. It certainly wasn't a traditional meal but it was tasty and American none the less! We also stopped by the American coffee shop but they ran out of pumpkin pie :( So we got cheesecake and brownies instead which were still good.

I forgot to take my camera to school on Thursday and I didn't have a phone so I took it on Friday to snap a couple pics of the turkeys.

Some turned into dinosaur turkeys...

Friday was pretty uneventful. Just some cleaning and watching movies with Lindsay after class. Saturday morning I had a group Skype call with all my family which was so nice! I miss them!! Then Lindsay and I we were invited to go on a field trip with one of my second grade classes and their parents. We met at the school and rode with one of the students and his dad to a Science museum in town where we met everyone else. It was fun to watch the kids tour the museum. Then we walked over to Hebin Park and they had some games like tug-of-war for the kids. It was fun to see my kids outside of class and I think they had a good time! We were there till maybe 1 or so. Then Lindsay and I went over to the American coffee shop because it is close by to see if they had pie. And they did! We also got to meet the American owner briefly. We usually only go at night so we never see him.

Stole this pic from Tyler's FB. I just loved seeing all my family!! <3

So that was my week! It's been pretty rough but I've got a lot of people willing to help me out and I am so grateful for that! Hopefully I will be able to look past this bad experience and find a way to enjoy Christmas time here in China. I just want to say that I appreciate all the prayers that have been said for me and the love and support I have felt from friends and family back home!

I hope you all had a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Long Week, Short Post

Hey friends!

Short post ahead. Another pretty uneventful week has come and gone. Actually, it was a pretty long week... I had a cold, I didn't like my lessons and some of the English teachers were out of town for work so I didn't have teaching assistants in a lot of my classes. Blah. But at least next week is Thanksgiving so I'll get to do a fun holiday lesson with my students!

Oh, I forgot to mention in my blog last week that the school had a fire drill and it was pretty intense. The alarms went off and the students left and gathered on the field and they had fire fighters talk to the students and they actually lit a big fire and put it out with the fire extinguisher. My school fire drills were certainly never that exciting! It was interesting.

Well it has been a pretty chill weekend. On Friday Lindsay and I checked out a new mall and Wal Mart that opened pretty close to us. We found a waffle shop! It was yummy. We also discovered a store that sells DVDs for 12 yuan which is about 2 dollars. 2 DOLLARS!! Good movies too. Lindsay bought Guardians of the Galaxy because we haven't seen it and we wanted to make sure these were legit. We tried it out when we got home and it was completely fine! Yay China!

Waffles!

On Saturday, we went into town with Chris and Evan to try and find a night market and also a Papa Johns that we didn't know existed. We didn't find the pizza or the shopping... but we explored a new part of town a little bit so it was fun. Then we stopped back at the mall to show the boys the DVD place and we all stocked up on some cheap movies! This mall also had doughnuts so we got some dessert.

We don't really have any plans squared away for Thanksgiving. William (the American teacher that teaches at the boys campus) had mentioned having a big dinner but we haven't heard if that was still happening. If not, we'll probably just go out to eat and get some pumpkin pie from the American coffee shop. 

Anyways, that was my week. Hope you all have a very Happy Thanksgiving!!

The cafeteria made piggy rolls for lunch!

Caught on of my students pulling a Colonel Sanders with her stickers..

KTV and a Cat Cafe

Ni Hao!

Another successful week in China down! Still just shocked at how fast it is all going! 

So funny story... On Wednesday I was teaching the class that my little special needs boy is in (I really need to remember his name) and for some reason there was no teaching assistant. So that's challenging enough but my little boy is quite a handful. It is difficult to keep him out of trouble while also keeping the rest of the class quiet and actually getting through my lesson. So he is always getting out of his seat and getting into things and apparently looking away for 5 minutes was a mistake. He was up at the front desk and I look back to see that he attempted to fill a white board marker with more ink... and spilled it everywhere. He was holding a marker, overflowing with blue ink that turned his whole hand smurf blue and made a nice big puddle on the desk. I had to stop class to take care of this mess! It was nuts. He did come back from the bathroom after washing his hands with the biggest grin as he showed me his slightly blue stained hands. No matter what he does, I just can't be mad at him! Oh the joys of teaching 1st graders! 

