Birthday Cubed and Shanghai Squared

Things have been so crazy that I haven't had time to give an update on Shanghai or my amazing weekend!
Friday was Josh's birthday. He was turning 19! His school was taking us all to dinner and buying him a cake. I was super excited for the party! I ended up going to another birthday party that day. In China they celebrate a baby's one month birthday. Orange took us to her nephew's party. She told us that we would be getting steamed buns. Alyssa and I were both picturing a small gathering of ladies cooing over a baby. Oh no. We went to a fancy hotel and had a fifty course meal. There was also fifty million people there. I had another opportunity to eat the poisonous fish that everyone seems to just love and makes you eat tons of it even though you really just want to vomit. It was a lot of fun though. Lots of drunk people coming over to toast the white people. One of the drunker guys that came over to toast made me laugh super hard, just because of his unique bald spot. It was a perfect circle in the middle of his head. The unique part is that hair was surrounding every side of the bald spot. It was awesome.

Josh's party was even more fun! Orange took the three of us to a restaurant and we got a private room. Orange ordered the most amazing food. My favorite was a dish of chicken that tasted and looked like orange chicken in America. That plate of food got cleaned up the best. The cake was my favorite part. Oh man just thinking about it still makes me drool a little bit. It was a white cake with layers of the pudding stuff they seem to really like in China and whip cream. On the outside was chocolate like you would find on an eclair and almonds. I had two slices. They were pretty little though. Birthdays in China are very different from American birthdays. We ate cake first. I kind of thought that was weird but then I started wondering why don't we do that in America? I never have room for dessert in America but in China I did. It was brilliant! Also, we had traditional Chinese cake and I use the term cake loosely. Mostly I just say cake because that's what they say because it in no way, shape or form resembles cake. Basically it's scrambled eggs except not really very scrambled. It's egg. Very good egg, it was delicious, but not what I would consider cake.

We left early Saturday morning for Shanghai and got there around noon. There was basically no sight seeing that went on the past weekend because we went for a District Conference and that took most of the time we were there. We finished up with meetings around 5:30 and the lady that was housing Alyssa, Josh and I sent her driver (Does that tell you anything about the people we stayed with?) to pick us up. Her and her daughter actually ended up coming with to meet us. Her name is Norma, and I have to admit with a name like Norma I was expecting an older woman and her husband. Norma was actually younger than I expected and had 3 younger kids. She was also Hispanic and made us tacos and Mexican rice for dinner. The tacos were great and so was the rice but I've had A LOT of rice so that one didn't satisfy as much. Her house was amazing. Four floors and everything had been brought from America. I flushed toilet paper AND I was able to rinse my toothbrush with tap water. It was so weird. The mattresses were also from America and so they were a lot softer than what I've been sleeping on. I actually didn't enjoy that one as much. It was hard to roll over!

They had an 18 year old boy from Africa living with them doing an internship in China. He was very nice and took us out that night to look around. We came back to Norma's house and finished up the night by watching Madagascar and eating popcorn. And it was actually American popcorn! It tasted amazing!
Sunday was great and everything went lovely until the last meeting went long and we had to hurry to the train station to make it back in time to catch the last bus to Yangzhong. The subway took us too long so we had to take a G train instead of a K train to make it back in time. The nice thing about this was a K train takes 3 hours and a G train takes an hour and a half. The not so nice thing, a K train is 38 yuan and a G train is 110 yuan. We were able to make it back in time to catch a bus and made it back safe. Poor Rick and Sarah, the married couple living in Yangzhong, did not though. They just barely missed the bus after taking a G train and had to catch a taxi. The bus is 17 yuan and a taxi was 150 yuan. That was an expensive weekend for them.
Andy's birthday was on Tuesday and our school did dinner and bought a cake for him as well. That dinner wasn't super good. Lots of weird foods I didn't really enjoy but the cake tasted amazing. This one had lots of fruits on top and also had chocolate. There were a ton of people at Andy's party, most of whom we didn't actually know. There was one guy that came over to talk to me that I actually did know, what I don't know is why he was there. It was the director of the education department from the high school that I went and visited a few weeks ago. He came over a toasted me and then sent people to get me to come to his table for more toasts and lots of handshakes. He's a funny guy.

After dinner some of the random guys at the party took the 6 foreigners and two teachers from our school to KTV (Karaoke Television, basically the cool thing to do in China. They have KTV places EVERYWHERE!). They opened KTV with my special friend, the director of education, doing Taichi to a song while another guy sang. Even drunk this man had amazing balance and it was awesome to watch him do Taichi. We sang for a long time and it was a ton of fun. I didn't have much of a voice afterwards but it was worth it!

This next week is a holiday so I get Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off from school. I got Thursday off special too. Tomorrow morning I'm heading to Southern China to a city called Guilin. It's a 19 hour train ride there but it will be so worth it.

One of the Dullest Weeks in China

I was really excited about my lesson this week. I was teaching about music genres. I had a scene from "Tangled" to watch, music videos and music to listen to. Almost all of my classes went really well! They went crazy over "Tangled", they were laughing so hard. I just showed them the scene in the village where people are dancing and such. They really got a kick out of it. I found out that the kids in my classes are super talented too! In one class we spent most of the time listening to people sing songs. They were pretty good too! One boy came to the front of the class and danced to Michael Jackson. He had the MJ moves down pat! After that class the boy that danced took me to the dancing room to show me some other moves. That didn't last too long because there was an actual dance class taking place there. The teachers let me stay and watch and it was pretty cool. Chinese traditional dances are way awesome! The had a fan in one hand and a silk scarf in the other as they were dancing. It was beautiful!
Orange taught the four of us how to make dumplings on Wednesday. I'm super excited about that because dumplings are my favorite food here so I'm so excited to be able to make them when I have to leave China to go back to the States. It was actually fairly easy. I don't mean to brag or anything but...I was the best at folding the dumplings (Besides Orange of course). Josh's dumplings were...unique to say the least. Orange looked over at them once and said "Josh! Are you making a flower or dumplings?!" His dumplings really were awesome. Orange took Alyssa and I to the market to buy the ingredients for the dumplings. Markets here are not like anything I've ever really seen before. I saw more inside organs than I ever really wanted to see. Alyssa recently acquired two turtles, Azure and Sheldon (Yes, we might be watching too much Big Bang). While at the market she decided to get some food for them, they supposedly will eat shrimp. We went to the lady selling shrimp and why yes, they were very alive still. The lady picked up a couple and just plopped them still squirming into Alyssa's outstretched hand. One of them jumped right out of her palm. Then the lady asked if she wanted a bag. Surprise, surprise, Alyssa got a bag.
I went for another run this week. There was one guy that was shuffling around the path. One time we crossed paths on the side closer to my school. He pointed at the school and I told him that yes I was an English teacher there (I was pretty proud because I did so in Chinese). The only difficulty was I was nearing the end of my run and was out of breath so it came out rather chopped. Afterwards the man came to talk to me while I was stretching and we used my sorry Chinese and lots of sign language to communicate that I am American, the school is not paying me money to teach, and that my name is Arielle. I also said I don't understand and I don't know and sorry a lot. The really weird thing I've come across in China is that even when the Chinese figure out that you can't really communicate with them in Chinese they still insist on talking to you. Really I don't know how many times I say I don't know and I don't understand. The worst is when they refuse to do any sort of acting out and just start speaking in Chinese really fast. On the way home I didn't put my jacket back on because I was hot and didn't want it. The security guards pantomimed me being cold and I pantomimed me running and being really hot. They started laughing really hard. I love my security guards. They're so cheerful and also have a big"Herrlllo!" for me when I pass by. Then I ran into one of the lunch ladies who gasped at me wearing so little clothes at the end of March (Really if the Chinese came to America and saw what people were wearing at this time of year they would all die of heart attacks). I pantomimed again that I had been running but that wasn't good enough for her. She forced me back into my jacket. That was great. :)
It was a pretty boring week by China standards but this weekend should be exciting! Josh's birthday is tomorrow and the school is buying cake and we're going out to dinner. There's also a district conference in Shanghai this weekend so back to Shanghai I go!

