Hong Kong Adventure-Day 1

We got off work on Thursday at 7pm and left straight for Hong Kong leaving at 8:30pm. But we had a 22-hour lay over in Shanghai that night and wouldn’t fly out till 4pm the next day. Mike had made some last minute decisions (like literally last minute! Right before we left school) and booked us a hotel room not too far from the airport for only $15. Our original plan was to stay those 22 hours in the airport, sleep there.. and not shower for almost two days. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about that idea but I think it worked out better to book that hotel room.

When we got to Shanghai it was around 11pm or so. We thought we would have plenty of time to get some food and check in to the hotel by 1am. Once we got off the tarmac (a lot of airports in China take a bus from the tarmac to the airport after you get off the plane) and into the airport we realized there wasn’t many food options left at that time of night. We walked around for a bit and decided to just go with a cup of noodles for dinner and go find a taxi. We didn’t realize that in Shanghai there are HUGE taxi lines at the airport. We thought there would just be a ton of taxis everywhere.. WRONG. We ended up standing there for about 40 min. By that time it was 12:45. At that point we were a little worried about being able to check into the hotel in time. But we were only 4 people away from getting into the taxi and going to the hotel, which was only like 5 min away.

But then this taxi van pulled up, reversed half way, and parked. Blocking all of the taxies from getting around. Everyone in the taxi line just dropped their jaw. What the hell was this guy doing?! At first we thought maybe he was protesting something. But instead after he parked and shut off the engine, got out of the van and just walked around rubbing his belly. He didn’t say anything. Just decided to block everyone. At that point we were like crap! Are we going to make it?! All I wanted was a bed at that point. I didn’t care where it was, I was just exhausted. No one knew what was going on. Eventually the police came, escorted him away and we finally got our taxi. Still not sure what that was about ha ha.

The taxi ride turned out to be about 10 minutes. We did eventually make it to the hotel on time. We just kept driving and thinking “Okay, now THIS is downtown Shanghai”. The city just kept going on forever and ever. It was so beautiful too.

When we got to the hotel we could tell it was no Four Seasons or even Holiday Inn. This place was pretty janky, but it worked. We had one room with a bed, shower, toilet, and TV. Yes, all in the same room. There was no separation between the toilet/ shower and the bed. No curtain everything was in the same room. But at that point we didn’t care! We were so exhausted!

   We made our cup of noodles and passed out. 

筋疲力尽

Jīnpílìjìn (Exhausted!)

Back from Hong Kong!

Were back from Hong Kong!! I just wanted to let everyone know I fixed the pictures in my last post. For some reason I couldn’t get pictures off my computer onto my phone to post them.  It’s really difficult to post on this blog from China. It takes me a few hours every time because I have to post it off of my phone that has a VPN.  The VPN allows for the wifi that I use to somehow direct it through Singapore so that I can use Google and other sites that are blocked in China. But it isn’t perfect. I get the message “This site hasn’t came to your country” a lot ha ha ha. I will post a few times about Hong Kong in the coming days. 

Please check out those pictures in the last blog!

  

More soon!

很快更多

Hěn kuài gèng duō

 

Another Spring Festival

Time has really been flying over here! Our work schedule has been changed again, but for the better. I now work Monday, Thursday, Friday from 1-7pm and Saturday and Sunday from 9-7pm. Gives a lot more time in the mornings to get up and go do things..  if I do actually get out of bed right away.  I’m still working on a good balance for this new schedule too. I have a lot of work to get done in the day and six hours is almost not enough, but at least I have the option to sleep in if I need now.  We also don’t get lunch those days and I haven’t figured out a good time to eat.  Usually I eat around 10am and noon.  But with the new schedule I need to leave the house around noon to walk to the school and it’s hard for me to balance eating throughout the day. 

On that note Mike and I have been slowly trying out the Paleo Diet. If you don’t know what the Paelo Diet is it is also called the caveman diet.  In essence you can eat anything that is unprocessed. Which is super easy to do in China! The majority of what we eat is unprocessed anyways. We make stir-fry almost every night with different seafood and vegetables. The only hard part about this diet is snacks.  I’m not sure what I should do for snacks.  I’ve been eating a lot of cucumber for snacks and they fill me up some, but I get hungry fast again. Mike told me this morning that I’m a “gas guzzler”. He’s very efficient with his energy output but I burn whatever I take in way too fast Ha Ha. The Paleo Diet isn’t bland at all though. This morning I made banana pancakes. 

