Phew!!

Happy dance!!

I'm done blogging about Beijing!!! I can now enjoy my last 4 weeks in China without that hanging over my head ;)

Also, I had to teach first grade for 2 weeks and I'm done with that too!

Now onto Children's Day tomorrow, a trip to Guangzhou, putting together 2 skits for the Spectacle performance on June 22nd, a kung fu performance sometime and cleaning the supply room......

The work never ends!

Oh well, I will enjoy it while it lasts :)

The Humble Abode

Oh this apartment. In all of its moldy glory, it really has become a safety net on which to fall back when faced with naughty children, evil mosquitos, stuffy humidity, and stinky pollution. But it hasn’t come easily or without frustration. It’s a modest little place but compared so some other ILP groups we have it really good. Through the good times and the bad, it’s been good to us. Every day is an incredibly amazing apartment adventure.


Here is our washing machine.

It sits on a little deck of sorts off the back of our apartment. Notice the railing…..

One day while hanging up the laundry on our deck, the mop slid in between the railing and fell. Oh great, I thought, I’ll have to go all the way downstairs and get it out of the bushes. But when I looked over the railing this is what I saw:

That black blob is the mop, sorry it’s small. Anyway, I once dropped a sock down there and never saw it again. We tried going down to knock on the door and ask for it but no one answered. Long story short I used my inventing skills to construct a device for retrieving it.

A bent hanger and some dental floss, the ordeal was shortly resolved. I felt pretty cool:)


The kitchen is a little growth off the side of this deck. It’s small but it gets the job done. I skype my family from this poor excuse of a room hehe.

Dish dryer that we never use, microwave, clutter, the usual. A little to the right out of view there is a water cooler and behind the door there's enough room for an ironing board and that's pretty much it!


Ahhh, the magic oven. I made the best yellow cake I’ve ever had in my life made in one of these. I don’t know if I will ever comprehend how this contraption is so amazing but I think it has something to do with a broiler and a lower heating rod..or it’s just plain enchanted, I like that theory better ;) Here we are making a Chinese cake of sorts one Sunday with our Chinese friends Tina and Mandy. It unforseeably puffed up real good and tasted like German pancakes. Yum!

One time we had a dance party in this our little cooking closet.

We fit 8 of us in the kitchen..which meant not a lot of dancing room but it was sweet! Complete with a strobe light, which admittedly had to be powered by one of us standing outside flickering the lights off and on but that’s beside the point.



Chocolate chip cookies were involved. Things get pretty awesome around here sometimes :)


And let’s not forget the bathroom!

I will probably never live in another apartment where you can simultaneously use the toilet for its intended purpose and then literally turn around and use it as a foot stool to shave your legs during your shower, and complete the experience with a quick mop of the floor. It’s quite the set-up! Sometimes during my shower I can’t help but laugh when I remember where I am..standing in front of the toilet showering directly on the bathroom floor. Too funny..and yes it gets SUPER wet in there. We bought a little garbage can thing with a lid to keep the toilet paper dry and we have to squeegee the floor after showering. And this is normal to me?


In China there are these things called house shoes. They don’t have backs and they're pretty much slippers worn only around the home.

These are mine. I happen to love them:) Pandas were the only option.


Bugs. Cockroaches, specifically. One day I woke up and went to use the sink in the bathroom and there was one just chillin’ in there. Lovely. Some days there are tons of dead ones in the hall so once we signed a note to the boys from a dead cockroach and included his body..

(Too bad we are the only ones who really think we are funny!)


And then there’s just the random fun that goes on around here.


Dressing up in Halloween costumes and trick-or-treating on April Fools’ Day



Yep :)



Truth or Dare one night, yes Amanda is pouring water into my mouth, blind-folded. Things were obviously getting very intense ;)



Bringing Chinese friends over to our crammed apt to watch New Moon because they’re in love with Twilight. Love it :)


It’s not much but it’s home for another month!! I think I’m even gonna miss it!

Jiao zi :)

Once upon a time Justin, Beanz and I used to make pot-stickers and watch free Comcast on-demand movies while we ate them. They were the best thing ever :) Then I went to Hong Kong and realized I could get them there! Their name had changed to dumplings but that was not a problem with me. THEN I got to Zhongshan where we ultimately began calling them by their Chinese name, jiao zi. And we loved them :) We've had them on every vacation we've been on and you can always rely on their squishy, filled goodness. Our native coordinators taught us how to make them an all my dreams and wishes were fulfilled :)



My creation:) Isn't it cute!