A Fishy Weekend

From Arielle's Mom: I had to add this picture. It really should have gone on the last blog post but it didn't come through and I didn't get it from Arielle until later! Sorry!

This was the first weekend I'd stayed in Yangzhong and no one had offered to feed me. It was a little depressing and I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself. So I was really happy when Joan came and sat with Andy and I at lunch and invited me to go and visit a different high school in Yangzhong with her. I was all for that so at one o'clock sharp a car from the other school picked us up and away we went! The guy driving the car was the Director of the Education Department and he took me to see some sites along the Yangtze River before going to the school. They were pretty cool and we took lots of pictures of the white girl standing by the river. Little did I know that this was just the beginning of the picture taking.

We got to the school and the instant I stepped out of the car I could hear the squealing and see the students gathering all around me. Joan told me to go say hi to some and I went over to a group of girls to talk to them. Next thing I knew Joan was gone and I was standing in line with the girls for instructions for gym. The girl that had dragged me over there leaned to me and whispered "Shh! He won't notice!" I was feeling a little skeptical about this and was thinking to myself "One of these things is not like the other!" This school is a lot less strict than my school so the gym teacher okayed the students to just walk around the track with me. Little bit of background information: The school I teach at is the number 1 high school in Yangzhong. Joan told me later that the school she had taken me to was the last ranked school in Yangzhong and that the students there are "rubbish" (as she so eloquently put it). The kids at my school will all go to university while only a few of the kids at that school will go on. Most of them will go straight to their jobs. I could tell that the two schools are different just from walking around the track with them. Their English was not nearly as good as my students who are only in Grade 1. I had lots of people following me taking pictures on their phones. People would grab me and face me towards the phone that they wanted me to look at. This was another difference, my students aren't allowed to have cell phones at school and everyone follows that rule.

I found Joan a little later but she ditched me again and I got dragged to class by some students. Here was another big difference between schools. All my classes have 56 students in them, the classroom I got dragged to had no more than 20 students. They sat me down in an empty chair and waited for the teacher to come to surprise her. Boy was she surprised! Then two other teachers came in and dragged me to their classes to show me off to their students. The first class just asked me questions and that was normal. Where are you from? Do you like China? How long will you be here? Do you like Chinese food? etc. The second class was a little different though. One girl ran up to the front and hugged me really tight then stuck out her hand for a handshake. A few other students would randomly come up and hug me during question and answer. That was kind of a bizarre feeling. The most bizarre thing though is when they said some things in Chinese and then the whole class erupted and rushed at me with papers and pens. I had no idea what was going on and I couldn't see anything through the mob of Chinese kids and papers. I wrote my name more times than I have in my entire life. Sometimes after I would write my name they would grab me and kiss my cheek. That was exciting and I'd never had that one happen before. Then they wanted me to sing a song so I sang Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree because it had hand actions.
After being a big celebrity in the classroom one of the teachers returned me to the class that I had first come from, this didn't really help me because I still had no idea where Joan was. I could tell again the difference between this school and mine because the students were watching a TV show and their school got out at 3 in the afternoon and they didn't have school all weekend like my students do. I was sat down in a desk and the students tried their best to talk to me. They were all pretty cute and I had a good time with them even if I was super lost. Eventually three boys from this class took me to the office that Joan was at. I felt a little less lost then. Joan told me that the school was going to take me to dinner that night and we were having special fish. I wasn't super excited about the fish because supposedly if it's not cooked properly it's poisonous. Great.
Dinner was...different. I've mentioned before that dinner is a time for the Chinese to drink and get drunk and that it doesn't take much for them to become drunk. They gave me orange juice after a little fight about me drinking whatever kind of alcohol they were drinking. It didn't take long before everyone at the table except me and two other ladies not drinking alcohol were very drunk. They kept toasting me and the toasts got more and more ridiculous as the dinner progressed. They tried to say them in English but lots of times I had no idea what they were saying. One guy began his toast by saying "Beautiful girl!" and I have no idea what he said after that.
I sat next to the principal chair which isn't necessarily a good thing. This means that he would dish my food. The first hot dish they brought out was a large platter of fish and the guy in the principal chair made sure I got my fair share of it. Yummy. I don't normally care for fish but this wasn't too bad actually. It was quite fresh. I was worried after he'd dished up the first time but he never dished my food again for which I was grateful. Joan made sure I got lots of the special fish though. She kept saying "It's so expensive. Marie cannot have this fish when she in China. Alyssa cannot have this fish. You are lucky!" and as she would say this she'd spoon more on my plate. I was actually thinking that Alyssa and Marie were the lucky ones. I liked having the opportunity to try it but that was it.  One time Joan served me the entire tail of the special fish and it just flopped around in my bowl and was nasty. Dinner was a bit of a let down because they really just had plates of fish. I like fish more in China but it's still not my favorite thing. Then they brought the rice out and I thought I could fill the empty spots in my stomach with it but Joan dished it up in my bowl with fish juice so even my rice tasted like fish! Gross.
I was very anxious to leave this party. Everyone would point at me say stuff in Chinese and then everyone there would laugh. This happened more frequently the drunker they became. Finally I told Joan I was leaving and she had one of the teachers give us a ride back to school. Luckily it was one of the teachers that didn't drink during dinner. As we were leaving one of the drunker guys that cracked the most jokes about me chased after us and gave me the weirdest hug ever. He just kind of wrapped his arms in the space around my shoulders. It was weird. Dinner was pretty awful and I went straight to bed feeling absolutely exhausted. Being a celebrity will do that to you.

