iheartzelbie

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Ninja Sauce

I am home! I have no excuses about why I abandoned my blog all together the last couple months so I am going to move right on past that. I have been home from China for 5 weeks now. The 4 & 1/2 months that I spent there were some of the hardest and greatest times of my life. I am so grateful for all the people I met and experiences that I had. I will never forget my time there and I am forever a different person because of the experience. I must confess that I really want to go back and plan on it someday soon. For now, I am living in Tempe, AZ. I am not going to school at the moment. I am just looking for a job and crafting and painting as much as possible. I am starting a new and different blog. I will post it here as soon as it is up and running.

Here are just some pictures to rap up China...

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Mine was wonderful and definitely one to be remembered. It was parent day at school so for the whole morning, there were tons of parents observing our teaching. We were a bit nervous but it went very well. Amazingly, the kids were really good with their parents there. The school put on a huge dinner for us in honor of Thanksgiving. Our chef, Michael, made delicious Chinese food and we made some American dishes for everyone to try. I made mashed potatoes for the first time and gravy. They turned out really good. It was definitely different than most of the Thanksgiving feasts I have had. There were chicken feet, fried squid, weird sausage things and many other interesting things but the stuff I did eat was really good. Some of the other girls made apple crumble and cookies so I still got to over dose on sugar. It was so much fun to be around all the teachers and staff at the school that we rely upon so much and that we have come to love. The food was great and then we played some games.

I have so many things to be grateful for! I have been so blessed with such an incredible and supportive family. This year, I am particularly grateful for the opportunity I have had to live in China. It has changed my life. I am a different person now than I was before and I hope that I have changed for the better.

Happy Free Jeans Day!

About a month ago, we went to a lunch that was put on by a company for foreigners in the area. We did not love anything about the activity except the food. The food was delicious. We were however promised free jeans so we all attended. At the lunch, they had someone measure us for our jeans. After much waiting, we all got our free jeans yesterday! It turns out that all the styles are completely different. They are all different colors and types of jeans. They all have different brand labels on them as well. I do not love mine but I love that they are free. China is always surprising. I can understand trying to bribe people to your event with a gift but I would have never thought of giving jeans. It worked for us and I am not complaining. Here are the four of us in our new jeans. 

Talent Show

A couple months ago, Candice asked us if we wanted to compete in a talent show. We had and still have no idea what the talent show was for but a couple of the girls in our group are really into dancing so we all agreed that we would throw something together. We decided to dance to Thriller since we had to have a performance for the Halloween Party our school was throwing as well. After a long series of events, we merged our thriller dance with 3 of the Chinese teachers that were also dancing. This turned out to be an extremely good idea. 

Here were the most interesting things about the talent show...

1. We were the only white people participating and we were dressed up like zombies. We usually get starred at but it was taken to new levels at the talent show. 

2. We participated in the talent show and then found out that not only was there another round but that we made it to the finals so we had to dance again. We had no idea that we were just participating in the preliminary. We were all very distraught at this news. It turned out that we had to perform again a week later in a much more public place outside. There were 10 dancing acts and 10 singing acts that made it to the finals. 

3. We did not win but we did get a case of milk that turned out to taste a lot more like something unlike milk than milk but we happily took it. Tina bought us ice cream and gave us lilies that made our apartment smell good for weeks so we are completely satisfied. 

4. Heidi made the observation that Mandarin just doesn't sound great in song form and I have to agree. It may just be that I cannot understand the words but it definitely is a strange language in song. The singing acts were really all terrible.

5. We were the last act to perform. This didnt bother me. I was not at all nervous. For some reason, performing in front of hundreds of people that I do not know and cannot speak to does not bother me in the slightest bit. If you asked me to dance in front of my roommates, that would be a different matter entirely. 

6. After the talent show was over, they made one person from each group go up on stage to accept the prizes. For some reason, the Chinese teachers decided that Wendy needed to be the one that represented us on stage. The only problem with this is that Wendy does not speak mandarin and had no idea what was happening. She just stood up there and every once in a while someone would make her move to a different part of the stage. It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

7. In all the talent show was a good experience. I am glad we did it and I am extremely glad that I never have to do it again. 