 I used 4 bananas, 4 eggs, and some coconut milk. They tasted amazing! We also eat a lot of lettuce raps that are really tasty! If anyone has any other recipes that are unprocessed please leave a comment! I want some new ideas!

We decided to really start this diet next week because tomorrow we leave for Hong Kong for 5 days!! We have another spring festival in China and everyone has a mandatory 3 days off of work, then the school put our weekend on there to give us 5! We have no set plans yet for what we are going to do there. But I’ll be sure to post some more pictures when we get back. 

Other then that nothing else has really happened. The weather here is becoming really nice! It’s hit about 70 degrees a couple days. I don’t understand how they do it, but the Chinese still wear long sleeves even though it’s a great temperature for T-shirts. 

I’ve also started teaching my science class for students who are 6 years old.  We will have 10, 2-hour classes total. I started out with Natural Science.

We explored how polar bears stay warm in the arctic with their blubber.  I had the students put their hands in a butter filled glove then into some ice water and they had to say weather it was warmer then their other hand. I wish I had pictures from that class! Their faces when they put their hands into the glove were priceless! One of my students looked so scared! But no one cried, which is always a positive!

In the second class we talked about plants and how the plants are able to absorbed water.  For this activity I had the students put roses into colored water.

   

 

Then in a few days we looked at the roses and noticed that the petals turned colors because the water was taken through the stem and leaves then to the petals. That experiment went relatively well! The students were really excited to pick out what flower and the color of the dye.

The last class I did was about wind. We learned North, South, East, West and made a wind vane.  I think the students really enjoyed this activity. It was very hands on and we got to go outside! What kid doesn’t love being able to go outside during class! 

I begin the next three classes on Chemical Science in a couple weeks. Should be a really fun unit! 

Thank you everyone for reading! I love your comments! My parents will be here in a couple weeks hopefully! So I will be sure to post pictures with them when they get here as well!

  

  

Hong Kong

香港

Xiānggǎng

Peanut Butter!!

Happy Spring Festival! We had 3 days off this week, but it was absolutely chilly here! It was so cold!!! I thought spring was coming soon..but I’m still waiting for it! We did do a little exploring the last day and went to Shandong University. We met a couple people and Mike got to play a little soccer.  It was a good trip and we only got a little lost on the way there.  We were told to take bus 12, but we didn’t realize we didn’t know where to get off the bus until we got to the end of that bus line and had to walk back to the university.  Whoops!! 

 

For most of the festival we just stayed in and stayed warm!! I ended up making some delicious homemade peanut butter!! Thanks Aunt Kay for the idea!! 

 Peanut butter in Weihai is relatively expensive, its about $10 for a jar that would maybe last us a week. So, instead I went and bought about $2 worth of peanuts that made a little more then the $10 jar.            -First we had to shell all of the peanuts (good thing we downloaded season 5 of The Walking Dead). 

            -Once all of the peanuts were shelled I put a little less then ¼ cup of oil in the blender.

            -Added about ½ teaspoon of salt.

            -Then the peanuts.  Don’t put all the peanuts in at first though. If you do they get stuck under the blade of the blender. 

 It takes a while to blend it, but after a while of blending and stirring it comes out pretty smooth. I didn’t realize how much I missed peanut butter but it is a great source of protein. I start every morning with a piece of fresh baked bread

花生酱

Huāshēngjiàng (Peanut Butter)

Korea Adventure!!

Mike is finally here!!!! He got here on March 25^th and I barely had my things moved into our new apartment! When you buy an apartment in China it is usually your job to clean the apartment or heir someone to clean it for you… and since I had hardly any money left I cleaned the thing for about a week! It was one of the most disgusting things I have ever cleaned! I didn’t even have time to start the kitchen. Mike got that pleasure. Even though the school invited him to come on March 25^th he isn’t allowed to start work until April 10^th, so he has had a lot of time to clean and hang out.  We were able to go over to Korea for four days last week, though. It was a complete adventure! We went over there with absolutely no plan, not even a place to stay.  We started our adventure by trying to find the bus stop that goes to the Weihai Airport. That wasn’t too bad, but we were definitely not sure if we were in the right spot or not. We took about a 40 min bus ride to the airport, went through immigration, and went straight on the airplane.  We couldn’t have timed it better!