Saturday was a good day though. Joan invited us to her house to use her ping pong machine. It was awesome! Josh was the best at it and after a while Joan took the machine down and Alyssa and I played Josh. He still killed us. I had to use the bathroom while we were there and had a moment of confusion. I couldn't find where to put the toilet paper! In China, you don't flush toilet paper. Ever. That was a really hard habit for me to break. We all kind of looked around and couldn't figure it out! Eventually we determined that we probably were supposed to flush it! This was crazy and I had a hard time doing it. You know you've been in China too long when you can't figure out where to put your toilet paper.
After playing ping pong for a while Joan took us to a badminton club. A random Chinese guy called me over to play with him and I was absolutely humiliated because I've never really played badminton before and it was obvious. I spent five minutes trying to serve the stupid birdie over the net. Once we got things going I did pretty good, we had a couple of good rallies. He had me switch and play with another guy and I actually scored two points with that guy!
Josh was having dinner with Lily that night so Alyssa and I went to a little restaurant to grab some dinner. After dinner we bought a slice of strawberry cake to share. We were so upset about sharing because it was the best cake either of us had eaten since coming to China. It was the best cake ever!
Sunday we went to the park for a little bit to write in our journals. We didn't get a ton written because people kept coming over to look at the Americans. We went and  bought what the Chinese call 'pancakes' for dinner. This was an awesome experience. They make pancakes by putting dough in an extremely hot barrel with their bare hands to cook them. They just stick them right to the side! They tasted amazing!

It was a very exciting weekend and lots of fun!

Sunshine On My Shoulders Makes Me Happy

This week has probably been one of my favorites since coming to China. (Side note from Arielle's mom, I think she has said this before!) Mostly because the sun finally decided to show it's beautiful face and I was able to take some layers off for a few days! What a great way to lose 20 pounds fast.
Since Saturday is St. Patrick's Day I decided to do my lesson on that this week. I had to focus on the wearing green and pinching and such because St. Patrick was a religious figure and I can't talk about religion but they seemed to like it nevertheless. Not a single one of my classes had ever heard of the holiday before but that wasn't much of a surprise. It's not a huge holiday in the Western area either, a huge holiday to me means you get school off. They were a little confused about the green though. They didn't like the answer "I don't know why green. Just accept it okay?" And they didn't know where Ireland was (Well I'm sure they do just not by the English name) and I could not find a good map online, they were all blurry. St. Patrick was sold as a slave when he was 16. I had to explain to them what a slave was and that was pretty fun. I would pick one kid in the class and tell them that they were my slave and must do everything I tell them to do. Some of the kids I would take one of their many books and throw it on the floor and have them pick it up multiple times. One of the boys didn't find that too funny so he put his hand on top of his book to stop me. I went for another pile but he was quicker than me. He wouldn't be a good slave. One girl I had stand in random spots of the room and jump. It was pretty funny.
I did a little listening exercise with them. I wrote a short little blurb about a St. Patrick's Day where I remember my mom dying our milk green and my sisters and I leaving a trap for a leprechaun but ended up getting chocolate instead. I brought a big bag of individually wrapped Starbursts to motivate them to give me answers and participate in class. That did the trick. In one of my classes I gave a boy a piece of candy for giving the right answer and the whole class started yelling protests. "Why did he get candy?!" They were very serious about the candy it was hilarious.
After talking about St. Patrick's Day we played a game called telephone. In telephone one person whispers a phrase to another person and that person whispers it to the next person and so on and so forth until you reach the last person. The last person would then say what they heard and you would see if it matched up with what was originally said. I started it and then I would pick students to start it and take their seat. I liked doing this because then I could talk to the students sitting around me and get to know them better. It was also funny to watch them panic. I was asking this boy something and he turned to his friend muttering rapid Chinese. His friend gets his notebook and shows it to me. On it he has written 'I don't understand'. I kept talking to the boy and he would give me little answers but never look right at me. His friend pulled out the notebook again and this time he had written 'He doesn't understand'. It's funny how nervous I make them because really there's 56 of them and only one of me! I'm just as nervous as they are.
In all of my classes but one the students would start the phrase I love you. The Chinese are very immature so this caused quite a bit of chaos. Especially when a girl had to whisper to a boy. My favorite moment though is when I had to say it to a boy. I turned gave him a flirtatious smile and said "I looooove you!" The entire class went wild and he started blushing like mad! The last person with the I love you one would always be a boy for some reason. So the boy would always blush when they had to tell me I love you. They're so cute. My last class had apparently heard what was happening in class that day because one of the boys stood up and said "She is going to make us say I love you!" Which was funny because I never started the I love you one, I just made them keep going. I've mentioned this boy before, he's one of my favorites because he makes me laugh all the time. In my first class he told me he didn't think any of the girls in his class were cute and disagreed with me when I said that I thought there were lots of cute girls in his class. After he said that I went to him and pointed to the boy sitting next to him and asked "What? You don't love him?" He said "Oh yes I do but some of us would have to say it to a girl!" As if that was the most scandalous thing they've ever done, which it probably is now that I think about it. I nodded my understanding and started walking away but I just couldn't let this moment go. So I stopped at the desk of a girl and asked this boy "You don't love her?" He looked like a deer in the headlights. Oh man it was so funny!
Andy and I co teach an English Corner class. It's a sort of extracurricular class full of 50 girls and 2  boys. This week the weather was so beautiful that we decided to go outside. We played a couple games and then finished with Upset the Fruit Basket, it seems to be a favorite with them. The boys ditched out on class so we just had girls. One of the girls that was it called out "I like people who are beautiful" they all kind of looked at me and nobody ran. So I yelled "You are all beautiful now go!" and still nobody ran. The Chinese really have no sense of self worth and it makes me so sad. Every achievment they receive means nothing because they could have done better. Nobody ever shows pride in anything. They have all been building up my self esteem even though they have none. It was then that I decided that is how I will make a difference for my students. I will let them know how special they are and just how much it they mean to me.
Alyssa's classes went pretty good this week. Well, all except the first class. That one went horrible. We told the kids that if they were good we would go outside and play a game. I know they understood because we had a Chinese teacher tell it to them in Chinese as well! They were really good until the Chinese teacher left the room. I have never seen kids act up so quickly. It was horrible. By the end Alyssa was almost in tears and I was feeling so grateful that I teach high school. Orange could tell that Alyssa was really upset so she was at the next two classes we taught. Both classes were good and we were able to take them outside to play cat cat dog again. One of the little girls who was standing next to me reached up into my pocket and pulled out my camera. They got so excited to see my camera and that ended the game for a few minutes. You can't tell in the picture but really sometimes they are monsters!

