Posting from China--booyah :)

So I sent a missionary-like email to friends and family and RIGHT after I realized that I might as well be blogging in place of that! That way I'm still referring to my photobucket for pictures and you can read as you please. Good right? Well I don't want to re-write this so it's a copy and paste sort of thing.
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Hello all :)

I decided I don't write to my lovely parents enough so I sat down to do that, and then I figured as long as I was emailing them I could let my sisters know what is up :) okay and my grandparents too! Oh what the heck, I'll just make it a full on "missionary email" :) It will be kinda long but just read at your leisure, I guess!

I've officially finished two full weeks of teaching and it's getting better....I think. As of today I'm still yelling a lot to keep them obedient but the behavior is still not amazing. It's frustrating but it will hopefully get better. I hope I can get a picture of my homeroom kids soon so you can see who I hang out with for three hours every day :) Oh and I can't forget to share this: when the kids start learning English their teachers give them names. And I am really appreciating the sense of humor that the group before us had because we have a kid that's a head taller than the rest of the group named LeBron, a set of obnoxious twins named Fred and George, and a cute little girl with a short bob named Dora. Classic :) Every time I have to yell any one of those names I can't help but smile (at least on the inside) at how awesome the whole situation is.

And I took my first vacation! Last weekend we went to Yangshuo (we keep calling it Guilin but we never actually made it into Guilin really, although they have the same things both places) and it was so fun! I bought a lot of souvenirs that I don't know if I will go into detail about because some of them are gifts and I want to make them surprises....but the shopping was awesome and so cheap so it was all I could do to keep myself from becoming a shopping fiend.

but I'm getting ahead of myself....we knew we were taking a bus to Yangshuo, but when we boarded it we noticed there was definitely something different about this bus....it was a sleeper bus!!! Like the night bus on Harry Potter!! But the beds were definitely not moving around crazily like that ;) but it was so cool! I think it's my very favorite mode of transportation ever up to this point! We got on the bus at 3 PM Friday afternoon after teaching that morning, and arrived in Yangshuo at 4 in the morning to an eerily empty street where we paid a two guys in little golf-carty things to drive us and our luggage to our hostile. Which is like a really cheap hotel--someone described it to me as somewhere between a motel and staying at someone's house, decide if that description works for you ;) So the little guys drop us off in front of, seriously, this space in between two buildings that is PITCH black. It is marked about it that it's Monkey Jane's Rooftop Bar and Guesthouse but it looked like how you get into Diagon Alley on Harry Potter (it's weird how everything relates to Harry Potter here...I can't really explain the phenomenon!).

So eventually we figure out that our hostile is at the very end of this dark pit of darkness and all stumble to the end just hoping there weren't spiders or other crawlies getting one us. Our hostile was the nicest one our head teacher said she'd ever stayed in, although I have nothing to compare it to so I don't really know! Anyway, it was about 5 when we got to bed, just in time for a darned rooster outside our window to start crowing. we slept in until about 11 and went out looking for something to eat. You have to understand something about my group--most of them crave American food all day. Ice cream, chimichanga, Wendy's, you name it, they want it. I have had McDonald's more times since February 23rd that I think I've had in the last year, no joke! I've decided to try as much food as possible because food is definitely a part of the culture so it's really hard for me sometimes when they think I'm weird because I don't want Pizza Hut everyday! It seems a little backwards but I'm a tolerant person so it's not like I put up a stink about it. So I decide I want local food so we go out and look for some. And you should know, my head teacher's husband speaks Mandarin so it makes a lot of things super convenient most of the time, it's so nice. So for breakfast, Amanda and Debbie and I (we're roommates) oh and another girl in our group, Raven, go trooping for some food. We ended up finding a place with dumplings and fried rice that our group ate at a couple of times, so it was kinda fun that I was the one that wanted Chinese food in the first place and found it :D I just don't want to spend extra money on food that I can get in the US because I miss it! there are days that I want Cafe Rio SO BAD but getting sick of rice and spicy food while we're here doesn't make anyone happier. So yes, dumplings on vacation, and everyone was happy :) Our cafeteria food is nasty though, but I'm enduring it pretty well. Sooooo after breakfast/lunch that day we....rented scooters! Like the motorized ones! It was SO AWESOME!! It made us laugh that in America you'd have to sign waivers and show licenses but here, you pay the 80 yuan and you're off! It was such an amazing way to tour the city, and although it was a little scary to actually be IN traffic with the crazy drivers, they are really good at communicating with eachother about being crazy so I felt pretty safe. Some people in our group drove up to a place called Moon Hill but I stayed with everyone else and just explored. We found a random cave in one of the mountains, drove through the countryside and just had an awesome time. I took some pretty great pictures so refer to those :) That night we shopped a little and mostly just ate....it's weird how much I want to eat here, I don't know if it's because I never get full or the food is different or what but it's so bad..

