The Briefest Snapshot of a Wordy Person

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The Conspiracy Theorist

2015-06-28T23:11:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I had a friend in town for a few hours between flights. We wanted to hang out and were hungry, which meant we went and got food. Luckily because the Phoenix airport is in the middle of town you can go 10 minutes in any direction and find some great places to eat food.

Looking at what was close and sounded yummy we decided to go to Lolo's Chicken and Waffles. I had never been there before but I really wanted to try chicken and waffles. Sitting there and looking at the prices of the entrees, I realized just how cheap making chicken and waffles could be. Like, seriously, I could open a shop and make some serious dough while still keeping the prices cheap*. But that's beside the point. I'm not the conspiracy theorist in this story and it was better food than I could have made that filled us up, which is all we really wanted.

When we finally came out of the restaurant and began walking to my car we met this man who was a little raggedy and riding a bike. He came up to me and asked me for some food or money. He explained that some kind soul had given him food not too long ago, but he had set it down on the sidewalk for a minute and looked up to find it gone. That was really unfortunate because he was hungry and the food had smelled good! I sympathized with him (making all the correct "awww" sounds during his story) but then informed him that I had no money on me: I had just used it to pay for my food inside.

Suddenly this man started to rant: he let me know that he was having a terrible day. There was a gang in the neighborhood that had the sole purpose of killing him somehow. He had almost gotten run over by them a few times that day and he KNEW that whoever had stolen his food was part of the gang that was just tormenting him. He continued to ask me for money and I continued to remind him I had no cash and to make sympathetic sounds as I fumbled quickly for my keys to let my friend and I into my car.

At the last moment as my friend and I were escaping quickly into the safety of my car, the man turned to me, no longer to ask for food or money, but to accuse me of being part of the gang in the neighborhood out to get him. The sudden exclamation of "YOU'RE ONE OF THEM!!!" sped on my retreat to my car, and was also the only thing my friend heard of my short conversation with the gentleman. It was enough for her to realize the mental state of my new friend though. As I slowly exited the parking lot, we laughed (a little nervously) at the back and forth I had experienced with the man on the bicycle but the whole time I was watching for him--just in case he wanted to prove my connection to this "gang" by jumping in in front of my car to see if I was trying to hit him.

*I'm not trying to bash on Lolo's. It is actually really good food and the prices are pretty cheap. I just wanted to clear that up.

Advice from a [fictional] famous photographer

2015-06-25T14:03:00.001-07:00

I fell in love with the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty last year when it came out, so I recently bought it...and then watched it twice in a 24 hour period. Seriously, so good! But there was one part that stood out to me, a part that I wanted to talk about today.

The quote comes near the end of the movie from a photographer. He has a perfect shot of an AMAZING sight! and yet he hesitates to take the picture. He says "Sometimes I don't [take the shot]. If I like a moment for me, personally, I don't like having the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it. Right here."

When I very first made this blog, 4 years ago (it was really that long ago??) I called it Snapshots of a Wordy Person because, well, I know I can get a little wordy in the details. But I also wanted to include as many pictures with my posts as possible. A picture says a thousand words after all, and what better way to paint the picture of my experiences than with pictures along with the story. I was really good at taking pictures and uploading them to my blog in Italy, and I resolved to continue taking pictures after I returned. Then life got in the way and I forgot to bring my camera with me, or forgot to take it out and take amazing (or even horrible) pictures to help articulate my experiences. So I felt bad posting stories on my blog without pictures. Who wants to read paragraph after paragraph of my life, even if it does have a lot of detail.

Then I went to China, where I needed a VPN to even get onto my blog. Nevertheless I tried to post stories and pictures of my various adventures. But I don't know if the stories always came out with the pictures in the format that I wanted. But I was taking a lot of pictures. And forgetting to take a lot of pictures as well... I think I was starting to get a better balance of picture taking to experiencing life though. I took more pictures of people than landscapes and things. Those are the memories that I want to keep anyways. With Google so prominent, I could find a thousand landscape pictures of the same thing in much higher quality or from much better angles, so why did I need to take pictures I could find elsewhere? I began to realize what might actually be important to document and what I might not care about in 2 hours, let alone 20 years.

But sometimes I catch myself still taking ridiculous pictures of things. Mostly I try to do it on snapchat any more, so it only really exists in my life for 24 hours. But even that is a little ridiculous. I am part of a generation that is so afraid to do anything without sharing it with the world; I think we as a generation want praise and compliments on our ever action so we think we need to record it all. We take pictures of food, pictures of our feet on the beach, pictures of our clothes and our crafts, pictures of everything. I watched a funny video that addresses that issue. But I want to ask: What do we really want to share and remember about our experiences?

So from now on I will strive to make more memories and enjoy the moments as they come, and not feel pressured to immediately take pictures and share them with any and everyone that I can. This doesn't mean I can't or shouldn't take pictures, but I won't let the little screen in front of me be the only way I see and remember the world around me. I will stay in the moment.

A Mormon, A Catholic and an Atheist go to...

2015-02-22T22:07:00.001-07:00

So I promised a post a few weeks ago and then never followed through. But I have some time now and I'd love to share some awesome stories from this week.

Last weekend was the last three day weekend of the semester. Being the good BYU alumna that I am, I used it to the best of my ability (momentarily forgetting that I will have a spring break this year!) and went to three National Parks in three days. I had been planning since late December to drive up to Utah and say farewell to my lovely ILP head teacher Maegan before she left on her mission, and when my coworker said she wanted to go up to the Grand Canyon I decided to make a weekend of it all.