Tuesday Josh, Alyssa and I found the most amazing park right by their school. It had a large pond, a pagoda and lots of other cool Chinese things. We messed around for a bit taking pictures. The best part is when Josh decided to hang off the bridge over the rivery thing. He always keeps us on our toes!

Alyssa decided to try and ride on the back of my bike. All the Chinese do it and I've done it before so we decided to have a go. Yeah, that didn't go well. It was really pressuring though having all the Chinese people at the park staring at us!
Spring, Apple and Sheep took Josh, Andy and me to dinner on Tuesday night. Apple asked me if I wanted it hot and silly me I thought she meant temperature. Nope. What she meant was do I want it spicy. I thought that asking if I wanted it hot was a dumb question to be asking in China, especially coming from a Chinese girl. That was an unpleasant surprise. I was doing pretty good until I bit into something that was filled with hot (temperature) liquid. I was trying to cool my already on fire mouth down when some of the liquid went up my nose. Spicy and hot liquid up one's nose is not a pleasant experience. I thought I was going to die. My eyes were just streaming and my nose was screaming and it was horrible. Plus, everyone was staring at me because I'm white. That doesn't help matters.
Wednesday morning was so beautiful that I decided to get up and go for a run. It was a beautiful day and I just wore a t-shirt with running pants. I felt really silly because all the Chinese people I passed on the track had on gloves and snow pants and coats. A couple of them gave me the thumbs up as I passed. I'm not sure if that was a hello or a "You're doing great! Keep it up!" Alyssa thinks it was a "Put on more layers!!"
Wednesday night Alyssa, Sarah and I got together for Visiting Teaching. We went out to dinner at a cute restaurant and then picked up some dessert and went back to Alyssa's to talk. Sarah and I both got something suspicious. It was behind the counter and sometimes they are really good and as yummy as they look and sometimes they're okay and not as yummy as they look. One that I tried looked like pudding with a strawberry syrup. It turned out to be who knows what instead of pudding with a jello on top. Weird but pretty tasty. That night Sarah and I found one that looked like Chocolate pudding with a giant thing of whipped cream on top. We were really worried that it was all going to be the jello stuff. We stared for a long time and tried shaking the counter to see if it jiggled. Eventually we both got one. Best decision ever. The thing that I thought was going to be a cherry on top wasn't, it was the feared jello stuff, but it was whipped cream with a chocolate mousse kind and a white cake in the middle. Delicious! And worth the debate.

The First Sunburn of the Year

After my dull week of no classes I was really looking forward to the weekend. On Saturday was the ward Relief Society Birthday social and not only were they feeding us dinner but they were providing us with housing as well! Our plan was to leave Saturday at 11:00 and spend some time in Zhenjiang before heading over to Nanjing for the social.
Friday afternoon I went over to help Alyssa with her last class. She'd had one class that morning and it went horrible because her Chinese teacher was away at a conference. Trying to teach over 50 little Chinese kids who don't understand you without a Chinese teacher to keep them in line is impossible. There wasn't a ton I could do since I don't speak Chinese either but I went for moral support all the same.
I went back to my school for dinner and ate my noodles with the gym teacher, Joan, and the teacher of the student Andy and I talked with on Friday, Jane. Little background for this story: I have a little problem. A lot of times I don't really know what the Chinese are talking about even when they're speaking in English. Often I'll just agree with them and hope I didn't just volunteer to give them a kidney or something (Which  hasn't happened so far). That night at dinner I was telling Jane and Joan that I missed cooking and that there wasn't anywhere for me to cook. Joan told me she had stuff in her apartment and that I was more than welcome to come and use it sometimes. She told me that after dinner she'd take me to her apartment (She has a little apartment at the school) and would show it to me. Here's where the miscommunication comes in. She took me to her apartment and starts handing me pots, pans, bowls and the little hot plate burner thingy they cook things on and then starts leaving the apartment. We then go to my apartment and drop everything off. I guess she was actually telling me that she would give me all this stuff, not that I could use it at her place sometimes. That was a pleasant surprise. So I can now cook in my apartment which is great!
Joan took me to her house later that night, and she is the first Chinese person I've visited that actually has a house. Most Chinese live in apartments and only the really rich ones live in houses. It was very obvious that Joan is rich. Her house was three stories and absolutely beautiful! She told me that I was her daughter and then gave me treats for my trip to Nanjing and fed me rice balls.
Saturday Alyssa, Josh, Rick, Sarah and I took the bus to Zhenjiang where we were planning on taking the train to Nanjing. On the way there Josh and Alyssa realized they'd forgotten their passports which is a huge problem. As of the Spring Festival in China you can no longer catch trains without a passport, they put your passport number on the train ticket. We decided that we wanted to stick together so Rick, Sarah and I went on the bus with them. It was an hour and half bus ride on a city bus. We got the last seats thank heavens! We didn't stay in Zhenjiang because we wanted to make sure we got to Nanjing in time and buses aren't exactly the most reliable mode of transportation.
We had no idea where to get off and ended up just getting off where everyone else did and decided to go right. We took out a phrase book and started pointing to the phrase "Where is the subway station?" to any passerby. One of the passerbys we asked randomly shouted out 97. We had no idea what she was referring to, we thought maybe it was a bus number but we couldn't even find a bus station let alone the metro. We walked for a really long time trying to find the subway station and finally we saw a building that Alyssa was sure was the train station that had buses and a subway station. We walked for another long time to get to the building just to see that it was abandoned. We started joking that the girl that shouted 97 was saying 97 because the station had been closed since 1997. We asked another passerby about the station and were informed that there was no metro station around. We were standing around trying to decide what to do when we saw a 44 bus drive by. The 44 bus takes you to the apartment where our China Horizons friends were living so naturally we chased it trying to find the stop. We eventually found it and got on and even got off at the right stop!
We should have realized it couldn't be that easy. We called Brian to tell him to come and get us (Their apartments are really strict about visitors. You have to be with the person and sign in and everything). We were saddened to hear that he and the people from Zhenjiang weren't around, but they gave us instructions on how to meet up with them. We got back on the 44 bus and were told to get off at the Confucious temple. We'd know it was the temple because there were old buildings and a dragon. Great instructions for China right? Needless to say we did not get off at the right stop. We were then told that the temple was like an open market and there would be lots of people. Still not good instructions, this is China after all. We got back on the 44 bus (The yuan I used to pay for the bus was a 1997 coin and we made another joke about the girl shouting 97. We never did figure out why she shouted 97). We were actually really lucky that we got on and that the Chinese have no sense of personal space and don't mind being elbowed or pushed when you're trying to get on a bus (Really when I come back to America people are going to think I'm really rude). There wasn't room for us to get in at the front door so we handed the people by the door our money to put in and booked it to the back doors where there still wasn't any room but we've been in China long enough that we were able to make room. That was the longest bus ride ever. My favorite part was when this old fat Chinese women got on and decided to use me as a leaning post. Her entire body was leaning on me while I held onto the pole for dear life. Plus side? She smelled nice, like perfume.