Fairies

A while ago, we went to Guangzhou to performance of some sort. We still dont really have any clue why this performance was going on or why we were there but we do know that we managed to get our hands on about 25 leaf fans that they gave to everyone in the audience. After seeing these amazing fans I decided that Wendy and I needed to be leafy fairies for Halloween. We made that happen. The wings were made out of some hot glue and the amazing fans we procured. The skirts are just made out of tulle and elastic. I loved being a fairy and sincerely wish that I did not have to dress like a zombie for the gigantic Halloween party our schools is throwing for 1,000 people but at least I got to dress like a fairy once out of the four times we had to dress up for Halloween this week. 

Halloween Week

This last week has been crazy. It was Halloween week, of course, so everyday at school was a different dress up day for the kids and teachers. We had fun dressing up and the kids were even more adorable than usual. 

Monday- Pajama Day

Tuesday- Crazy Day

Wednesday- Backwards Day

Thursday- Black and Orange Day

Friday- Costume Day

I was in charge of arts and crafts this week for my lessons so I made Halloween crafts with them all week. Some lessons worked better than others but I made these headbands with the kids and I think they are so adorable. On Wednesday one of the ILP directors, Casey, came for a visit. He watched our teaching and saw how things went down at the school and at our apartment. His visit went very well and he reaffirmed to us that we are at the best school, have the best coordinators and live in the best apartments in all of the ILP programs in all of China. We are truly blessed because all of those things really are true. Casey talked about sports and politics with us and it was really nice to have someone else to talk to that can understand you completely and that knows what is going on. He even took us out to dinner and bought us ice cream. That is really all it takes to win us over. 

I am so glad this week is almost at an end. It has been crazy and tiring. Thank goodness tomorrow is November! Happy Halloween! 

T.H.A.W

One day at school, a little girl did not have an English name so we were asked to name her. We were brainstorming possible options and Wendy decided that we should name her something that had the first initial of all our names in it. The best option she could come up with was J.A.G.T.H.A.W. You will be happy to hear that we named her Daisy but the name has stuck with us and that is what we call ourselves. It also turned out that J.A.G (Jessica, Alex, Gabby) lives in one apartment and T.H.A.W (Tessa, Heidi, Alyssa, Wendy) lives in the other. 

About a month ago, we were bored on a Sunday afternoon so we decided to take T.H.A.W roommate family photo's. We then made large prints of them and awkwardly hung them all over our house to make our visitors feel awkward and to make our place a bit more homey. The Eighties themed photo's we took, that will not be displayed on my blog, are hung up in our apartment as well and are sure to make all the people that visit us feel awkward. I spend most if not all of my time with these girls. 

In the pictures it goes Alyssa, Wendy, Me, Heidi. I love my roommates and they are some of the best people I know. I am extremely lucky to get to live with them here in China. You can blame them for my love of Hindi movies and other strange hobbies that I am going to come home with. It is not my fault. 

10 weeks

This week marked our 10 week anniversary of our arrival in China! Time is starting to go by fast. We had a Hindi themed party of course! No other theme would do. We are all a bit obsessed with Hindi films at the moment. Heidi, one of my roommates and my Head Teacher, is really into it and has us all hooked. We got noodles from our favorite Muslim noodle place, some friends of ours came and brought some Apple Chutney and we watched a fantastic Hindi film called Ghajini. It was rather comical to have 10 of us in our tiny living room watching a 3 hour movie, in which you have to read what they are saying, on a lap top. We have a TV but we dont know how to turn on the English subtitles because all the menu's are in Chinese so we are forced to watch all Hindi movies on our laptops. The party was a success and China is better than ever. I am constantly overwhelmed by how amazing this experience this is. I think the only thing harder than coming to live in China will be having to leave it. I try not to think about it. Thankfully, that is not for another 8 weeks. 

The picture is the only picture we took at the party. Everyone is doing their best to look like Sanjay, the main character in the movie. I am not sure if they were quite spot on. 

