Birthday in China!

See a post or two below for the corresponding photos of my birthday!

My birthday in China was so fantastic! The sun was shining and the temperature was actually in the high 40's! Terri, Cyndi, David (birthday twin), Sally, Cortnie, Dana and I decided that we wanted to enjoy the vitamin D and take a walk to the castles beach. It was so nice to be outside! We are literally just around the corner from the beach (I can see the yellow sea from my apartment window) and it's a fifteen minute walk to the beach. We spent an hour there; walking up and down the beach, looking at tide pools, jumping over clumps seaweed and discovering a variety of dead things to poke at. (Fish, crab, frog? Yep. definitely a giant dead frog on the beach. TIC). We had been talking about finding the Pizza Hut for dinner that night, but we weren't sure were it was; we just knew it was close to Happy gate. There is a bus station right by the beach, and we had heard that the 15 stopped there and would take us into downtown and let us off at the McDonald's stop, which is a couple blocks away from the ocean front and Happy Gate. So, we caught the 15, and rode into downtown until we hit the McDonald's, where we decided we would chance fate and risk staying on the bus a couple stops longer to see if it would take us closer to the allusive Pizza Hut. LOW AND BEHOLD! Two stops later and the bus dropped us off right in front of it! We were all so excited to have conquered the bus system here a little bit more. There are SO many bus routes that run in this city, and now we know how to use the 12, 15, 30, 38. Our next goal is to master the 112, because it apparently takes you to the JUSKO (Japenese version of Walmart, apparently it's a big deal?). So, we went into the Pizza Hut and it was the NICEST place I've eaten in so far and so drastically different than the Pizza Huts in America. The waiters and waitresses dress in super fancy outfits; the lighting is all fancy and the pizza is all stuffed crust. Of course, we're in China, so there are weird pizza toppings, like salmon, but there was also a supreme and regular pepperoni, so we ordered that. David speaks a little Chinese, so he ordered for us all. He thought he ordered me a small drink, but two minutes later, the waiter brings this GIANT pitcher of soda. We laughed really hard at that. The pizza was really good and CHEESY! China does not believe in cheese, and when it does, it's really expensive. So, it was wonderful to eat indulge in that. After we ate ourselves full, we walked down to Happy Gate to see it all lit up. There were massive amounts of women standing in front of Happy Gate, doing all these jazzercise dances. It was the funniest, weirdest thing! It was 8:00 at night and all of these women dancing in front of Happy Gate. Obviously, we had to join in. So we danced with them for a little bit, before catching taxi's back to school. Later that night, everyone sang happy birthday to me and gave me a piece of Chinese cake. Chinese cake is not cake. It's more like a thin layer of light spongey like stuff, covered in layers of different fruity cool-whip stuff. It's weird. But it was good! 

On Monday, my kids sang happy birthday to me and it was pretty precious. They all know that happy birthday song, but they never say the name; they just keep on saying: "happy birthday to youuuu."  

I'm so grateful for the simple fact that I've made it to my 22nd year of life, and even more grateful that I have been given this amazing opportunity to be in China. The more time I spend teaching my kids and getting to know them, the more I realize how incredibly lucky I am to be here and to be taught by them. Realizing that I have this incredible second chance at life and that I am getting to spend it here, with my students, is one of the greatest gifts of all. Super cliche? Sure. But is it the truth? Every bit. 

Thank you all for the birthday wishes via email, Facebook and Skype. I am so blessed to have you all in my life. 

Today, in China...

Sam: "How many people can say they lived in China?"

David: "About a third of the world's population."

Photos from the Birthday Adventure

IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY YESTERDAY!

And I share it with another teacher, David. So we had a wonderful double birthday celebration!

We walked to the castle's beach:

wrote happy birthday in the sand:

Me and my birthday twin, David:

SIXLETS Jumping picture:

My artsy picture of Dana and Terri:

WE WENT TO PIZZA HUT! AND HAD PIZZA! WITH CHEESE!

(this is a big deal for us in China)

So happy!

And then we walked to Happy Gate to see it all lit up.

Basically, my birthday in China was fantastic. Today, my kids sang to me. And gave me hugs.

I like my life. 

And I'm so blessed to be here. 