By this time it was 5:00 and we decided that we really ought to try and figure out how to get to the church so we were semi on time. We got off at the next stop which turned out to be the stop we were told to get off at the whole time. We tried to meet up with our friends again (Mostly because they knew for sure how to get to church and we were only mostly sure) but we decided that we better just take off. We said good bye to the men and Alyssa, Sarah and I took off following the metro signs. We thought since there were signs that it would be close by. Oh no. At 5:56 we bought our subway tickets. Needless to say we were late for dinner which started at 6:00. We thought we were staying at the hotel to eat but it turned out that everyone was waiting for us to go eat at a restaurant and we were just using the hotel as a meeting point.
We went to a really yummy restaurant that was supposedly French. I got pasta because that's what I miss the most and a banana split. The pasta was amazing! It was mushroom and ham in a rose sauce. Not sure what the rose sauce was but it sure tasted good. I used my fork to make sure I didn't even leave any sauce behind. The banana split was amazing as well. A scoop of chocolate ice cream and a scoop of vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup a banana, two orange slices, little chunks of watermelon at the bottom and an umbrella to top it off. Ice cream coated watermelon is actually really good! Then we found out that the RS Presidency had brought cheesecake so I ended up having three slices of that (Don't judge. The Chinese don't like sweet things so I never get anything sweet. All the other China Horizon girls were scarfing it down as much as I was). The only thing that was French about the restaurant was the portion sizes. They were very small. Everything else was obviously Chinese such as the way they serve the food. In America when you go to a restaurant they bring everyone's food out at the same time. This is not true in China. They bring out food as it is ready. So I watched lots of people devour their meals (And I was super hungry. Being lost all day will do that to you) before I received mine. Four of us ordered the same thing but three of us got it at the same time and the last girl got her's about the same time I got my banana split. We ordered at around 6:30 and left about the time everyone had gotten their meals which was 9:30. Two of the ladies took their meals home without getting to eat any of it at all.

The restaurant had forks. It was very obvious that all of us had been living in China for a long time because of the way we used our forks. In China you don't put your mouth on your chopsticks because meals are often community, which means they put the food on the table and you just eat up. So you use your teeth to pull the food into your mouth. I started laughing at myself because I wasn't putting my mouth on my fork and was just using my teeth to pull. Then I looked around me and realized everyone else was doing the exact same thing. I felt better because everyone else was doing it. That was a you know you've been in China too long moment for me.
The lady's husband that was going to house us got really sick and so they turned us out. I ended up staying with Wayne and Dora Johnson, they had a spare bedroom. They were both super nice and we stayed up late talking. When I was getting ready for bed that night I discovered something really amazing! Well, let me back up a little bit. The whole weekend was really sunny and warm. When I was riding my bike to the bus station to meet everyone I was wishing that I had one less layer it was so nice and warm. So that night I realized I had sunburned! It wasn't anything huge, my face was just a little red and hot and by the next morning you couldn't really tell but I was still excited. Spring is coming to China! The next morning I had the most wonderful surprise. The Johnson's had waffles! I had some with strawberry jam and oh boy was it so delicious. I don't remember waffles ever tasting so good!
After church we had a potluck and it was amazing as well! I had a ham sandwich, some fruit, crackers, a cinnamon roll and a slice of dark chocolate cake (Again with the don't judge thing. I haven't seen cinnamon rolls or dark chocolate cake in what feels like forever!). The sister that brought the cinnamon rolls needed to rinse out the tupperware but there was still frosting in it. She looked at the tupperware looked at a group of China Horizon girls standing together and brought it over to us. She didn't even have to say anything we all stuck our fingers in and began licking up the frosting. There was another you know you've been in China too long moment.
Rick, Sarah and I had decided that we were going to take the train back to Zhenjiang for sure (The train is 15 minutes. We only didn't take the train the other direction because we wanted to stick together). We also decided that we were going to try and get Alyssa and Josh on the train as well. Before anyone gets nervous about us breaking laws or anything in China let me just tell you it worked and no one seemed to care. The three of us bought tickets and then got in another line to buy two more tickets. They wouldn't let us buy tickets for the same train but we got two for the train leaving 15 minutes after the first one. Made it back to Zhenjiang with no problems. Then as we were buying bus tickets the bus that Alyssa, Rick and Sarah had purchased tickets for filled up right as I got to the counter to buy. So we had three tickets for 17:30 and two for 17:45. Rick and Sarah took the 17:45 and Josh, Alyssa and I took the 17:30.
We were only gone for a little more than 24 hours but we were all exhausted. I went home got ready for bed and ate cup of soup while watching "Persuasion". I had another been in China too long moment because after almost finishing my soup I realized that I've picked up a nasty Chinese habit. I slurp my soup. My family is going to make me eat in the other room if we ever have soup. By 8:30 I was in bed (Just as a sidenote I didn't actually go to sleep until 10. And the China Horizon people were comparing bedtimes at dinner and we all go to bed somewhere between 9:30 and 10). It was a fantastic weekend!

The Week Off

This week turned out to be full of surprises both good and bad. One day I'll stop being surprised by all the things that happen in China.
One of the teachers gave a big presentation at a convention that was going on this week. She ended up taking my Monday class which I was pretty bummed about. I already teach way less than I'd like and that meant I wouldn't have class again until Wednesday. But I understood why she wanted my class so I gave it to her. Tuesday came around, I went and helped Alyssa with her little demon children (But very very cute demon children who tend to be cuter outside the classroom than in). One of her classes we took outside to play duck duck goose. Well, actually cat cat dog because they knew what those animals were. We split into two groups which naturally turned out to be boys and girls. I took the girls and Alyssa got the boys. Trying to explain the rules of this simple game to Chinese children who barely speak any sort of English is very difficult. I finally got them to get in a circle and then they grabbed hands and starting running around me. Yeah that was weird. Eventually Orange came over and explained to them how to play the game. They loved it! They would giggle and scream and shout out names of people to pick. I loved it because sometimes they'd start yelling "Laoshi! Laoshi!" Which is teacher in Chinese and look at me and start giggling again. Tuesday afternoon Orange took the four of us to brush training. It was super dee duper hard! There's a lot more to writing with a brush than just drawing lines. I succeeded in drawing a couple straight lines and one character that means king. One day I want to do my name but I don't think I'm quite up to that one yet.