It was a fun night :)


Hopefully I can find the stuff to make them at home! 'Find an Asian market' is definitely on my summer checklist once I get back to Utah! Word on the street is that there's one in Provo. I will find it.

And I will be tons better than Justin or Beanz at using chopsticks from now on ;)

Long Vacation: Day 10

The long vacation was a big party but it was just that—long. Go figure. Enjoyable but very tiring to be running to and fro from pavilion to pavilion without a lot of time to recuperate. So it's a little bit of an understatement to say that I was excited for it to be over :)

For breakfast we ate off the street. And by that I do not mean that we literally picked food up off of the roads in Xi’an and put it in our mouths. I hardly like letting my shoes touch the roads here, what were you thinking?? It’s just the term we use to refer to trying food from street-side little vendors. Always cheap and always an adventure. Today was a Chinese hamburger..and let’s just say that the Chinese should leave hamburgers to America ;)

We came back to the hostel and Tiffany told us to have our luggage down to the lobby in an hour. My sunglasses had broken in my backpack so we proceeded to spend the good part of that time doing the following...


We got laughing so hard, oh my goodness it was hilarious! Totally beat packing!


Anna had to give it a try


followed shortly by Debbie


It is actually a lot harder than it looks, I promise. And the facial expressions are totally necessary to get them to stay like that! No joke! We sometimes wonder about our sanity here..


Ahem, anyway, packing..we said goodbye to our friends at the hostel and loaded a bus to the airport! I was a little anxious about flying on a Chinese airline but the airport looked normal enough so that was a good sign. We checked our luggage and waited for our flight, which of course was delayed.

Resume taking funny pictures with sunglass lenses!


Erin’s turn


Joey..haha


Amanda’s is one of the best, I think!

Sometimes it pays to be so easily entertained :) We boarded the plane and we were on our way. I ended up sitting by one of the guys in our group, Ryan, who got his mission call to Taiwan while he was here! *Yay* I informed him of this tendency I have on planes to get motion sickness which sometimes has very negative, and often visible, side effects. I expected him to be understanding but he wasn’t, he was NOT OKAY with the situation and was convinced that I was NOT going to throw up on this flight. Ryan’s a big guy so I was a little surprised that he was so squeamish but oh well, if I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t help it! The flight started out well, nothing too exciting and I was just concentrating with all my might to relax and not let the normal little bumps get to me, because the landings are what make me sick so if I stayed as un-sick as possible until then it would be good, right? I read a little and about..20 minutes before landing I got up to use the bathroom, even though the seat belt sign was on. I knew I had to hold my composure during the landing and having to pee wasn’t a distraction I wanted to deal with. I waiting in line (so awkward on planes..) and used the teeny bathroom and started back to my seat. About halfway there the plane hit a huge patch of turbulence and the whole plane jolted in a downwards direction, making everyone scream and drop a couple of feet. For me out of my seat it was like I walked down a step, it was so scary! I grabbed onto the nearest seat and seriously scrambled to my row, pushily telling Ryan to let me past because if this plane was going down I sure as heck wanted to be in my seat for it! After I had my seatbelt safely on I looked around and saw that one of the Chinese guys across the aisle had been holding his green tea up and when we hit the turbulence it was been thrown at the ceiling and was now dripping over everyone. Hahaha it was so great, a nice little comic relief to a seriously scary situation. I was out of my seat for all of that! I thought of Lost and Charlie in the bathroom when the plane went down..I always think of Lost when I get on a plane..

Then I remembered the lady waiting to use the bathroom after me..and felt sincerely sorry about however that experience went for her. Yikes..

Landing. Ryan was SO determined to distract me to the extent of not vomiting and was just asking me pointless questions that I don’t even remember giving him answers to but it worked, and to both of our relief (mostly his), I didn’t! Success!! There’s hope for the three flights back to the states! We got off the plane and were hit by a wave of humidity. Home sweet home :)

We claimed our luggage and rented a little van to Zhongshan. We’d been looking forward to climbing the four flights of stairs back to our beds for about a week at that point. We unlocked our door and tumbled into our stuffy apartment and it’s times like these that I know I’m actually living in China because this crammed little dorm room felt like home :)

Long Vacation: Day 9

Worst. Night. Ever. But we made it!