Hard beds and sound effects

In China, it is important to have good posture. So, the Chinese believe that beds need to be as hard as possible to prevent your back from becoming soft and slouchy. Our beds here are literally boards with a thin layer of padding on top. I'm used to it now (and I bought a comforter at the night market to sleep on top of that added extra padding) but I'm pretty sure that these beds are causing me more back pain then improving my posture. 

The lights here in the halls and stair wells are all activated by sound and not by motion. So, it's not uncommon for weird sounds to be heard every 20 minutes as people move about the building at night. Usually it sounds like "woooo!" but people try to be creative...and that can get creepy.

There are four teachers here who are deathly ill with all different kinds of bugs. We've been working harder than ever to cover for their classes, and I might have to teach Korean school tomorrow morning. (There is a Korean school inside of our school, btw). So, life continues to be crazy, but I love it and I love the opportunity I have to serve my kids and my fellow teachers. I'm learning an awful lot while doing it.

Peace, love and CHINA!

a few high lights from this week

Another week in China has flown by and here are a couple things that I wanted to share:

The Bank of China is EXTREMELY picky about the condition of American money that you try to exchange. On Thursday, they flat out refused to exchange 80 dollars of it because my money was "broken." In other words, it was worn and frayed on the edges, with creases down the middle from being folded. Future note for any future travelers: don't bring broken money. You will be up a creek without a paddle. 

We had our first Chinese lesson with Kelly on Thursday. I learned how to say a lot of things and my goal is to practice so I become somewhat fluent. Well, at least when it comes to telling the cooks what I want in the cafeteria. It would have been nice to say: bù yao qiézi in order to prevent being served a giant helping of eggplant stew. At least I know

for next time! Kelly is really funny; she also taught us how to say "I love you" after which she said "Because you are...how do you say...very young...you might not always love

someone....so I want to also teach you 'I hate you.'" We were all cracking up, but we learned it anyway.

We went to the Jade store on Friday, in which we were treated to an hour of examining many kinds of jade jewelry and statues. It was all beautiful, and the owner offered us 40%

off because she wanted to be friends with the foreigners. It was still really expensive, so I ended up buying some wooden carvings of traditional Chinese animals that were a lot 

cheaper.

This week, I continued to teach basic reading to my kids and we had a ball. They were thrilled with the opportunity they had to color pictures and practice sight reading. My 

second period kids wrote books about alligators and then worked on illustrating them. They were some of the funniest things I have seen. One class wrote about how the 

alligator punched a dog, and then kissed a girl alligator. Another class wrote about how the alligator was hungry and wanted food, so he went to the bathroom where he found 

cake and milk. Turns out, my kids really know the words bathroom and kissing. 

Thursday, my second period homework walked in and before I started to seat them, Jessie and Lacey come running over and wrap their arms around my middle and said: "Hello, 

Chelztee!" Put a huge smile on my face. Later that day, we went down to say hi to them after dinner and Jessie came up to me and gave me another huge hug and put a sticker in

my pocket before patting my butt and shooing me off. I laughed so hard at her cute gesture, but was so touched by how loved I felt by her and by the rest of my kids. 

Sometimes, I forget that I live in China and take for granted the precious faces I spend my time with every day. But I have these small moments where I realize that: "holy cow,

I'm LIVING in CHINA!" and I think about how incredibly lucky I am to be here and to learn from my peers, and much more importantly, to learn from my kids.

Took a shower tonight. Killed a cockroach in the middle of washing my hair. No big deal. This, after all, is China. 

Happy One Month of Teaching!

Well, this last week of teaching has been a whirlwind, but it's been wonderful. We've started a new discipline system called "strikes" and it's really improved our kid's behavior. So, I don't know how much of our teaching program I've told you about, but basically, we plan activities to do with our kids and get them to speak English while doing it. For example, last week I read them the story of Snow White and we acted out eating the poison apple. I made paper apples and handed them out to the kids after they each said: "I want an apple!" As we pretended to eat the apple, I had them say: "We are eating the apple" or "He is not eating the apple." Basically, the whole lesson goes on in that sort of manner. Every time the kid says something in English, you "token" them, which mean's they get a little bead. At the end of every day, I count tokens with my homeroom and at the end of every week, we do store, where they can cash in their tokens for prizes. ANYWAY, the strike system basically is: "three strikes, no store, and you lose all your tokens from that week." It took us a little while to get the kids to completely understand the strike system, but after we gave out the first few, it became REALLY effective (well, for most kids). There are still a select few who do not care if they lose their tokens; and we had one kid get to four strikes by Friday, because he was being so bad. (I stuck him in the corner for a whole class because he slammed the door in my face. Ninny).