I went home for dinner and ate with one of the teachers I share an office with. She is super nice and apparently didn't think I ate enough for dinner because she took me to the bottom floor and got me fried chicken and a tasty bun filled with egg cream filling. During dinner she told me that my students would have exams all day Wednesday and Thursday so I wouldn't have to teach my classes. I don't know who I felt more sorry for. Myself because now I didn't get to teach like I wanted to, or my students who had exams for the next two days straight.
In the package my mom sent me was a special gift for Spring and Apple. She'd taken a picture of the three of us that I sent her and made cute scrapbook pages out of them for each of us. During dinner break I ran over to their classroom to see if they could come to my dormitory after class and pick it up. They weren't going to be able to make it but said they had time to go right now. We turned to go super quick and saw a man coming down the hall towards us, turns out this was their math teacher. Instead of going back to class and coming to get their gift later like I thought they would they asked their math teacher if they could run to my dormitory really quick. Well I'm assuming that's what happened, it all occurred in Chinese so I really can't be sure. He stared at me for a few seconds and gave me kind of a weird look and I just stood there pretending like I knew what was going on and that this wasn't a really awkward situation. He eventually told them they could come with me and we ran really quick to get it. I hope I never run into this math teacher ever again. Apple and Spring really liked the gift so that kind of made up for the awkward situation they put me in.
Wednesday Orange invited me to their school for a special ceremony. They'd picked the top ten teachers from the primary school and they were giving them awards. Lots of representatives from Yangzhong were going to be there. It was pretty boring for me though because I don't speak Chinese and they didn't use any of the words I know. Which isn't surprising since I mostly know foods...They had movies for each of the teachers and those were pretty fun to watch. Turns out it's more fun to make up what's going on in movies than actually to know what's going on.
The ceremony went long so I wasn't able to make it back to my place in time for dinner. Alyssa and I decided to go to our favorite restaurant and get dumplings and eggplant (There are lots of foods that I love in China that I would never eat in America. Eggplant is one of them). We'd met up with all the foreign teachers in Yangzhong Monday night at this restaurant for a little unofficial FHE but it's so delicious that we go there lots. We normally sit at a large round table with the spinning top but since it was just the two of us we sat at one of the small four seater tables. While we were eating a group of men came in. They'd been there on Monday when we ate and they acted out to us that they remembered seeing us. One of the guys spoke VERY little English (Mostly he'd just shout Hello). They went and sat at our usual table and after a few minutes gestured that they wanted us to come sit with them. In America we would have asked for boxes gotten the check and booked it out of the restaurant never to return without a man. In China we picked up our dishes and moved to their table. Dinner in China is a very social event and there is lots of toasting that goes on, mostly because these guys were drinking alcohol. They offered us their drink and when we refused offered us every other kind of alcohol the restaurant provided. They finally settled on aloe milk (Sounds disgusting right? That's for sunburns not consuming as a beverage. It's actually super delicious, I'd had it before at hot pot with Cassy and a fine substitute for alcohol). They really liked spicy food and made us try every dish they ordered. They also really liked green stuff which I can only force down with rice and we were out of rice. I had one bite of everything and then called it good. They'd ordered kung pao chicken which was super tasty and I had more than one bite of that. The Chinese have a very low tolerance for alcohol and they were drinking really strong stuff. When one of the guys started trying to take his clothes off (Which wasn't that huge of a deal considering everyone has fifty layers on) we decided it was time to head out of there. They ended up paying for our meal which was fantastic! (Side note from Arielle's mom: Arielle is VERY CHEAP!)
On Thursday Alyssa called to say the teachers at her school were having a little party where they would sing and dance and wanted to know if we wanted to come. The plus side? Dinner was served afterwards. I was really excited about it until Alyssa rounded the corner holding a flute and said that the school wanted me to perform a song. Panic Mode!! Every song I knew went flying out of my head, I was lucky I remembered how to even hold the flute I was so shocked. We went to Orange's office and found a simple version of Fur Elise to play. Unfortunately (Or fortunately I haven't quite decided yet) the Internet wasn't working very well and all the copies we printed were blurry and not playable. I told them next time I'd come better prepared, so prepared that I'd know what activities to skip. They had a drawing at the party and I ended up winning a set of headphones. I got my picture taken and everything! It was exciting. The most exciting part is I was able to figure out that they'd called my number in Chinese before Orange translated it into English. They wanted Alyssa and I to sing a song but they didn't really have songs in English. I was actually a little bummed about that one. Singing with someone else would have been fun, playing my flute was a more scary ordeal. Instead of us singing Orange's son Starling sang Twinkle Twinkle in Chinese. It was so adorable!

 Thursday was International Women's Day and Alyssa's school gave her a cake. We got rid of the boys and devoured the delicious goodness. It was a white cake with whip cream frosting, fruit on the top and a banana pudding in the middle. The best part of the cake? I guess the Chinese eat cake with chopsticks. It was pretty fun actually. One of the trickier things I've eaten with chopsticks but fun all the same.

One of the third year students at my school made it past the first part of the exam for Tsinghua University the number one university in China. It's a huge honor for the school and for the student. Last year not one of the students at the school made it this far. When Cassy was telling me about it she said this school is like the Harvard of America. The next exam was an oral exam and the high school suspected that the people giving the oral English exam would be foreigners so they wanted her to talk to Andy and I so she would be used to talking to foreigners. On Friday morning we met with her in the Teacher's Reading Room. The school provided us with questions that the university would be asking. I was quite surprised by some of the topics they touched. Some of the questions were: Are you happy to be the only child? Do you think you would be happy to be a housewife? Nowadays some college students cohabit outside the campus. What is your opinion? I found them to be strange but we asked them all the same. She doesn't want to be a housewife and she doesn't think students should cohabit just in case you were curious. I didn't even want to touch the only child one though...She was really sweet and I hope that she does make it in. She works really hard. Her teacher came and talked to us and told us that she is not attending her classes until her exam (She will go to Beijing on the 14th and the exam is the 17th and 18th) so she can read all day and expand her vocabulary. The Chinese are very serious about education.
This weekend I will spend Friday in Yangzhong and leave for Nanjing Saturday morning for the Relief Society Birthday Social. Alyssa and I are staying at a lady in the wards house. It should be a lot of fun!

