So, I think it's time for me to tell you about my kids...

My homeroom kids. There are adorable. They make my heart happy. Sometimes I giggle out of sheer happiness when I see them around campus. I love them.

Ella: Ella is the cutest little girl ever! When she smiles her whole face lights up and it is adorable. She is so well behaved! We have all the kids’ names on the floor in their spot where they are suppose to stand for opening. Usually all the kids are running around when they get there and we have to round them up. But Ella is so good! She goes to her spot and stands there, I love it! She has been gone a lot this month but I love it when she is there.

Ben: Ben is Ella’s counterpart, they are my quiet sweet little kids. Ben is ADORABLE! I can’t remember who started it but the kids play this game where they will come up to me during breaks and put their clenched hand near my mouth as a microphone so that I’ll sing. (They’ve pretty much learned the Baby song by JBieb.) The game has now morphed into where they get me singing and then turn their hand into a gun and shoot me. But Ben still just has me sing. He is such a sweetheart. He is also super chill. Sometimes the other kids will steal his tokens or hit him or something and he never gets upset. He has the cutest smile and loves calling me “techa banana”. I love it.

Angel: I first named her Wendy. It seemed the perfect name. But then a month after teaching (a month!) her parents wanted to change her name to Angel. There was nothing I could do about it so I made her a new name spot on the floor. And I don’t know if it’s just me but is seems like ever since her name got changed she has been less of an angel and more prone to acting up. But she is still a sweet little girl. She doesn’t speak a lot of English (none of the kids really do, they are 4 years old and this is their first year). She gets along really well with the other kids (even Tim who is a little bit of a bully.) She is smart too. She always reminds me to get the token bags when I forget and knows where they are. She’s a good kid.

Marcus: The best way to describe Marcus would be like a punk-gangster type kid. He just has swag when he walks. He doesn’t get upset and cry about things, he turns the cold shoulder like he is too cool for you. But he is sweet at the same time, he always comes and takes my hand to bring me to the table when it is time for me to go to his group. He loves to have his picture taken and will get you to take the  picture but as soon as the camera is on him he puts his “cool” look back on, like he doesn’t care or anything. He is so funny. He loves whispering Chinese into my ear and I don’t know what he is saying! So I just whisper “don’t speak in Chinese” in his ear. Then he whispers in my ear again like we’re communicating or something, but truly, neither of us has any idea what the other one is saying. I love him.

Sami: She joined my class a couple weeks after we had started but from the very beginning she seemed to be older (she’s not) and just more advanced. She loves attention being in pictures. She strikes me a someone who is used to getting her way. Whenever there is something she wants or she is upset she automatically goes into this cry thing that will immediately stop once she has what she wants or attention. It drives me crazy. But she is such a good student. She is a quick learner and continues to show a lot of progress. She is also very helpful with the other students and loves helping the teacher.

Joey: Joey is a quiet little boy and oh how I love him. Whenever he sees me he runs and gives me a hug. And by ‘gives me a hug’ I really mean he hugs my leg, he wraps his little arm around my thigh and just holds on tight. Its real adorable. And I love how he just giggles and giggles at the silly things I do, it makes me feel like I’m funny. Sometimes he likes to scatter the tokens when other kids are trying to count them which makes my life more difficult, but I can never stay upset. He has these big eyebrows and squished little face, he looks kinda like an old man in a little body sometimes. He makes me happy.

Tim: Tim is rather infamous. All the kindergarten teachers knew who he was after the first few days and even the Primary teachers have heard of him. He is bigger than most of the other students and has this thing for hitting people (teachers and students) and he likes to run away. Yet when you see him outside of class he is the first one to see me and smile and wave, and he won’t stop until I see him and wave back. Even then sometimes he just likes to smile and wave at me. He has a lot of ability and does really well in class…when you have something he wants such has a snack, craft or toy. He is so excited to see us in the morning. He, like Marcus, could probably be a gang leader. Sometimes I feel like I’m teaching little gangsters. Tim is cute though, and I do love him.

I wish you all could meet them, but hopefully you will be able to reconcile yourself with pictures instead. I will try to post them on Facebook sometime. We’ll see if THAT happens. J Also, there are so many other kids in our group A that I shall have to tell you about, not to mention the other (older) group. But I’ll save that for another day.