Yangshuo 11 Hostel

Since being in China, we have stayed in some rather shady hostels around the country. They have been perfectly satisfactory for our needs but not a place I would like to chill after a bad day if your picking up what I'm putting down. However, we LOVED our hostel in Yangshuo a great deal. It had a sweet big TV with all the movies on it that you could ever want. The rooms were relatively clean. You got to our hostel by winding around these little tiny alleyways off of the main road and I loved getting to do that. The people in charge of it were extremely helpful and friendly. Our favorite part was the roof. Our hostel had the highest viewpoint of the whole village and it was in a perfect location. We loved to just sit and look at the gorgeous scenery from the roof. The only problem with the hostel was the smell of our bathroom but I can even overlook that because it was so awesome. I miss that hostel and Yangshuo and probably always will.

The pictures were taken from the roof of our hostel. 

Moon Hill

For one of our glorious days in Yangshuo, we decided to go on a hike at Moon Hill. I was completely naive as to what Moon Hill was and what the hike was going to be like. I am glad that I did not know how hard that hike was going to be because I if I would have known how hard the hike was going to be I probably would not have gone.

We took a bus to the park and before we could even step off the bus we were surrounded by four elderly Asian women with big coolers full of stuff they wanted to sell us. We sat down on a bench for a while and they sat with us. They stayed with us the entire time we were in the park. At the beginning of the trail you can see a big mountain ahead of you that has a moon shaped hole in it. I thought to myself, "we surely cant be hiking up to that hole. That is too high up and far way." I was apparently mistaken because the trail consisted of 1000 stairs that went to that moon shaped hole. I was extremely brilliant and forgot my inhaler that would have been mighty handy in that situation. I may or may not have had to stop about 5 times on the way to the top but I made it! The Chinese women did not even break a sweat or breath heavily. They make that hike once or twice a day. Once at the hole, the Chinese women showed us a trail that had a sign in front of it that said, "NO ADMITTANCE." They pointed above us and then pointed to the trail. This shady little overgrown trail led us to the very top of the mountain. There were incredible views from there. I was not looking up at all the mountains around me. I was among the mountains that were surrounding me.

Dragon Bridge

I am not exactly what you would call an outdoors and exercise lover but it is amazing the physical activity you can get out of me when I am in exotic places around the world. In Yangshuo we went hiking around caves, bike riding and climbed a limestone formation that was 1,000 steps high. One of my very favorite days in Yangshuo was when we biked to Dragon Bridge that was 20 Kilometers away. It was an incredible bike ride. We were biking through some of the prettiest places I have ever seen. Since, for some reason, I mysteriously get really brave around water, I jumped off the 30 foot tall bride. That was an extremely terrifying experience but I am glad I did it. There was many Asians at the bottom cheering me on with their camera's at the ready. Everyone in our group jumped in except Jess who was completely at peace with herself and did not want to destroy that peace by self inducing terror. If I could go on a 24 mile bike ride like that everyday, then exercise would become a lot more appealing to me. Yangshuo is just so dang beautiful. 

Li River

One of the highlights of the trip was our boat ride on the Li River. The river runs through Guilin and Yangshuo and many other little villages that are between them. We knew all along that we wanted to go by boat from Guilin to Yangshuo where we would spend the remainder of our vacation but we did not exactly know how that was going to happen. It was a holiday so everything was very expensive. Thankfully, we ran into a man who offered to take us for a pretty good deal. He kept introducing himself by different names so we are unsure if his name is Smiley or Jerry. Anyway, he convinced us to start our journey at 5 AM so that we could be on the river when the sun rose. The only problem with that plan is that we did not realize how cold it can get at 5 AM when you are on a river in a boat. It can get a medium to extra large amount of cold and none of us brought jackets or even decent pants. Smiley/ Jerry picked us up in a van and took us about 45 minutes along the river to where we got into the boat. It was the bumpiest and craziest ride I have ever been in. We then got into a bamboo boat that was actually made of enormous PVC pipe. Normally it would have bothered me that the hour and half boat ride that we paid for was only fifty minutes but I was so cold that if I would have been on that boat one minute longer I may have expired right there. The boat ride was gorgeous though. I loved weaving around the big limestone formations. After the boat ride we drove through some little towns and got to see where the picture on the 20 Yuan Bill Note is taken from. I am definitely glad that we went to Yangshuo by boat. In my opinion, there is no other way to go.