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.