I love China!

First week back from Vacation

Some highlights from this week:

We had a grilled cheese party! Yes, you read that right, a grilled CHEESE party!! We found cheese! It was in this deli/import store. I got a block of cheese for 37.5 yuan which is about 6 US dollars…but it was worth it. A bunch of us in the group got together and made grilled cheese. We had a pan and an iron. I tried cooking mine both ways and I prefer the iron. It was fun. Emmaline and Teal brought cream cheese…it was SO good in a grilled cheese! Ahh, best day of my life. I love cheese. And the cheese was melted and perfect, I’m sure Cindy Evans would have LOVED it! Haha! (She hates melted cheese).

Kung Fu was a BLAST! We’ve been learning all these different moves and found out that they all go together in a sequence and yes I feel so cool doing them. We’re all getting Kung Fu outfits and I cannot wait! We’re gonna be so legit!

We watched the Relief Society broadcast on Tuesday which was sweet. Darci and I watched the Saturday morning session of General Conference live because we had slept all day (no sleep on the train remember?). It was super cool to think about how I was watching conference the same time as everyone else…except it was midnight for me. It was super cool! The change in missionary age announcement was crazy! I was definitely very excited, Darci recorded the happy dance I did because I was so excited. There were a lot of different emotions I felt thinking about that announcement. I’ve thought long and hard about some things this past week. Maybe I’ll post them on here someday. Maybe not. I don’t know.

Some crazy stories from this past week:

I got bit. Hard. By my little student Tim. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned him before.  But he often hits us teachers as well as us students. We were starting classes so I was taking a toy away from him and he sure didn’t like that. So he grabbed my hand and started biting. I didn’t really know what to do, I didn’t expect him to bite me for that long or that hard. But after he finally let go, I realized it actually hurt. I showed our head teacher and she showed the Chinese teachers. I probably would have been fine but the Chinese teachers looked at it and took me down to the nurse. She cleaned it, had me ice it and then put something on it. Then I went back to teaching. Luckily our head teacher had been there so she could cover for my class real quick. They made him apologize to me. Then life goes on. The mark lasted for a couple days though. You can still see where his front two teeth bit down though. Even though he is a violent child, I still love him.

That was pretty much the only crazy story, unless you count the fact that everyday I’m living in China as a crazy story.

Peace!

Living out of a Backpack : 10 Days Around China

Ok, so my journal entry is taking way too long to write out and I’ll probably bore you with details anyways…so here is the short and sweet version. And yes I know, that even for a short version..its still pretty long.

Train: hard seats – 32 hours – that is way too long to be on a train. Not very comfortable. Lots of smokers because we were near the back. Squatter bathrooms smelled awful. Just laughed at everything, that’s all you can do sometimes to handle it.

Xi’an: super fun city. The weather was awesome (aka NOT humid!). My favorite part was biking around on top of the city wall. Darci and I rented a tandem bike, it was AWESOME! Did some fun bargaining. Katrina is my favorite to watch bargaining. We pretended we were sisters at one point. We were starving students. Got called “my dear” every other word by this one vendor. One of the vendors let me sit while he bargained with Katrina and gave me this book call “You May Find You Chinese Name Inside this book” and it was written on a paper and taped on the book. But to my surprise, I actually DID find my name in this book, Solana and Curtis. Found this awesome taro ice cream that I fell in love with. Ate it twice in one day…What? Who said that? Moving on. Tried octopus at the Muslim quarters, didn’t get to go into the mosque. Bummer. But the octopus wasn’t that bad. The seasonings were good (cumin, I think.) but the texture was weird.