Lots Of Yummy Foods

This weekend was a ton of fun! It was probably the least hassled weekend I've had since coming to China and that was a nice change.
Friday Andy and I wandered around Yangzhong all afternoon. We found a cute little coffee shop and Andy got super excited. Apparently he loves alcohol and coffee! He got the largest cup they had and bought me a hot chocolate. It was a fantastic cup of hot chocolate. They just poured Hershey's syrup into a cup of hot milk and it tasted almost American. The coffee shop itself was a cute little shop and Andy and I ended up sitting there for almost two hours just talking. It was very nice.
We were planning on meeting Alyssa and Josh for dinner but the two of them ended up going to Starling's (Orange's son) birthday party that night so Andy and I were on our own. We went to a "Western" style restaurant. It was pretty good but really expensive, not somewhere I'll frequent often. I got Yangzhou fried rice (Don't laugh about me getting rice at a Western style place. They don't have fried rice at all so it was a novelty for me). After dinner Andy and I picked up some cookies from the stall outside the school and watch the Big Bang Theory all night. It sounds pathetic but it was so nice to not have to go go go for one night.
Saturday was a pretty exciting day for me. I was heading over to the office to send an email when I ran into Andy who had a package for me. Exactly one week ago my mom sent me a package with goodies to give to all the nice people that give me gifts all the time. I was completely blown away. I wasn't sure the package was even going to make it let alone in one week! I was super excited though. I was running up to the office to open the package and check to see if everything made it okay when one of the other teachers called out to me and said her daughter wanted to play with me and asked if I would be willing to play. Well of course! Her daughter was probably 3 or 4 and super cute. All Chinese kids are cute! 
We met up with Josh and Alyssa for lunch and got some delicious noodles. Alyssa and I decided to catch a bus that went around Yangzhong just to see where it headed. We found the neat park that Spring and Apple took me to a couple weekends ago and discovered it was really close to Alyssa and Josh's school. So when it finally warms up we will be spending lots of time there.
The four of us were meeting Lily to go to her house for dinner that night. Lily is one of the students at my school. A few weekends ago Josh and I ran around the track with her and she gave me a hair clip. My mom had sent some fun hair clips in her package so I brought one with to give to Lily as a thank you gift. Oh my goodness the food was so delicious! Lily's mom is an excellent cook! She made two different kinds of dumplings. One had pork the other had mushrooms, I think is what Lily told me. There's always a giant bowl of whole shrimp it seems like. Lily's dad came over and popped the whole shrimp in his mouth and then pulled out the parts that we shouldn't eat to show us. It was hilarious. There was also a bowl of green stuff, I kind of thought it looked like grass. I can eat that stuff with rice but not plain so I didn't touch it. Josh ate almost the whole bowl though. There was a bowl of something like BBQ pork and a bowl with fish that stared at us all night long. It was actually very tasty though, once you get over the fish looking at you. The bowl of fish also had bamboo shoots in it and I popped one in my mouth. Just as it got in Lily shouts "Don't eat that!" Well naturally I panicked so I promptly opened my mouth and let the questionable food fall in my bowl of vinegar (That was a surprise to me. The Chinese use lots of vinegar with everything). As it was falling, I thought to myself that this couldn't be a polite thing to do, especially when the vinegar splashed all over the bowl of shrimp. Luckily Lily's parents weren't eating with us and it was a very casual meal so everyone laughed about it. Plus, being a foreigner gives you certain rights. You can get away with lots of things just by being foreigners here. Turns out not only had I picked up a bamboo shoot but a piece of ginger that you use to season the food. Glad I didn't eat it, ginger isn't my favorite thing ever. Lily's mom came over during the meal (Her parents don't speak English) and was watching us eat. Nothing is scarier than having chopstick pros watch people use chopsticks who are less than pros. I feel like I drop more things when they're watching me. Her mom pointed at me and said something in Chinese. I kind of hunkered down ready for my chopstick skills to be attacked but turns out her mom was saying that I am very good with chopsticks. That was an awesome moment in time.

Lily's parents are apparently religious (Lily told us she does not really believe the things her parents do). They had a little shrine in the corner of the flat that had three sort of gods on it. One was for wealth and good fortune, one was for happiness, and the other one I don't remember what it was for. I was looking at them just to check it out. Next thing I knew Lily's dad had lit the candles on the shrine thing and had lit three pieces of incense for me. Lily showed me how to hold the incense and how I was supposed to bow and ask for things. Well I didn't want to be rude so I did the little bowing thing, the whole time thinking to myself about the ten commandments. Alyssa told me after that I went really red in the face. It was an interesting experience but one I don't think I'll take again. Incense smells funny.

After dinner Lily took us out shopping. We went to the grocery store and bought drinks and messed around for a bit. Lily really likes Josh a lot so there was a little bit of flirtation going on there. All the Chinese girls get really excited when they find out that Josh is only 18. His birthday is this month so it will be interesting to see if they react the same to 19.
Sunday night one of the teachers at my school, Cassy, was taking the four of us out to hot pot. When we walked inside we saw a black man at the grill. This was one of those "You know you've been in China too long" moments for me once again because all four of us stared at him in awe. He spoke English and we told him that we were English teachers before we were ushered away to the room where we'd be eating. They turned the heater on for us but then opened the window up really wide. That was a bit of a contradiction, no? Needless to say the room did not warm up. There were two tables in the room and another family came in later to eat and ended up shutting the window. Thank heavens!
We started hot pot with something called dry pot. I'd had this before but I thought she'd called it cold pot. Dry pot makes so much more sense than cold pot. It had chicken wings in it and lots of various vegetables. Since there was an Indian at the grill the food was quite spicy. The chicken wings were amazing! After we finished up the wings they poured water right into the bowl which meant our entire hot pot was fairly spicy. It wasn't anything too terribly spicy so it was okay. We had lots of vegetables and many of them we don't have in America. We also had lots of kinds of meat. Beef, sausage and my favorite this bacony stuff. It's not like bacon in America (Which I was a little sad about even though this was delicious) it was really thick and was almost more like ham...It might have been ham and she just translated it to bacon I don't know. Cassy's daughter joined us for dinner, she is a first year university student in Yangzhou. She was very nice and fun to talk to. She sang us her favorite American song and it sounded familiar but I'm not sure what it was. She invited us to visit her sometime in April when it is warmer. We wanted to go to Yangzhou because it's supposed to be really pretty there so that should be fun!
I had a fantastic relaxing weekend filled with good food! One of the best things about China is the food. I hope I can eat at Chinese restaurants in America because they are so very different from actual Chinese food.