Anyway, on Thursday, my second period homeroom came in (my favorites!) and Travis looked like he was on the verge of tears. I asked what was wrong, and Walter told me that Teacher Erica had given him a strike! When I asked why, none of the kids knew what Travis had done to gain him a strike. Travis started crying and it just broke my heart. I tried to explain to him that he would still get store because it was his first strike, but he was just so upset. Walter, bless his heart, went over and patted his back and kept on saying: "It's okay!" and then explained to him in Chinese that he would still get store (or at least, I think that's what he was saying). I didn't even stop him from speaking Chinese because I just wanted Travis to understand that it was okay. Travis calmed down after that and my homeroom all gave me high fives and hugs before they left for the day. I have to say though, watching Walter console his friend was so precious and all's I could think of was how much I wanted to be like him in that moment: to care and love everyone around me that much and to want them to be happy. I seriously believe that these kids are teaching me far more than I will ever teach them.

I get to teach basic reading these next two weeks; so I'll be doing worksheets and singing the ABC's and playing word games. YES! I'm excited to take a break from SPE's (the activity centered lessons) because they require a lot of planning and can be utterly exhausting. Plus, the older kids LOVE practicing their writing and letters. I started teaching basic reading today with them and after I said: "Today we're going to write some sentences!" Mary jumped up in excitement and said: "TEECHA, I LOVE YOU!" Happy days!

1. One of our most misbehaved children is named William. We all refer to him as "Asian Harry Potter." He is a terror and nothing at all like Harry Potter except in looks and in awkward hair cuts. The strike system does NOT work for him.
2. One of my favorite first period kids, Madison, always gives me really weird anime-cartoon stickers and puts them right on the back of my hand. One day, Laura (a girl in the class after Madison) pointed to it and asked me what it was. I said: "Madison gave it to me!" and she said: "That's because Madison loves you." Yeah, I pretty much melted into a puddle of mush right on the spot. Today, she gave me a heart sticker with a picture of a hot dog on it. The words said: "Magic Love." Typical Chinglish, right there.
3. On Thursday, it was Chinese Woman's Day. I guess they celebrate woman, but I didn't really understand the whole point of it when Kelly tried to explain it to us. Regardless, the school treated us out to dinner at a restaurant called Hot Pot. Basically, you sit around this table with a hot plate built into the middle that heats up a giant bowl of broth and then they bring you PLATE after PLATE after PLATE of meats, veggies and seafood for you to cook in the broth. I've never eaten so much, and it was delicious!

4. We went into the city yesterday and walked around for a bit. We found this little restaurant that served us family style; which means you order five or six plates of food and they put them on a spinning table in the middle of your table and you just pull from it and eat what you want. It was DELICIOUS! We had dumplings, potatoes, chicken, sautéed green beans, onions and corn and rice. A bunch of super drunk men came over and asked if they could take pictures with all of the girls. That was weird. But this is also China.

5. Kelly (foreign coordinator) has an "in" at a Jade factory and is taking us there on Friday! Cool!

OH! We're going to the zoo this weekend and I might get to feed a baby tiger and hold a baby panda! I'M SO EXCITED! Definitely will take tons of photos on that adventure. 

With love from China,

Chelsie

 

Pictures from Shanghi

 Dana and I in front of the Old Town entrance.

 I took this from the Yuyuan Gardens of a pagoda.

 Dana and I on the Bun.  The Shanghi Skyline is behind up, but you can only see some of it because of the weather.

A super flattering (NOT) photo of me on my bed in the sleeper bus.