Train: hard sleeper – 21 hours – it felt like heaven compared to hard seats. There were so many more people who knew English so we made so many friends. Iris and Eric had the bottom sleepers and were so nice to let us sit on their beds. We gave this one friend we made an English name. We wrote down names we thought were cool and all our brother’s names. We put down Corbin for my brother’s name even though its spelled differently and that’s the one he picked. This guy Evan helped Kelsey and I on the train and his brother and he sat with us for awhile. They have 4 kids in their family. We asked how that was possible and it sounded like they just have to pay a fee. We played Uno with them and some other people that joined. It was an awesome way for us to learn the colors and numbers in Chinese and we helped them learn them in English. It was great. There were a lot more families on this one it felt like. The whole atmosphere felt very friendly and there were no smokers around us! We actually got to sleep which was so nice! We met this kid William who is super good at chess. Him and Teal were best buds. Victor was my little friend and let me tell you, this kid is so cute! I love his voice! He helped me practice my numbers. He sure stole my heart. This train ride went by so fast.

Beijing: Our first day in Beijing (Monday), Darci, Jace, Katrina and I went to Insect street to try some new things. We ended up eating: scorpion(surprisingly good), snake(not bad), starfish(hard and gross), ostridge(pretty good), eel(I didn’t like it), deer kidney(not bad but not good either) and those were the crazy things we tried on sticks. But we also had this sugar comb stuff, coconut milk, this nasty milk yogurt thing (dairy is just not good here, unless its ice cream), cotton candy made to look like a flower, and this dried fruit stuff. Pretty fun stuff.

The next day (Tuesday) we went to the Temple of Heaven there was beautiful rose gardens, this circle of old people hacking sacking like you’ve never seen it done before! They were tricksters fo sho! There was a beautiful moment when everyone else was taking sweet picture of this spider but across from the bushes beyond us was this group of people dancing. There were wearing traditional costumes but one lady was also wearing sunglasses on her heads. They looked so happy and they danced with each other. It was a tender moment for me to be able to watch these modern people celebrating a culture rich with traditions and history. America is a relatively young country with a blend of many cultures. I was happy for these people who laughed and danced and enjoyed their culture.

Then we went to the Summer Place, we didn’t have a lot of time but it was a beautiful place and probably the coolest summer home I’ve ever seen! It was just before sunset so all the colors seemed to be a little more vibrant. I love how all the buildings are fully of such colorful artwork and architecture.

The next day (Wednesday) we went to Tiananmen square, there were so many people. I wore my red and white striped shirt and had some fun taking “where’s Waldo” pictures. We had so many Asians ask to take pictures with us. Jace went to go do something so Darci and I waited for him and we had all these people take pictures with us and give us their kids to hold and take pictures with. It was fun and we didn’t have anything better to do, but it was hard to get away. Then we went to see the Forbidden City that was pretty cool and we hiked to this hill thing over looking it. Pretty cool stuff. Then we went to the pearl market. It was so fun and there were some great deals and fun stuff. They would also call you beautiful girl. And when you bargained they would give you the “low price” but only because you so beautiful, or you so nice, or even just, because I like you. Such fun!

Our last full day (Thursday) we went to the great wall. We woke up early to take the subway to a bus to a van. The van got a flat tire on the way (I feel like I’m always getting flat tires on road trips!). We were suppose to go on this long 6 hour hike. But they dropped us off at the wrong place so it ended up only being the last hour or 2 of the hike. Emmaline and I were pretty excited about that because we are not super fast, strong endurance hikers like everyone else. Even with the shorter one we were bringing in the rear. But it was way fun. The Great Wall is super legit. There is a good reason why they call it great. The stairs leading up to it are death though. They are steep and there are many. But we made it! I hiked the Great Wall, jumped on the Great Wall, ate Oreos on the Great Wall, did a cartwheel on the Great Wall, did the worm on the Great Wall (the guards nearby chuckled heh heh), and yes, I even KISSED the Great Wall. The one big disappointment was that we wanted to zip line off the great wall but that part of the wall was closed for reconstruction or something. Sad day. We were really bummed.

We went to the Pearl Market one last time get some things before going back to the hostel. Packed everything up to leave in the morning.

Next day (Friday): woke up and went to the train station. Ran to get on the train first so we could put our luggage up (we were last, last time so we had to sit with our luggage on our laps, but we didn’t have seats this time so we needed to make sure our luggage made it in the luggage area.