Can you blame us for eating breakfast and going straight up to our rooms and sleeping after a night like that? You shouldn’t. Those puffy white sheets, the wooden bunk beds, oh it was Heaven :) We woke up at noon and rode a long series of buses for two-ish hours to see the terra cotta warriors. I was excited to go (but not too hugely) but boy oh boy they over-exceeded my expectations by about 250%. I hadn't expected to geek out as much as I did!

Long story short, one of the Ming emperors was either nervous about the after-life and wanted to feel protected or he thought that his possessions would go with him so he had statues of his army made. Pretty daunting task! All of this was barely found in the seventies!


See for yourself:)


Pit 3, maybe. If you ever go see the terra cotta warriors visit the pits in backwards order because 1 is the most impressive!



Go terra cotta!



Pit 2. Generals and other high-ranked guys



Terra cotta warriors?



My Olympic fixation reaches new heights—a real torch from the Beijing 2008 games!



Pit 1, the biggest and most impressive. The room is as big as an airplane hangar, and I don’t remember how many warriors are in there but there are a lot. They are still being excavated today. Pretty cool :)


Lovin’ the zoom on my Christmas present? Oh yes! Thanks, Dad and Mom :)


Isn’t the detail amazing?? Every warrior is completely unique, even down to the treading on the soles of their shoes.




We rode a bus back to the hostel and by this time I was definitely vacationed out. The sights of the Beijing vacation are amazing but they are tiring- a lot of walking and transportation catastrophes and I’d been fighting a cold all week that I just couldn’t shake. I was more than content going back to the hostel and just chilling for the rest of the night. Some hostels have activities every night and it just so happened that the activity that night was a karaoke/open-mic night of sorts. There was girl playing guitar and singing named Journey from..somewhere that I don’t remember, but she’d been staying at the hostel for a long period of time but was continuing her travels soon. She sang a couple songs, some in Chinese, others in Korean and some in English. It was just the most relaxing atmosphere, listening to music, Shaw was playing some bongos they had there, as people from all over the world checked into the hostel and just contently swaying to the music.

She asked if anyone would sing and somehow I ended up singing “Stand By Me” pretty nastily through my cold but it was worth it when I got a plate full of fresh red strawberries as “payment” for participating. But I jammed with some Chinese people at a hostel in front of people from all over the world. Haha wow! It was such a wonderfully content night. Oh and did I mention there’s a hostel dog?? A brown labradoodle named Teddy..

I fell in love with the curls!! What a cutie ;) I wanted to bring him home!



Tiffany and I were hiding from Shaw. We were almost invisible.

A relaxing evening to end a really awesome day:)

Long Vacation: Day 8

Travel day! But first a visit to the Yonghegong Llama Temple on the street of our hostel. It was an experience that smelled strongly of incense and was filled with too many Buddhas to count and just as many sneaky pictures of them that definitely weren’t allowed..


Enjoying our cultural experience maybe a little too much?


This would explain all of the incense being sold on the street of our hostel. Go figure!

And the Buddhas..




That's a big buddha!!


I still have no idea what any of that had to do with llamas. Oh well!

One last trip to Silk Street and we were going to be on our way to Xi'an. I had exercised self-control and passed up many things I wanted until a pair of perfect knock-off Asics were literally handed to me and I had to stop and barter for them. Amanda and I tried every tactic we knew, telling the lady Amanda had a student with her same name (which was completely the truth), getting a picture with her..

..and we eventually got them down pretty low. Just take the picture and give me my dang Asics!


Remember how the last train I took to Beijing was an awesome little experience on a sleeper seat, tons of fun and full of smiles and everything wonderful. Welllllll...

Enter the hard sitting seat. They are adequately named. I sat straight up on a seat sharing leg room with three Chinese men for ELEVEN HOURS. Hours that should have been spent in a bed of my own not smelling like a hundred Chinese people who haven't showered in days. It was so awful. The most uncomfortable thing ever. Almost unspeakably so. Not to mention other perks of the night.. trying to balance over a squatter to change into my pajama pants. Or waiting for the man with the noodle cart to come (he never did). This picture pretty much sums up the experience...

These are the two guys across from me. Obviously they found the only comfortable sleeping position. That black, blonde, and light green mess on the right is me laying on the little table between the 2 rows of seats, with the hood of my jacket over my head in an attempt to block out the light of the train to get some sleep. Yuck. After that the international flight home is laughable. I'm not sure where to end this post in terms of what happened last that night because it's all a jumble in my brain of waking up from sleeping on Amanda every 10 minutes to re-adjust, fall asleep, repeat, over and over and over, all the while trying to cuddle with a seat that stuck at a 100 degree angle. My back hurts just thinking about it….{shiver}

And I couldn't help but wonder, "How long have we been on this train? Is this ever going to end?"