Once we landed in Korea we went up to the subway/bus counter to see how we should get into down town Seoul. This was relatively easy as well! We just went and got on the subway and it took us all the way down town with no stops. Once we made it downtown we thought it was going to take us some time to find a hostel that we liked, but again we lucked out.  A policeman helped look up a hostel that was pretty cheap. He actually studied at the University of Pennsylvania (I believe that’s the one). 

 The hostel, the Insa Guesthouse, ended up only costing us about $16 a night for me and $14 a night for Mike.  Not too bad and breakfast was included! (If anyone wants more details about the guesthouse, just let me know) But we did have to stay in separate dormitories. Mike got lucky on this one. In the mixed dormitory there were only 3 other guys who pretty much just passed out as soon as they came in the room. The girl’s dormitory was a little different. We had six girls staying in the room every night. For the first two nights three of the girls would come in at like 2am, turn the lights on, shower, talk… I didn’t sleep too much those nights. But it was an experience.

 

The first night we got there we didn’t do too much. Just went had dinner and came back and went to sleep. We were exhausted but we did do a lot of walking that day.

 The second day we were a little bit more active! We went and saw a palace in the morning and in the evening we went to soccer game (South Korea vs. New Zealand). 

 The palace was pretty neat! We didn’t realize how intricate they were, we just kept walking through different paths, it was never ending.    After lunch we headed over to the world cup soccer complex. We ended up getting there pretty early. We had some coffee and went for a pretty neat little hike. There were so many different types of birds it was so cool! In Washington we have a few woodpeckers but it was so neat to actually sit there and watch them.  We also saw a peacock! In the wild! I didn’t even know that peacocks lived in South Korea!

The soccer game was pretty fun too.. I guess.. Although it was raining the whole time and I was frozen and wet.. But Mike LOVED it! He was so ecstatic the whole time.

 

The third day we ended up meeting up with our recruiter Joseph of Star Teacher, the guy who set us up with our teaching job in China.  He is such an awesome person!  He grew up in Texas then after college decided to go over to South Korea and got a recruiting job. That’s where he met his wife! Since then they have both found different recruiting jobs. It was so good to meet him in person finally.  He took us to a Korean BBQ place.  I have been to a couple of them in Weihai, but it was Mike’s first time trying it. The marinated bbq it was absolutely amazing!  I don’t want to make anyone mad… but I think Korean food is better then Chinese.  Although Chinese food is very healthy I have a hard time finding a balance between enough flavor and sooooooo spicy I cant even eat it.  Korean food gives more of an option for the flavor and spiciness. 

 After lunch with Joseph we decided to go grab a bottle of wine and sit in the park… we weren’t there too long when I almost got sick. I was so close to vomiting everywhere (sorry for the people who are reading this and are not use to me talking about bodily fluids).  Luckily Mike got us out of there in the nick of time. I got a sprite and it help settle my stomach long enough to get back to the hostel and take a nap.  I have no idea what happened (and no mom and dad it wasn’t the wine! I only had a couple sips before that happened).

On our last night in Seoul we tried this restaurant that looked super cute.  It was a tiny restaurant, you could only walk straight in once you came in the door and it was pretty tight in there.  After trying to communicate with the waitress to get oysters we got some sushi fish instead. Not complaining though it was amazing! Mike also had his first experience eating the silk worms. I’m actually not entirely sure if these ones were silk worms or something like them. They were smaller but tasted the exact same to me. He didn’t think they tasted so bad.  They really only taste like sunflower seeds, a very natural taste. 