Train: Standing seats – 20 hours – yes, we didn’t even have seats. We bought these stool things and newspaper to sit on. Darci bought this car window thing that you use to keep your car cool in the summer. My stool broke within 30 minutes of the train leaving. It was awesome. Luckily since we were first we got the back of the train..or not so luckily because we were near the bathrooms and the trash in the smoker area. But since we were the last cart on the train the trolley people didn’t go past us so we could spread out some. It was a long ride. We took turns sleep on the floor on the newspaper and mat. The bathroom smelled atrocious and we smelled it every time the door open. We had people throw up in the trash bag next to us and we had mothers hold their children over same said trash bag to poop. It smelled so bad constantly. When we got off the train we thought the smell was haunting us, but no, it had just sunk into us and we felt sorry for anyone who had to get near us. I think most of this train ride I have just blocked from my mind. But hey, I got to experience 3 different forms of train rides. I just hope I never had standing tickets on a long train ride again.

But we made it home! Went from train to train to bus to bus and up the stairs where we could shower and wash our stuff. I was going to try to stay up so I could go to bed at a regular time but ended up falling asleep almost immediately.

Overall it was a super fun vacation that went by so fast. Lots of adventures were had! Hope you enjoyed the abridged version of it. Peace!

My Life as a Superstar

I love walking into the cafeteria (not because I love the food or the smell) but because I love seeing all the kids and even better, all the kids love seeing me! My kids are starting to learn my name and will call out to me when I walk in. It makes me feel like a superstar. Fact.

Ok, funny story about my name. I was with one of the groups of  kids (they are divided into 6 different groups – three 4-year-old groups and three 5-year-old groups) and I was trying to teach them my name. I kept having them say Teacher Solana, which sounds more like techa Solana. As they were saying it one kid realized that Solana sounds like Banana and he switched to calling me Techa Banana. It caught on pretty quick. So now all the kids call me Techa Banana. And I love it.

But back to the cafeteria, so they are calling out “Techa Banana, Techa Banana” and it just melts my little heart. They are so stinkin cute! Even the kids that I don’t even know love to wave and call out “hello” or “good morning”. They are adorable. And I can’t help but stop and give high fives to them. Warning: once you give an adorable little Chinese kid a high five, everyone else will want one too…and I can’t resist.

Besides high fives, the kids love holding their hand to my face like a microphone to make me sing. It started in class when I would pretend a cup or a banana was a microphone. So then they started using their hands as microphones in my face during breaks and such. They love when I start to sing. And I love when they giggle because I’m singing into their hands. It’s a win-win situation.

It not always just the kids either. The adults love to use whatever English they know on us too. I love it when they get so excited to say hello as they pass in the hallway or cafeteria. But is goes both ways, they giggle at us when we try to use Chinese and say Ni Hao…I’m not sure if it’s because we pronounce it wrong or they just think it’s funny to see Americans speaking Chinese or if we have a booger on our face…not sure. But then again it makes me giggle sometimes when they say hello too. But mostly, I just love it.

Another perk to being a superstar is having your picture taken. Haha, it’s so fun! At first people would just take pictures of us whenever we got together for group shots (I was warned that this would happen a lot). Then we have random people just come up and ask to take a picture with us. One girl walked up to my friend Heidi and asked to have a picture with her. She didn’t bring a camera or anything, she just wanted a picture. So Laurissa took the picture. It was super funny. Some people don’t ask and will just sneak pictures of us. Or like that one time we were dancing and I turned around to see an Asian with a camera. Well, I figure that since I am bound to be in pictures with Asians anyways I might has well embrace it. As such, I’ve developed a new game that I love to play when we go out. It involves jumping into group pictures with Asians at every opportunity. This is how you play: you walk by, notice them taking a picture, jump in doing the Asian peace sign (it means happy), and boom. You win. And like I said, I’m a superstar here so they love it! If you’re ever in China you should try it too. It’s actually a lot of fun.