Until then, I just tried to sleep and avoid playing footsies with the sprawled-out legs of the Chinese man across from me.

And to think I couldn’t wait to experience a train across China.

Long Vacation: Day 7

No fooling around today, we were GOING to see the dead body of Mao. As the week went on we progressively got up earlier and earlier and we actually made it out of the hostel by about 10:30 today {yay!}. Funny how vacation does that to you. We wanted to beat the rush by getting there as close to when it opens at possible but it wasn't so. Luckily for us there wasn't a huge line and it was moving pretty fast. We were smarter today and sent half of our group in while the other half waited with the bags. Genius :)


Debbie, Amanda and I waiting in the heat. Umbrellas aren't just for rain, folks :) Eventually the others came back and sat with the stuff while we went in to the monument. First of all it was really cool to see the reverence that the Chinese people had in coming to pay their respects to this man who is pivotal in their history. Second, it was freaking weird to see the preserved body of a guy who I see every time I spend a bill here and for some odd reason his face was very orange. I think it was the lighting but either way it was just a successfully creepy experience.


I found the building on the back of the 100 yuan. Woot!
(The only shame in this is that no one at home will appreciate the unbelievable greatness of this picture. Oh well!)


From there we rode the Subway to a new pearl market that most of us hadn't ventured to up to that point. My head teacher and her husband said the bargaining was easier there and that they had stuff we hadn't found at Silk Street so we went for a look. This was probably the worst day in Beijing and one of the biggest "I hate China days" of my experience living here. The sales hawks were as merciless as vultures and I seriously felt preyed upon as Amanda and I floundered to pick out a suitcase for her and a lady literally pushed me because I wasted her time in not wanting the pair of definite knock-off-looking Asics. You hang around the dishonest, rude, deceitful and self-serving Asians long enough and you start to despise all of them! Bargaining is a clever game of wits in some ways but it was not fun here. We eventually went back to the warm familiarity of our beloved Silk Street and finished the night feeling better about China and life in general. Stupid hecklers at the pearl market. Nobody likes you and I hope bad things happen to you in life. Not really, you just completely annoyed and humiliated me and that wasn't okay. May we never cross paths again.


My favorite Beijing salesperson, Sherrie! Look at all her jeans! We made friends with her and she gave us good prices on them :) I tried on jeans in that corner with only this Chinese person shielding me from anyone walking by. Lovely. By the end of Beijing it didn't even phase me...


Anyway, it's all in the past. Hakuna Matata. With our nights becoming fewer and fewer, Joey, Debbie and I decided it was Round 2--time to make the journey to the Olympic Stadium again! Our ride through the Subway transfers was much smoother and on our last one before Bird's Nest station we could tell we were close because of how awesome it was decorated! It was a nice change from the normally drab platforms we were used to.

Think of all the nationalities, athletes and spectators alike, that used this subway in 2008! Way cool! (Can you tell the Summer Olympics are my favorite?)


We came up out of the station to find an arrangement of beautiful buildings surrounding us. We all started laughing and basking in the glory! But it was short-lived-- the lights shut off, I kid you not, 10 seconds after we made it. Oh brother. We walked down the street a ways to the Bird's Nest only to find that everything closes at 10, that people were being herded out of the stadium and for some reason the Nest wasn't even lit up. Disappointing...there was a little street vendor selling old Olympic merchandise and I'm totally not ashamed that I bought a little silver Bird's Nest keychain and hooked it on my belt loop. I was on an Olympic high, okay? We tried to get as close as we could for some good pictures but the distance plus the lighting were just not working out.

Our best attempts:


Yep. Hard to photograph. Still awesome though!


Yet again some Olympian pictures were necessary..

The Olympic torch finally in context, woohoo!


Swimming to water cube. Even harder to photograph and not illuminated at all. These people make it so hard to be a tourist sometimes!!


Just to add to the sheer bliss of the night, there was a guy selling sweet potatoes from a cart outside the stadium and we were starving so we bought one and shared it.

Um, yeah...it was one of the tastiest things ever, whether because of the overall experience or because I was starving. For whatever reason, the Bird's Nest, the Water Cube, a sweet potato and a group of joggers really made the Olympic adventure a freaking amazing one.