         The next morning when we got up we packed all of our stuff and headed back to Weihai.  We had no problems getting to the airport and through security.  But our 1-hour flight turned into nearly 2 hours. Once we got to Weihai, the pilot came on the intercom 3 times telling us that he was going to TRY and land… it was a little terrifying! But there was like zero visibility, it turned out to be super foggy that day in Weihai.  Every time the pilot tried to land we would start to descend and then take off again super fast. It was a little terrifying; I’m not going to lie.  Although we did end up landing smoothly, Mike said that on one side of the runway we had just a few yards before we would have hit the dirt.

 

Now we are back in Weihai. I had to work Friday and Saturday. Now we are on a three-day festival again. I will post more either tonight or tomorrow morning. Thank you everyone for all of your support!

春节快乐

Chūnjié kuàilè (Happy Spring Festival)

Winter Camp 2 + Update

I really need to work on posting more! I didn’t realize it has been a month since I posted last! So after the first winter camp we had another one, this one went a lot more smoothly. In my class I had students ages from 2 ½- 10 years old. My biggest difficulty that week was to keep everyone learning at an appropriate level.  Its really easy to have the 2 year olds learn through singing and dancing, but at 10 they are starting to think it isn’t as cool any more.  Overall though it was a successful week!

 

After that weeklong winter camp we only had one day off and we started our normal schedule. I’m now teaching one class almost everyday that I’m working. It really isn’t too bad but we are creating a lot of new curriculum for the school. This part is super difficult because you really have to think abstractly about different scenarios that may happen in the class and what the students might not understand. But I do like this because it allows me to be super creative with the lesson plans and the games that I might incorporate into the class.  Right now I’m coming up with the curriculum for the schools science classes for all of the levels.  It is a lot of fun, but with the creativity is also stress.  Some days I just can’t come up with anything creative but I still have due dates for the lesson plans.  I’ve finally come to the realization though I am only one person and at the end of the day I am doing all that I can possibly do.  

 

I think the stress from the work and the long hours has made me sick too.  I’ve had a cold for about two weeks, I think.  It was really rough at first. I went to work for the first few days with a fever. If I didn’t though they would have wanted me to go to the hospital.  In China, there is no family doctors or personal doctors (or if there is they must be really expensive) everyone has to go to the hospital if they are sick.  Then if the doctor decides that you are sick and you need medicine you have to stay there because they don’t prescribe medicines outside the hospital.  It also seems that they use the IV on everyone to hydrate them again… which I’ve never had and I’m not positive if I want my first experience to be here yet ha ha ha. 

Then on top of my cold, I’m pretty sure I had food poisoning.  Both my roommate and I went out the night before with a family and although we both had a fair share of wine, we were both sick throughout the night and the morning.  I’ve never been that sick from wine either ha ha Again everyone from the school wanted to take me to the hospital so I went to work close to vomiting every few minuets.  It was rough! I’ve been pretty lucky here though; I haven’t gotten sick any other time. 

 

Today was one of the first days I’ve really took care of myself and did things for myself.  I didn’t have to go into work today so I tried my first yoga class here. It was pretty fun! Defiantly challenging! The teacher kept coming over to me and pushing me literally in half and I couldn’t understand a thing anyone asked me or told me to do. But it was an awesome experience and there was one girl there a few years older then me that can speak pretty good English. She helped me a lot and wants me to take a belly dancing class with her. So I guess I will learn belly dancing in China, why not! She wants me to teach her ballet too. It will be so nice to have a friend outside of the school life. 

 

I apologize for such a long post. I will definitely try harder to post more often about all my experiences! Mike will finally be here in 1 week!!! AHHHH I’m so excited!:)  It’s been way too long since I’ve seen that man! I’m still looking for a place for us to live though! Fingers crossed I find one tomorrow, so I can move in before he gets here!!! Then on the 30^th we are going to Seoul, Korea for a few days.  I will definitely try to post before we leave for there and after we get back! 

 

I’m going to add a couple pictures of a lunch I had at my friend, Grace, house and a couple pictures of a green house strawberry farm she took us to. Her father is an amazing cook and everything for lunch tasted too good! The strawberry farm was out in the countryside.  We paid about $4 to eat all the strawberries you could while you were in the greenhouse!

 





很高兴认识你 = rèn shí nǐ hěn gāo xìng = Nice to meet you!

            (I say this literally everyday!)