As for meeting and getting to know them, Darci and I made a new friend, Isabella. I think I mentioned her briefly before. We first met her when Laurissa, Ashley, Darci and I were practicing My Heart will Go On. We were hot, sweaty, tired and thirsty. She was with a friend and they were introducing themselves. She is a new teacher here as well. She teaches piano. I think we met another girl that same night whose name was Rachel and I got them mixed up and called Isabella Rachel for the first few times we met. She told us we danced so well and that we were all so beautiful. Her English is pretty good. We see her all the time in the cafeteria now. Sometimes we go over and eat with her, we usually just miss her though. We went and talked with her in her piano room one night. Just asked questions about her life and such, it was cool. Another time we went to her apartment to show her how to do a twist thing in her hair and chat some more. We brought her a gift of cookies because we know gifts are a big thing here. A couple nights ago she brought us some moon cakes. It’s big holiday thing for the Mid-Autumn festival coming up. There were 4 of them. The first one we tried was really good. The last one we just tried was…interesting. We enjoy learning some Chinese words from her and she loves practicing her English with us. She is so happy all the time. She is such a sweetheart.

I love the people here. They are so great! I cannot wait to make more friends and get to know people better. The language barrier is a little bit tough but when both sides put forth efforts it is well worth it. I love feeling famous! I love China! 

Church and Cheese

So today we left at 7:00am and rode a bus for 2 hours to arrive in Shenzhen at 9 for District Conference. I slept most of the way there. Conference started at 10 so we were an hour early. It’s an international district there were not that many Chinese people, the only ones there were spouses of foreigners. We sang Joseph Smith’s vision for our opening song. It was amazing to be in China yet singing about something that happened in America with people from all over. They read a statement about how members of the church are not allowed to share the gospel with Chinese nationals. BUT as one of the speakers talked about in her talk about missionary work, we are allowed to talk with other foreigners about the gospel. Its quite an experience living here.

For our middle song we sang “I’ll Go Where You Want Me to Go Dear Lord” which was kinda fun because we were all here in China for one reason or another for whatever reason. The longer that I’m here, the longer I feel like this is where I am supposed to be right now. I’m not sure why exactly yet.

Elder Jui Chang Juan, an area 70 spoke to us last. He is so funny! He talked about a lot of different things, but I just really enjoyed it. He made a lot of jokes but made some really powerful analogies and some experiences. I don’t know. I feel like being a better person now.

After church we went to President Colin Robinson’s house for lunch. It was divine! We had Hawaiian haystacks. I can’t remember the last time I recognized everything on my food. It was so good! There was delicious cheddar cheese. I have not had cheese at all since I’ve been here and I miss it so much! All you people in America go right now to your fridge and eat some cheese. Right now. Do it! Just kidding, but seriously. You are so blessed! I can’t wait to eat cheese all the time when I get back. We asked them where they got the cheese and they said you can get it at an import store. But talking to one of the girls from the other school she said it’s pretty expensive. So maybe for special occasions and holidays? ALSO, Isabella, one of my Chinese friends said she knows a cheese store and I’m hoping it’s cheaper. It might be different cheese or taste differently, but hey, I’m in CHINA, I do what I can. And now that I just spent a whole paragraph talking about cheese…moving on.

We had a short fireside following lunch and talked about church in China. Since we are pretty far away we won’t be able to come every week so we are going to meet with the Shenzhen branch via skype. And since we have priesthood we will be able to pass the sacrament as well. Basically we are going to be a twig. Twig = a branch of a branch. The Zhongshan Twig. I love it. They sure are taking care of us. They got us speakers so we can clearly hear and a hot spot thing so we have internet to skype. They are great! I love our district leaders! Also, after the fireside they had cookies and fudge for us. I love me a good down to earth chocolate chip cookie.

I love that even though I am far from home, in another country, halfway across the world, the church is the same. Where 2 or 3 are gathered, there will I be also. I loved meeting with other faithful saints and feeling the spirit. I hope I get to go a couple more times while I am here. But I am so grateful that I will be able to receive the sacrament each week while here. I am grateful for my Savior who died for me and everyone else in the big world. I am beginning to realize more and more just how many people there are. I am grateful for a people who love to serve and even though they don’t know us, they are so welcoming, letting us come into their home and feeding us delicious food. The Church is true wherever you go! I love the gospel. I love my Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. I’m just feeling so blessed today!

Tender Mercy: Cold watermelon here tastes as delicious as cold watermelon in America. I love it.

My Weekend in Changsha

So, remember how I was PERFORMING IN CHINA…in case you missed the last post I went and PERFORMED IN CHINA. I was pretty excited, did you pick up on that? I PERFORMED IN CHINA. Kind of exciting.