Upset the Fruit Basket

Every week of teaching seems to go better than the week before. My students are becoming more comfortable around me and aren't as shy as they were before. This week I taught about stereotypes. We wrote out stereotypes about Chinese, Americans and Japanese. It was funny to hear the stereotypes about Americans. Most classes came up with tall, white, speaks English stuff like that. One class started naming off American pop stars like Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, Justin Beiber or Lady Gaga. They also said stuff like KFC and hamburgers.
I did Japanese because the Chinese do not like the Japanese at all. They all went crazy as I wrote Japanese up on the board and started shouting out negative terms. They also brought up Japanese cartoons which they all seem to love, ironically. They would also say things like short and small eyes and uses chopsticks. I was thinking to myself "Have you guys looked in a mirror recently?"
After doing stereotypes for about ten minutes the real fun began. During training in Shenzhen I learned a really fun game called Upset the Fruit Basket. I'll quickly describe how to play it just so everyone knows. Everyone stands in a circle and one person is in the middle. The person in the middle will say "I like people who..." They could finish that sentence with any sort of description such as I like people who are wearing boots, I like people who live in China etc etc etc. If they'd said I like people wearing boots all the people in the circle wearing boots would have to run and find a new spot. The last one to find a spot is in the middle and has to say "I like people who..." Easy enough right? If you're a native English speaker easy enough apparently. I was planning on having my class just move their desks and playing it inside. I did that with my first class and it didn't turn out too well. First of all they moved their desks and I got trapped at the front of the room. So naturally I climbed on top of a desk and jumped to the other side. It was insane seeing the cell phones come flying out to take pictures of the crazy white girl jumping on desks. I got to the other side (With no injuries I might add) and realized we still had about the same amount of room after the desks were moved as before. There was no way I'd be able to fit a circle of 56 kids in this room. After thinking quick I said "Everybody move the desks back we're going outside!" This was met with lots of blank stares. Eventually I got them to understand that even though it was February and not exactly the ideal temperature for outside games I still expected them to head outside to play. It took me another fifteen minutes to explain the game so that they'd get it enough to be able to play something like the game.
In my second to last class it was raining so we went into the gym instead. We started as a circle but eventually became one line of girls and one line of boys that ran to the middle and then back to where they started (I tried super hard to get them to mix and mingle a little bit but somehow they always made it back to a group of boys and a group of girls. One of my classes I made them stand boy girl boy girl and I thought some of them were going to burst into tears. (Never did that again). One of the boys suggested that I had the students run all the way across instead of to the middle. It wasn't exactly the safest thing to do but I obliged because it was a funny thing to do. The Chinese are super competitive which made things even more funny. Really I thought I was going to wet my pants a couple times I was laughing so hard. One of my classes started pushing each other to the ground. The students would run straight at each other and the boys would bee line it while the girls were left to dodge the massive groups of boys. One time I ran across turned around to run back and started heading right for a wall of larger Chinese boys. It was terrifying.
I loved to yell things like people who are Chinese, people who have black hair, people who wear glasses etc. because they would all start screaming and take off running. One time right after I yelled I like people who are Chinese the other students starting yelling things for the girl in the middle. Now, my Chinese is not good but there is one word that I have picked up quite easily: Meiguo. It means America. They started telling the girl in the middle to say say I like people who are American. I then proceeded to wow my students by saying "Hey! I know what that means!" Needless to say I dodged that bullet.
My students also liked to single people out. They'd look to see what certain people were wearing or even shout out their names. The one I probably should have put a stop to but it's just more of a culture thing was "I like people who are fat." The Chinese are very blunt about that kind of stuff and so I just let that one go. No one ever was visibly offended. One of my classes said "I like people who are black" and then went up to a boy that was just a darker Asian. I did call that one out. I told them no one in this room was black and that he had to do it again.

My last class worked themselves really hard. At the end most of the boys had started taking off layers. Just as a reminder that never happens in China. Ever. Especially not this time of year. At the very end of the class some were lying on the floor just panting. One of the kids in the middle called out one of the boys lying on the floor and instead of getting up and running the boy started pushing himself on his stomach to the other side.

Alyssa has been super sick this week. I went and helped her with her classes on Tuesday like I normally do and she was just completely miserable. The kids were just going wild because Orange wasn't in the class. Orange's son has been really sick so she was with him. One of the things the teachers do to get the kids attention is yell 1,2,3 in Chinese and the kids yell back 4,5,6. So I decided to try it. For the most part it worked well. The kids were quiet for about 5 seconds but they didn't yell 4,5,6. I wowed them with my amazing Chinese skills and got them to listen for a minute. It was hilarious to see that.
On Monday night Josh came over to our school so we could go to a cute little restaurant across from our school that had waffles (Alyssa was too sick to come with us). The three of us (Josh, Andy, and I) went over to the restaurant and pointed at the picture of the waffles. Apparently they don't actually sell waffles there they just have pictures. False advertising? I think so. We left feeling a little upset and even more disappointed. But it turned out for the better. Now that it's getting a little warmer there are more street food vendors, which is the best place to buy food. We found some really good flat bread and little cakes that tasted like short bread. The flat bread was super delicious though. It was dough rolled out and then the guy spread some herbs on it, rubbed butter and sesame seeds on it and then cooked it in what looked like a giant tortilla maker. Then the girl cuts it into fourths rubs a semi spicy smear on it and cuts the fourths into little pieces that you eat. Oh it was so good. I've been there a couple more times to eat. We also got this wrap thing that I don't even know how to describe. It was also good, but I liked the flat bread stuff better. It had some sort of meat in it. It kind of had the texture of chicken but it was curly...I don't know. The meat that made me the most suspicious was the red meat (No it wasn't raw. I checked). It is like nothing I've ever had before and I'm not sure I really want to know what it was.
There was a really important day that just happened. International pancake day. We decided to try our hand at making pancakes. We looked up some recipes online but it's hard to find baking powder when you can't read Chinese. We ended up just making them with water, flour, eggs, sugar and salt. We tried to make them over a burner but that didn't work. Turns out you can make pancakes in the microwave! I would not recommend this to anyone who has ANY other means of making pancakes. It was out of sheer desperation that we did this. The Chinese dip everything in sweet condensed milk so we decided to do the same with pancakes. It turned out beautifully! I'm definitely doing that in the states it's so tasty. In conclusion: Pancakes in the microwave not an extremely good substitute. Pancakes with sweet condensed milk an extremely good substitute for syrup.