On Friday the power went out in our whole building and most of the buildings in our complex so that was crazy. Even some of the shops nearby lost power. So Lindsay and I decided to head to the American cafe for hot cocoa and luckily the power was back when we got home!

Saturday was a ton of fun! We went with Daisy and Journey (one of the English teachers) out to KTV! It is like karaoke but you just rent out your own room that has TVs and microphones and just have a party! It was just the four of us but it was soooo fun! They had quite a bit of American music to choose from so we sang Adele, Taylor Swift, even some Avril Lavigne. Seriously, I wish they had KTV in America! But if you find yourself in Asia, find some friends and go to KTV. So fun. Daisy and Journey also taught us part of the dance to a really popular Chinese song called "Little Apple" by the Chopstick Brothers. We hear this song everywhere and we've seen some of our students doing a dance to it which is hilarious by the way.

Here is a link to the music video. Warning: it is super bizarre. Like really, reeeally strange. But the song is so catchy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvC6HGujPUs

Of course they gave us the hello kitty room!

I'm secretly a pop star. (photo cred: Lindsay)

Lindsay, me, Journey, and Daisy

After KTV, Journey had to leave so the three of us went to dinner. Daisy showed us an American restaurant that we had no idea existed!! They had Mexican food, burgers, pasta, pizza, sandwiches, steaks, etc.  We were pretty excited. Unfortunately the Mexican food wasn't great... but I got a sandwich that was quite delicious! It was funny though because Chinese people aren't used to ordering their own dish at a restaurant. Usually you all just order a bunch of different food and share it. So we ended up just ordering a few dishes and sharing them since Daisy didn't quite seem to get the concept of picking out her own dish.

To top off a great night, Daisy took us to a little cafe that has cats! It is all cat themed and they have maybe 6-7 cats just wandering around the place. It was a cat lady heaven!! We got some iced hot cocoa (yeah, weird...) and played with the cats :) It was fantastic. I love that cats are so popular in China. It's like I just fit right in here! 

Just a cat... sitting on the table. (photo cred: Lindsay)

Happy Krista!

Yes, I was on the ground playing with one of the cats... (Photo cred: Lindsay)

We walked around this little shop and found these fake bang headbands... they're hysterical! (photo cred: Lindsay)

Today has been a good Sunday. We went to the boys campus for church and the taxi driver didn't get lost! It was the first time we've had a driver that knew exactly where it was. And we made it home without any issues so that was nice! Now just gearing up for another week!

A Crazy Trip to Lang De

Hey Everyone!

I can't even believe how quickly the weeks have been flying by lately! Only 9 weeks left until I'll be home! It's crazy.

It's been a pretty routine week. It got so cold so fast! I had to wear a coat in my apartment because it didn't have a heater like Lindsay's. I asked Sylvia if one could be provided and luckily she said yes, thank goodness! Now I am staying nice a warm :)

The English teachers have been asking us if we have ideas for celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas with the students so we have been trying to come up with some ideas! Some of the teachers have already begun decorating the hallways for Christmas! I thought people back in the States were getting too eager but it is even more so in China, probably because no one here really celebrates Thanksgiving.. obviously.. so they're jumping right to Christmas! Lindsay and I went to Starbucks for hot cocoa on Friday and they were all decorated for Christmas and playing Christmas music! It's too early!!

Anyways, on Wednesday one of the math teachers, Mia, invited us to play badminton that evening. She is also the homeroom teacher for the class that my favorite boy is in (the one with some special needs) and she loves seeing the way we interact with him. And her English is really good! So we went to the school gym on Wednesday night and played badminton with her and another teacher whose name I don't remember. It was actually a lot of fun despite the fact that neither of us really knew what we were doing! The school's coach was there playing on the court next to us and he gave us some pointers on how to serve. It was so nice to get to know some other teachers.