We got picked up in Zhongshan (our school) right after we were done teaching on Friday. I managed to eat real quick at the cafeteria and hurried to grab my bag to catch the van driving us. From our school we had Max, Jace, Laurissa, Ashley, Aly, Katy, Darci and I. We then went to the other school and picked up Heidi, Karissa, Micah, Justine, Savannah, Ashley, and a couple other girls. We then took a 40 minute train ride in first class seats, they were pretty nice. Then we took a 3 hour train ride in regular seats. It was pretty fun. We arrived in Changsha and they took us to dinner and the food was SPICY! We didn’t really know what we were eating. I was just trying a little bit of everything. I ended up eating frog without even realizing…it was interesting. There was all kinds of fun things to try. We ended up eating there for all our lunches and dinners while we were there (breakfast was at the hotel). My favorite food from there were these little sweet potato things that were super good with these meatball things. I loved it so much. Everyone else did too. They were gone so fast every time! I also tried duck and pig feet/knees/legs/something(not exactly sure what). Overall I liked the food.

Saturday morning we went to the place we were performing. It was a really fancy place with all this nice architecture, fountains and stuff. They had us walk around outside while these 2 chinese people with nice cameras took pictures of us. It was so fun. We would just walk around all casual like trying not to seem like we were posing but totally posing the whole time… and they would follow us and take our picture. I felt famous! Haha, it was super fun! Then we went to lunch.

We came back and while we were waiting for it to start we would play with the kids and stuff. Then the show started. First we did the cupid shuffle with all the teachers. Then it was our shining moment where we performed My Heart Will Go On. Even though none of us are ballerinas we all totally acted like we were legit. We did our rapping in the middle. And when we lifted Jace in the air they started clapping. It was great! The whole thing was kinda a joke. But we acted serious the whole time too. And they didn’t laugh. So basically, we were real ballerinas. It was great! Between acts there was speeches and games that we helped with. Oh I forgot to mention, these whole thing was for the opening of a new Bond school (Bond is the school that we teach at, there are about 7 of them). Max did the Cha Cha with 3 girls from the other school (Justine, Micah, and Karissa) and that was really fun to watch. The twins Aly and Katy played a song on my ukulele. The other school did a skit and a song.

I think they have another performance thing in October and I really want to go to that one too! But they only let 8 teachers go this time and there are 15 of us so I wonder if they will let the other teachers go next time. But…they might not want to…so maybe I could go again!

Saturday night they took us to see some fireworks. We were suppose to ride taxis but none were coming by so we took a bus. Something you have to understand about China is that they drive CRAZY! Imagine the craziest driver ever and then times by 60 then take that number and double it and that’s about how crazy they are. They’ll drive on the wrong side against traffic so you feel like you’re playing chicken. People just cross wherever they want despite the traffic that is going on all around them. It was quite the experience…I kind of loved it. But anyways back to my story, we were riding the bus to the fireworks and everyone got off and crossed the street but there were a couple of us that got off last because we were in the back and right when we got off a bus pulled in front blocking the way to the sidewalk and the bus closed the doors and started moving forward so there we were between 2 lanes of moving traffic being the calm cool Americans that we are we huddled together and screamed. It was tender. We eventually made it across the street. There we so many people! We had to keep close to avoid losing each other. The fireworks were pretty cool. They do them every Saturday. Someone told me that they are the providence that manufactures fireworks. Plus it’s China! They invented fireworks!

So our hotel rooms were quite interesting. We think maybe they were the honeymoon suites or something? You walk in the room and there are the beds but instead of a wall between the bathroom and the wall there is a window. So you can see the shower and the bathroom. Kinda awkward. Luckily there was a shower curtain that you could use to close it off, but still. It was a little weird.

While we were walking back from dinner the first night we stopped because our coordinators were getting fruit and some people in our group were getting ice creams. Laurissa, Ashley, Darci and I started playing the mirror dancing game where one person does a dance move and everyone else follows. Usually you just play with 2 people but we were playing with 4 standing in a circle, it was way fun. One of the times it was my turn I did this dance move where I jumped and faced the back and come to face to face with some Chinese person recording us on his phone. It was funny. We noticed some others taking pictures. I feel kind of famous here. I kind of like it. I think its fun for here. I wouldn’t want to really be famous. But sometimes it fun to pretend that you are.

