March 19, 2016

March 19, 2016

My group went back to the park near our school. It's so pretty and has an amazing pagoda that we hiked up to. We took a moped taxi, which was really fun! The driving here in absolutely crazy, and there is an obsessive amount of honking. One of My roommates and I discovered this great bakery near the supermarket-amazing cream puffs and other desserts! I bought a mango from a vendor near our apartment; they put a spicy seasoning on it that tasted pretty good. The people love to take photos of us. They try to be sneaky about it, but it's pretty obvious.

I love China so much! And my students are the cutest things ever! I can get some of my babies, the 2 year olds, to speak in complete sentences! One of the babies, Lucas, used to cry every time the US teachers would come into the classroom, but one day we came and he was so happy and smiley and now I can get him to say a couple words!

We had our first vacation and we went to Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong, which is the province we live in! It was so fun the first day we went to the zoo, and I was so happy ( I love animals in case anyone didn't know that.) There were tons of monkeys, and tigers! We watched them feed the tigers. They would dangle the meat in front of the Tigers and they would jump for it. We went on this safari at the park and got to see a lot of animals including lions and tigers and bears (oh my!). There were giraffes, zebras, rhinos, and elephants! The next day we went to two temples that Lexie would have loved ( In case you didn't know this Lex, China is very Buddhist). We got invited into one of their prayers. We were walking around and chanting, later we realized that it was Buddha's name! Then we went to the beautiful memorial park, and to a subway (the American sandwich shop) and took the actual subway back to our hotel. The last day we went to a beautiful park where we just walked around in the rain and saw really cool statues. There was a river where you could take a boat down, and a bamboo forest! This weekend 3/19-3/20 went to a church activity. The church paid for our transportation since it was a few hours away. We played a bunch of games and there was one where I got pranked 😐 So in the game the judges (I was one of them) leave the room and then the others decide on who has the loudest scream, the judges come back in and pick who had the loudest scream. Then we got switched out for other judges, I was then picked to be the loudest screamer. When it was time for everyone to scream.... Only I screamed. It was embarrassing 😱 then we got pizza and then we were given a chance to get a blessing, which I did. It was such an amazing experience! After dinner we went to the conference, which was 2 hours, then we had ice cream after! There was a member and his family that live right next to the hotel we were staying at so when some of us went to check in three of us went with him and his daughter to their apartment. His wife was super cute! She made us popcorn and gave us chocolate, iced water (this is rare in China, all the water here is warm) and we watched an episode of Doctor Who. I've been having so much fun! If anyone has any questions about my experience, I'm able to text (425-502-2889) and my email is gymnastgirl2014@gmail.com , I would love to hear from you guys!