I keep getting so off topic but oh well :) So the next day we woke up at 9 and went on a bamboo raft! It was way pretty! We met a little fisherman who was hilarious and we paid him some money to take a picture with him and his fishing bird. We rafted down to a little village and bargained for stuff there. Everyone tries to rip you off and tell you their stuff is the best quality so it's over-whelming sometimes. And they can somehow see when you REALLY want something and are sticklers about it, but when you just ask a price non-interested-like and walk away, they drop 30 yuan in price as you are walking away. It's so weird. They're little temptresses and it's definitely a new experience for me to be sneaky and act non-chalant and aggressive and persistent and smart just because I want to buy a souvenir! So weird.

Then after the bamboo raft, we took a bus for a tour of a cave where we played in the most awesome mud hole ever. I paid for a couple pictures (they wouldn't let us take our cameras in) but pretty much imagine a mud hole with light brown sticky mud, and smearing it all over your body, and sliding down a little slide into it and that's pretty much our experience. But when we first walked in? Oh my heck there was a naked guy and it ws so awkward....we were all freaking out but luckily he sat down the whole time we were in there so we could play safely. Wow that was more than we bargained for though! Oh I forgot to mention it's been pretty cold lately, so all through the vacation Debbie and I have been swapping a couple of my jackets to at least look different in pictures from day to day but using as little suitcase room as possible. Brilliant, I know :) So it was SUPER cold after the mud but so worth it. From the mud cave we went up some stairs to a natural hot spring and it was wonderful! I'd never been to one but it was Heaven. And this one had a bunch of little crater things to sit in that only fit 2 or 3 people in one and it was so great! Like our own personal hottubs. We left there and went back to the hostile to clean up, and because it was Sunday we didn't do a lot of shopping after but walked around the shops anyway. Monday we finished our shopping and just enjoyed the city until catching our sleeper bus home at 9 that night! The first hour or so of the bus ride, I was on the top bunch right behind the bus driver and there was a man smoking up by the front, which he shouldn't have been doing anyway but he dind't have a window opening or anything! So Debbie and Amanda and I were dying--it smelt so bad and we tried putting our sweaters over our faces and breathing like that but it didn't help at all. After our first bathroom stop they smarted up and opened a window, but after that all three of us still feel really heavy in our lungs and it hurts to breathe in really deep, and yelling at the kids is painful and walking up stairs to school and our apartment makes us feel so out of shape! It was a rotten deal that those guys were so inconsiderate to the rest of us! But I slept for a couple hours on the bus that time and it was way nice. And now I'm back in my apartment! And I feel like it's more Home now that I've been away and wanted to be back with my own pillow and sheets. Funny how that makes you feel more attached to a place :) But yeah that's what I've been up to! I had shrimp that was looking back at me for the first time today,that was exciting :) And I thought it was weird and a little freaky but I definitely wanted to eat them because hello, shrimp is relatively normal compared to other things we eat! I was the only weirdo at our table who did....am I crazy? Oh well, I guess the Chinese are rubbing off one me ;) Well that's it for now, eventually I'll write about Hong Kong but this will at least get me going for now :) Haha I really do feel like a missionary, it's a little silly but in a good way. Xai jian until next time!

Love, Andrea

P.S. I promise I can still speak English...I just get lazy so I'm not going to proofread this, please excuse any mistakes :) Thanks a bunch!
P.S.S. Here's the link for my photobucket! I can't organize them worth anything because I don't know the program very well so just bear with me. Let me know what you think! And I think the link might possibly change everytime I add pictures so I'll try to send the new one regularly. It's all new and exciting to me :)

http://s956.photobucket.com/albums/ae49/andrealamb64/

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The End :) More to come!!