So, Saturday was a craaaazy day. Bear with me, it is quite the story! We got up early, took a taxi to the train station and took a two hour train to Kaili. From there we were planning on going to a minority village called Lang De but we weren't particularly sure how to get there, just that we could get there by bus. When we got to the Kaili train station we saw a lot of buses so Lindsay asked a police officer which one would take us to Lang De. Suddenly they were surrounded by people that wanted to help us which was awesome! We followed a girl onto a bus that took us to the bus station a few minutes away. She even helped us buy tickets to Lang De which was so kind of her!

We had about half an hour till our bus would leave so we walked around Kaili a little bit. Then when we went back to the bus station we couldn't figure out which bus was ours and no one seemed to be able to help us! We were freaking out because it was suppose to leave in like two minutes when the driver of our bus waved us over and sure enough, that was our bus. He must've seen us frantically looking around and figured we were his missing passengers. There was a girl on our bus from the Czech Republic and some Chinese people that spoke English so we were able to make sure we were going to the right place.

The drive to Lang De was about 45 minutes and it was a gorgeous ride! The village is just surrounded by beautiful green hills and rivers. The bus dropped us off outside the village and we just sort of followed a path that we thought would take us to the village. Well, it was a beautiful, peaceful walk, but it was also in the middle of no where and was taking us in the wrong direction. We thought we were good because we were sort of following one of the Chinese girls that was on the bus. We figured she knew where she was going... but no. So after walking for awhile we asked her if she knew the way (she spoke English) and she said she was lost too. So we all turned around and headed in the other direction and it turns out we just went down the wrong path. This girl ended up being a true life saver for us but I don't remember her name!

Such a beautiful place! Even if we were a bit lost...

This is our Chinese friend with Lindsay and a Bull! They didn't want to get too close...

So we found the village and and were told that a performance of the Miao people was going to be taking place soon. We wandered the village a bit with our new friend then waited for the show. There were some TV camera crews that I guess were going to be filming for something which unfortunately caused the show to be delayed for quite awhile. The TV people kept making all of the tourists move out of the shot so we couldn't see very well. But then, the TV people wanted us (and some of the other tourists) to join in a dance! It was the weirdest thing and we didn't really know what was going on! We ended up walking around in a circle with some of the Miao women to the beat of a drum while some guys played their big flutes. It was so strange, but kind of exciting! And hey, we may have made it on Chinese TV!

Apparently the 2008 Beijing Olympic torch came through here!

Cute little Miao girls in costume!

Such a cool little village! I can't imagine growing up here!

Look at that tall flute thing! The performance finally beginning

There were 2 couples there with the TV crew that may or may not be famous? They danced with the Miao people but clearly didn't know the steps

I'm trying to get better and taking videos but I'm not much of a videographer... But here ya go! A short video of part of the performance.

We watched some more of the dancing, then we had to go to catch a bus back to Kaili. We were totally relying on our Chinese friend because without her, we would have had no idea how to get back! And it so happened that she was trying to get back in time for the exact same train back to Guiyang as us! But it turned out we could only get a bus to Leishan which was actually further from Kaili but at least we would be able to get a bus from there to Kaili. So we got the Leishan bus station and our friend helped us get tickets to Kaili. Unfortunately, we didn't think we were going to make it back in time for our train. Somehow, she managed to convince the bus driver to leave 15 minutes early! I think there was one seat left they were waiting to fill so she went ahead and bought the last ticket! And it turns out that 15 minutes made a difference!

So we were on the bus for about an hour and got to Kaili bus station about 20 minutes before our train was suppose to leave... and we still had to get to the train station. We practically jumped off the bus and right into a taxi. We got dropped off at the train station and just started running! It must have been quite a site... haha. We ran to the ticket counter and our friend convinced the one guy in front of us to let us go first. Then we ran through security and got to our gate 6 minutes before the train was suppose to leave! Luckily it ended up being delayed about 10 minutes so we did it! Haha all of this buying bus tickets and running to catch our train in a foreign country made me feel like I was on the amazing race or something!

Honestly, I don't know how we would have made it home without our Chinese friend. I am so grateful that she took us under her wing! We probably would've ended up stranded in Lang De or Kaili, possibly overnight if we hadn't met her or if she hadn't been trying to catch the same train. I definitely felt like the Lord was watching out for us that day! And although we made a new friend, I think we decided we'll want to make sure we are a little more prepared before heading out on our adventures from now on... haha :)

Anyways, sorry for the long and confusing story, but it was a long and confusing day! But certainly one I will never forget!

