Egg salad?

Snowman- China style

Chinese meals and bumper cars

Mr. Wu took us out for dinner with a few of his Chinese friends. The meal was alright, I am just not a lover of the Chinese meals. After the meal we went to an amusement park and rode the bumper cars, they were pretty intense. 

Chinese foot massage!!!

If you have ever experienced a real Chinese foot massage than you know exactly what I mean when I say, OUCH!! My friends Linda and Serena invited me to go with them to get a foot message a few weeks ago. They have you first soak your feet in medicine water while they massage your neck and back. That part felt really good! They did rub my skin pretty hard though and it did actually leave some marks.... Then they give you an intense foot message. The guy that massaged my feet told me that I need to drink more water, and also get more sleep. They say that the your feet is another heart of your body. The two girls I was with were screaming during the massage because it really does hurt. I was so strong though and didn't scream and just gritted my teeth. They said I am very strong :) So anyway, it was really fun. I am planning on taking the other girls here with me to get the massages next week, they are in for a treat!!!

Package from the best mom in the world!!

So a few weeks ago a got a package from my mom in the mail! I cannot even describe how excited I was to get it. It was waiting in the office for me one morning and I freaked out! The box is so big with my favorite goodies from America. Some of the goodies included; peanut butter m&ms (of course), mac and cheese, chewy bars, sweet and salty granola bars, fruit snacks, gushers, cereal, potato pearls, wheat thins, vanilla wafers, cheese itz, and trail mix. She also included the last 2 issues of the Ensign, some pictures from home, flip flops, and a blanket. What an amazing, kind mother I have!! 

Lakes, houseboats, and crabs.

This last weekend Brielle, Abby, and I had the opportunity to go with one of our students, Julie, to her Grandparents village for the day. We went with several other Chinese people on a boat ride out on a lake. The lake was really neat. It was filled with many house boats where the some people live and they catch fish for their living. After our trip to the lake we went out to eat with the family. I ate some really crazy things at this meal! For any of you that know me well, you know that I am extremely picky and don't ever eat anything crazy. Well.... not anymore. I am not a seafood person but I still eat fish a lot here in China. At this lunch we had; crab, snails, pig lung, chicken stomach, jelly fish, chicken fingers (not the yummy kind like at Wendy's), bamboo, and many other fun dishes. The meal lasted around two hours, I felt like they would never stop bringing out more and more colorful dishes. It is always fun for us to experience these Chinese traditional meals. They eat so much! 

Amazing buffet and KTV

                     few weeks ago we went out for a fun night with some of the teachers at the school. They took us to a really amazing Chinese buffet place! Besides the cow tongue and the chicken stomach.. it was really good! I was happy about the ice cream, french fries, orange chicken, and fried bananas. After stuffing ourselves at dinner we made our way over to KTV to sing the night away! The Chinese people LOVE karaoke! It is really a big deal here in China. It is really cool because you rent out a room for 3 hours. The rooms are really nice and they have many songs for options! They have the music videos for the songs playing being the words. Some of the music videos for the English songs are hilarious because they made them up themselves. Pretty ridiculous. We had a blast with our Chinese friends though! We have become really good friends with so many of them. There are also 2 canadians that are teaching English here at the school. They are not part of our program, but we have a lot of fun with them also! 

My reason for coming

My main purpose for coming to China this semester was to make some sort of a difference, even if very small, in the lives of these beautiful kids. Within this last month of teaching I have grown to love these kids in an amazing way. Even though I cannot speak Chinese and hardly communicate with them verbally at all, I love them so much. I am so grateful to be here and have the opportunity to get to know all of them! I cannot think about the day when I will have to leave them. So, I will make the best of the time that I have here with them! 

                    Here are some pictures of the kids, our classrooms, and some of the teachers teaching. So far teaching has been amazing. We are getting to know all of the kids so well and they are learning so much! We have 50 students all together that we teach for about 3 hours every day. Each rotation last 25 minutes and then we also have an opening and a closing. I am actually not teaching with the other teachers during this time because I am the head teacher. My job is awesome though, I get to walk around and watch all the teachers do their job. Sometimes I will teach for them as an example so they can get some tips on how to teach better. I also help them with their own teaching every day and I make sure that everything runs smoothly. I love being able to get to know all of the kids so well, in this short time I have already been able to see them grow and learn so much!

 

Quick Nanjing Trip

So this was our second time going to Nanjing for church. We are having a lot of fun getting to know the members in the Nanjing Branch. Last Sunday we did the trip in one day and it was a blast! We left our school around 6:30 AM and took a bus to the train station. Our train left at 8:00 and got into Nanjing at 9:20. From there we took the Subway a few stops over to the Gulou station. Then we walked to the Hotel where the Branch meets. After church we went to a yummy noodle place for lunch with Brad and Ben. After that we went and had bubble tea (not really tea). It was so good!!! We love Bubble Tea so now in Changzhou we get bubble tea whenever we can, we love it. So in the evening we met up with some other friends from the branch and we made our way over to Purple Mountain. It is a big mountain that you can walk up and lookout over the whole city of Nanjing. It was so good to hangout with a fun group of young adults. I just kept thinking how crazy it was that we were in China all together, but just hangin out like we would in the US. I am grateful for the opportunity we have to go to church every once in a while out here in China. It is extremely hard to go even a few weeks without being able to partake of the sacrament and go to church meetings. I am so much more grateful for church now. What a blessing it is!!