Shanghai and Sickness

So, we went to Shanghai this last weekend and that was an amazing experience and quite the adventure. Shanghai is about a 13 hour drive from Weihai, so we took a sleeper bus there. Did you ever see the third Harry Potter movie? The bus was JUST like the Knight Bus-it seriously had three rows of bunk beds on it. And, because This Is China, we had to take our shoes off as we got on the bus. We left at four, I read for a couple of hours and then I curled up and slept the rest of the night and woke up around seven, as we were entering the city. The only down fall to the bus was that I was at the back, right by the potty, and it smelt something fierce every time someone opened the door. And yes, because TIC, the potty on the bus was a squatty potty. Have you ever tried to pee on a moving squatty potty? No? Well, let me tell you, it is IMPOSSIBLE to make sure your pee gets in the potty! I had to pee so badly, and finally decided I would have to use the squatty potty, so I went in, and before I could even assume the proper position, I almost toppled over because the bus driver decided to make a u-turn. I was cracking up the whole time because of how utterly ridiculous the whole situation was, but I eventually piddled, and I didn't make a mess of myself, so I called it a success.

 

We did a lot of walking in Shanghai, but I got to see a lot of cool things, like the Yuyuan gardens, which are these beautiful gardens that are built around traditional Chinese Pagodas and Coi ponds. Right outside of the gardens is a dumpling shop that apparently has the best dumplings in the world…the line was around the block. It reminded me of what an In-N-Out line looks like during lunch hour. The line was moving pretty fast, so we decided we would get some and they were AMAZING! I'm pretty sure Chinese Dumplings are my favorites. We also learned how to take the Metro in Shanghai, which was a crazy adventure, but we had it down by the end of the first day. I got to see the Chinese Acrobats, which you seriously would have loved. The whole time I watched them, all's I could think about was the excited noises you would have been making because of how cool it was. If they every come tour the states and come to a city close by to us, we are totally going. Saturday, we went to a market where they sell tons of knock-off brand names. It was easily 40,000 square feet and filled with everything you could possibly imagine. And, this is the kind of place where you barter with them. It was kind of intimidating at first, but I got to be really good at it by the end of the day. I got a North Face fleece for 100 RMB, which is about 17 American dollars, which I bartered down from 700 RMB. I also got a pair of TOMS and a pair of Rayband sunglasses, so that was really cool. Do you want anything in China? I'll totally use my bargaining skills and get you whatever you want.

 

We took the sleeper bus back to Weihai on Saturday and got back in on Sunday, where I proceeded to sleep forever and plan for teaching. As fun was it was to go on our adventures, I was surprised how much I missed my students and how excited I was to come back and teach them.

 

Well, our first day back after vacation was insane. I had a child throw up on my table in the middle of my lesson. I froze for a split second as I tried to register why there was a puddle of puke there, until I made the connection that it belonged to the little girl who was still retching. I literally picked her up and pointed her towards the hall and said, GO TO THE BATHROOM (Chinese teachers do not believe in trash cans; they think it makes their rooms look dirty) and banged on Erica's door and yelled: "WATCH MY CLASS!" before taking off behind her. We made it to the bathroom, where the poor dear proceeded to lose the rest of her lunch as I rubbed her back. All's I could think of was that I was glad I had cancer, because I could stomach the puke, haha. I then took her to Kelly before going back upstairs to help Bryan clean up the puke before getting my class back.

 

The second group came up later, and after going through our rotations, I was excited to see my homeroom come into my room. But, I found out that three of them had all been taken to the teacher because they felt sick! Walter, Joe and Jacob were all feeling ill. So, there is probably a bug going around, which stinks because all of my favorites are getting sick. Sad day. 

Oh, remember how I wrote about how we've started going down during meals to say hi to our kids? Dana and I decided we would bring our food down with us and try to eat with them during lunch the other day. We found a table (and the tables are the kind with the seats attatched to them) next to Joe and Travis and sat down and started eating and talking with them. Dana made the tiniest shift in her weight to ask Travis something and all of a sudden, THE TABLE STARTS GOING OVER! My dumplings started sloshing on the floor, my arm came flying up to try to counter balance it and Dana's leg was flying up. We somehow caught ourselves before everything hit the ground, but our kids all saw and started laughing SO HARD! Travis kept on saying: "SCARY, HUH?" and Jessie came over to help wipe up our table. It was so embarrassing and SO funny; I had tears streaming down my face from laughing so hard. Pretty sure our kids think we're the weirdest American's they've met, but they still think we're cool, so that's fun. Woo!