Winter Camp 1

When I first left for China I was planning on having a week or so to acclimate before I taught. I also really wanted to teach young children about 4 years old.. but it didn’t go this smoothly. I am teaching at a training center, so it is a private institution that focuses on English. It just opened about 3 months ago so to increase the amount of students that they have they decided to put on two intensive English winter camps. They go for 7 days straight and start from 9am- 6pm. This made for some really long days! I spent about twelve hours a day for those 7 days at the school working on lesson plans.
When I first got here I had no idea about these winter camps and the third day I was here they told me I will be teaching the high level.. Ages 10-14 years old. Which I would start the following day. This might have been the hardest week in my life!!
Between not know exactly how to teach, teaching an age I wasn’t prepared to teach, and being jet lagged it was rough! Everyday I had to teach an English class on idioms, a homework class, and a reason class. Then throughout the week I also taught a class on drama, Legos, science, maps, and picture taking. Most of these things I had to learn with them.
Overall this week helped me learn a lot about myself. I had a total of 6 student in my class. Apart of these 6 I had three 14 year old boys that seemed to do everything in their power to make me go crazy! I think in America we think Chinese students will be super well behaved and structured because they are an only child.. But it’s not the case.. Teenagers are teenagers no matter where you are in the world! But I did learn a lot from them, I now know the worse to expect with this age and different techniques I should use to overcome these challenges.
Now I have over a week off for the Chinese New Year before I go back to teach the second winter camp. This time I’m teaching my 4 year olds!! I’ve already met some of the children who may be in my class and they are so fun! I am truly excited to teach them!

The Internet here is very difficult to use, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I have to post my blog from my cell phone though and I haven’t figured out how to completely use it though. These pictures are from the school that I teach and those were my student from last week!

新年快乐 （Happy New Year)

First Week!!

Wow! Time has flown by so fast! Since I landed 2 weeks ago I have been going, going, going! When I landed it was 8 am here, so everyone’s day was just beginning, but I was exhausted! None of my bags made it right away… And one of them ended up taking two days to make it… That day I had to go check in with the local police department, look at the school, and get groceries. It was a long first day! The next few days I had to get a physical and a new cell phone, but it felt like I was constantly doing things and had no time to recover from the flight!
My normal work schedule will be Wednesday-Sunday from 10-6, with Monday and Tuesday off. It’s not as long of a day as it sounds.. I don’t think.. I haven’t been able to work those hour yet though. Usually we take a nice long lunch in the middle too.
I’m learning new Chinese words everyday!! I really like the environment and the people too. Although, I do wish it was a bit warmer! It felt like
it was around 14 degrees when I first got here and the wind made it even worse! By its warming up now a bit! :)

多到了来到 （more to come)

On My Way!

After getting charged for my oversized bag (5 lbs over) and walking miles in LAX, I’m finally in the terminal to get on my flight to Beijing. After this 5 hr layover I will travel to Beijing for a 2 hr layover and then I arrive in Weihai at 8am on February 4th!

The nerves are finally setting in! I hope my bags all make it  and everything goes smoothly from here on out. The principal at the school that I will be teaching at is going to pick me up from the airport in Weihai and take me to my apartment.  I’m not sure what she has planned for me the first day, but I hope to be able to freshen up, nap, and maybe get my internet connected.  Who  knows though with the jet lag! I may be too excited though and be wide awake.

紧张 (nervous)

23 Days Left!

I finally purchased my plane ticket and my visa is being processed! It was quite a process to get both.  The prices for my plane ticket nearly doubled between Monday and Tuesday of this week.  I finally ended up going through Uniglobal Travel Partners for the ticket and they were to accommodate me with window seats the whole way!  I hope I will be able to sleep some on the flight, its about 23 hours of traveling!!!  I will be leaving out of PDX on February 2nd and arriving in Weihai on the 4th.

This is a pretty exciting/ stressful time.  Between packing, getting all my doctors appointments taken care of, and selling my furniture theres not much time in between. I’m going to start packing up most of my stuff these next two weeks.  My parents come down to Oregon on the 27th and we will be driving my things up to Washington, then I will fly back down to Oregon with Mike and stay with him until my flight to WeiHai.

兴奋 (Excited)