Happy Halloween from China!

万圣节快乐! (Wànshèngjié kuàilè!) HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

It has been a great week! And I had hard time narrowing down what pics to post sooo... there's a ton. Like a ton. Sorry, not sorry. These kids are too adorable!

On Tuesday (when I usually have 7 classes) I only had one! All of the students throughout the whole school had mid-term tests on Tuesday. Lindsay didn't have any classes which was good because she was sick on Monday and still getting over it on Tuesday. She's doing better now :) So Tuesday I went into town all by myself! I just wanted to see if they had Halloween stuff at the Carrefour and found some garland for my apartment!

All week we have been preparing our students for Halloween! We celebrated on Thursday instead of Friday because the students go home early on Friday but the teachers wanted to trick-or-treat with them. It was so fun to see all the kids dressed up! And all of the English teachers! Thursday morning we had a little assembly where Lindsay and I told the students why we celebrate Halloween and we sang a Halloween song that we had been teaching them. All day the kids were "trick-or-treating." Every time we saw them in the hallway or in class or in our office they'd say "trick-or-treat!" and wait for candy. Luckily the English teachers collected A TON of candy from parents of the students. So there was more than enough for all the kids. 

In my classes, I taught them some Halloween words like "ghost" and "jack-o-lantern" and we sang Halloween songs and did color by numbers. They loved it! Then we hung up their pictures on the classroom door. They also loved watching "This is Halloween" from "The Nightmare Before Christmas." The kids would keep screaming at different parts. At first I thought that I was totally freaking out my little first graders but turns out they were just screaming for fun and always wanted to watch it again.

Cat friends doing what cat friends do best!

Sylvia and I! She let me borrow the cat ears :) 

Not sure what's with his pose....

Favorite!!

Cici :)

Sylvia getting attacked in the office by kids "trick-or-treating"

Lots of Spidermans... spidermen?

One of my crazies ;)

More of my crazies!

Thursday after dinner, we had about 22 students that I guess were picked to go trick-or-treating. They were in our office getting make-up and costume adjustments. They looked so great! Then I went with Sylvia and Yoyo to lead 11 of the 1st and 2nd graders to trick-or-treat to all of the grade 1 and 2 classrooms. Lindsay took 11 4-6th graders with Cici. It was CRAZY. The kids would knock and yell trick-or-treat and then it just turned into a big, crazy, candy handing out party! It was nuts, but I think the kids had a good time! I was sooo tired when I got home!!

Corn flavored candy? Oh China.....

'

My favorite little batman! I don't hear him speak English much but he now knows "Krista" and on Thursday he said "cat" when he saw me! <3

Getting ready!

The boy on the left is Leon, the half-Irish boy! He's gotten way more comfortable speaking to me and I am realizing how good his English is! 

Sassy vampire queen ;)

Love my cat friend!!

That is Daisy, the one who took us out to dinner last weekend! 

This is Yoyo! She's awesome!

Friday night, Lindsay and I decided to celebrate actual Halloween by watching our favorite Halloween movie, "The Nightmare Before Christmas." When I went to the Carrefour earlier this week I miraculously found tortilla chips and salsa in the imported section!! So we snacked on that during our movie :)

We were going to go out with Daisy and Journey (another English teacher) on Saturday, but they had to cancel so Lindsay and I decided to go to Huaxi Park which was a couple hours bus ride away. I met a University student on the bus named Julia and she spoke excellent English. It is always so exciting to meet people who I can talk to! It's a good thing too because she helped us know which stop to get off for the park or else we might have missed it.

It was a pretty cold day and very cloudy but the park was beautiful! It is right by a University so we saw tons of college-age students there. Everyone was riding bikes! We walked around for awhile and had a nice time. Sometimes I forget how beautiful Guiyang is when you get out of the city a little bit. I wish the pictures I took did it justice! Anyways, it was a perfect way to start of the first day of November!

Hope you all had a great Halloween! Happy November!! :)