I loved the train rides! It felt like I was going to Hogwarts! We would just pass lots of trees and on the first train there were 4 seats facing each other 2 on each side, almost like their own little compartment. Then on the 2^nd train the trolley lady passed by selling food. Laurissa and I lamented that there were no chocolate frogs that we could buy. The scenery we passed was just absolutely beautiful. But I’m glad it was a relatively short train ride (we rode a fast train, there are also slow trains that are cheaper). Our train ride to Beijing will be over 24 hours…that’s a long time to be on a train. That’s in 2 weeks, super excited!

On the way back while we were waiting for our next train home I had to pee really bad, bad enough that I was willing to use a squatter. I have successfully avoided it thus far. But that time of bliss had come to the end. It was…interesting. I think I want to try a few more to compare. For being squatters they were pretty modernized. There was  flush and there were sinks and soap. But no toilet paper. You just squat down and pee. Not much to it. Hey, when in China…do as the Asians.

Performing in CHINA!

I wish I had more time to type all this up, but there is just so much to do all the time. But these are some highlights from my week so far. 

CHURCH

I can’t believe I forgot to tell you about church! First of all, let me tell you this; there a bunch of people that came to China through ILP…probably over 100…not sure. But of all of those, only 4 boys (yes this is a female dominated thing is seems, but it doesn’t have to be!) and all 4 of them are in our school. BUT only 2 of them are active members BUT that means we can have the sacrament as soon as we get permission. I feel so lucky to be in this group! Know that we have the priesthood 2 doors down and that they could give us a blessing if we needed is actually a huge comfort. As first I was just thinking about being able to take the sacrament but realizing they could give blessings too. I love it. Jace is a recent convert from Canada and he is way sweet. Max is a super funny guy from Idaho who actually served his mission in part of Missouri (but not my mission). They are both superb  young men.

Okay back to the church part. Since it was fast Sunday we had a fast and testimony meeting. It was really good. It was our school and the school that is just across the street and then another school traveled 2 hours to come meet with us! I was way impressed. It was really good. We sang songs, bore testimony, and then got to visit afterwards. I’m not sure when we’ll be able to have the sacrament, we’re still waiting for permission. We might be going to stake conference here in a couple weekends which I think will be sweet! But not this weekend since we’re performing in China. Yeah, you read that right. I’m PERFORMING IN CHINA. Super stoked.

PERFORMING IN CHINA

So the first full day we were here our foreign coordinators told us that there was a talent show next weekend and we needed to get 3 acts together. The twins in our group are borrowing my ukulele to play and sing a song. Max, one of the guys is salsa dancing with 3 girls from the other school, it’s pretty great. There are a couple songs and skits from the other group. Darci, Laurissa, Ashley, Jace and I are ballet dancing to the heart will go on song from titanic and we break into rap in the middle. Its pretty amazing. We lift Jace in the air and everything. It’s pretty legit. I hope someone gets a good recording I can put on here or something. But yeah. We leave tomorrow. It will be a 12-15 hour journey to get there and we will be there all weekend. But the awesome part is I’M PERFOMRING IN CHINA!! I don’t know if you caught on yet that I’m performing in China. Also, I’m pretty excited.  

KUNG FU

Yes, I went to a Kung Fu class. Yes, I am a Kung Fu master. Yes, I sing Mulan songs in my head pretty much the whole time. We started by running around and then doing all these stretches. Then our teacher (his name is Spring, not like the season but the water, his Chinese name is something about water so he picked it) taught us the moves. It was so fun. It reminded me of the beginning of the Mulan 2 movie… “like a rock, ha, ha, we must be strong, ha, ha, hi-ya”…because we say “ha” all the time.  I love it, it makes me feel so legit. We do it outside on this basketball court. Chinese people stop and watch us sometimes. Its kinda funny. I kind of love it here.

There is more I wish to tell you all, alas, I REALLY need to go to bed because I keep staying up late which is no bueno! So goodnight!