We began our journey Friday night, a little bit too late for my liking as the driver of our adventures, but we got into Williams, AZ by 10pm and found a hotel. I rejected the first one we found because the lady behind the counter saw us walk in, made eye contact and then promptly ignored us for the next 5 minutes while she finished whatever she was doing. It wasn't that we weren't helped right away, but as a face for customer service I expect a "I'll be right with you" or "Give me a minute." Seems easy enough to expect from a front desk attendant. The second hotel (the one we stayed at) was cleaner and seemed less sketchy to me, except when we tried to get into our room. Then the card reader wouldn't read our cards, or really any cards that weren't Master Laundry Cards....so we got one of those with a promise not to accidentally or otherwise sneak into other rooms and that we would return it next morning. Sitting in our room we realized how funny our adventure could be as we started saying: a Catholic, a Mormon and an atheist went to the Grand Canyon...

The next morning we headed out to the Grand Canyon. I had the opportunity to introduce my companions to selfie sticks! and then we promptly saw more of them than I ever thought I would see in America. We also saw a gaggle of Japanese school girls in uniform and many more groups of Chinese and Japanese tourists also visiting the Grand Canyon. I had a blast saying hello to them in Japanese or Chinese,

and Justin had fun doing handstands and acroyoga near the edge.

We hiked down into the Canyon a little bit, but we were hoping to drive to St. George and get a hotel room there for the night, so we knew we couldn't stay super late or go really far down. We went far enough down to see the change in rock and watch the donkeys hiking back out of the canyon with heavy packs on their backs. It was cool, and we knew it was going to get cooler (in temperature) if we continued hiking down in shadows and a deepening afternoon, so we hiked back out. it was actually a lot farther down than I realized we had gone, but I can't say we really went that far.

That night we made it to St George by about 9:30 and found another Motel 6 to stay in. I think we were the luckiest travelers there because we found what I think was probably the last empty room in St. George. It was over priced and a single bed in a smoking room, but it was a room with a shower, so I was happy enough. After visiting with Maegan Sunday morning and saying goodbye and good luck on your mission, we decided to head out to Zion's and see what we could find in terms of hikes in that National Park.

The park was really full that day because it was President's Day weekend, and who wouldn't want to be out and enjoying the weather and scenery! They told us that basically we couldn't drive much farther than the main entrance to the Park, so we asked if there were any less populated areas. The lovely Park Ranger Andrew let us in on a (somewhat) secret valley about 45 minutes away. He was spot on: we saw 3 other people in the 3 hours we were in the area hiking around. and it was a GORGEOUS canyon! Zion's really is wonderful, and I was reminded of that as we drive and hiked around and saw the mountains and valleys around us.

The last National Park we went to last weekend was Wupatki National Monument just north of Flagstaff. It is some ancient Native American ruins, but very well preserved. We had a blast running around and looking at the workmanship of the remaining walls around. It was extremely windy there, so I don't know how the ancient peoples managed to live and farm there. We barely lasted an hour puttering about, but maybe we were just tired from so much travel time in the past few days.

All in all, I had a blast traveling and getting to know my travel companions and viewing some of the most amazing sights in Arizona and Southern Utah. We had good conversations, took some great pictures with my selfie stick, and enjoyed the beauty of nature. so a Mormon, a Catholic and an Atheist went to the Grand Canyon, Zion's National Park, and Wupatki National Monument in a weekend and lived to tell the tale.

Aaaaand, I'm back!

2015-01-25T21:54:00.003-07:00

I survived China! ok...so I've been back in the States for a month already and so much has happened in this past month, as well as everything that happened the last month of China that I can't do it all justice in one post. I'm hoping to start writing about my life again, but we'll see how that goes. I do promise at least two or three more posts, since I have such great ideas for what to write about. but for now, enjoy the video I made as an overview of China: My video

Chinese Fire Drill

2014-11-13T09:34:00.000-07:00

We always joke in the U.S. about Chinese fire drills, and them being crazy. Having now lived through one, I can attest that they are even crazier and more intense than running around a car a couple of times!

In case that intro didn't clue you in, we had a fire drill at school today. We were informed yesterday so we wouldn't be nervous, but, I was still taken by surprise! They go all out on these drills, and when I say all out, I mean a fire is actually included in the drill...

Shortly before the drill happened today, I was informed by one of my teachers that Lizzy was missing. She often wanders, sometimes even out of the classroom, so it was a believable if somewhat scary story. It didn't help that today the junior class and Chinese teachers were being evaluated, so I was nervous about how loosing a child might look. I began wandering the halls. In the midst of my wander and search, a teacher runs out of a room with a spoon and pot, and starts banging them together, yelling. I'm not sure what she's saying (not knowing Chinese can be such a hassle sometimes) but it seems imperative to find Lizzy now.

Downstairs I find mostly empty classrooms with children streaming out, racing after teachers towards the front gate. I also find one of the cooks and our dear friend Jerry making a very smoky fire in a trash can. I think this is the fire part of the fire drill... The PreK kids had to bring little cloths along with them so they wouldn't breath in the smoke. Actually, most of the children were holding something up to their noses, or covering their faces with their shirts. And a lot of the kids with siblings at school spent a moment to locate their brother or sister in the crowd and make sure he or she was safe. It was sweet when you would notice older siblings waving or patting an arm to comfort a younger sibling.

But wait! Things got even more outrageous. Remember how I said Lizzy went missing? She was part of the act. They had her hidden in one of the rooms so they could triumphantly carry her out of the gate while everyone was watching. Leona had just forgotten that Lizzy was part of the act when she told me Lizzy was missing...I felt a little foolish by how worried I had gotten, but Leona said the other teachers were laughing at her, so we had worried together.

The funniest part of an overall funny ordeal though, was realizing that at least at our school, they hold an every-man-for-himself point of view towards fires and fire drills. The prek were the last out the gate because they are slowest, and it didn't seem like anyone exited with any order, or took role to see if anyone was missing. Although, knowing that Leona recognized Lizzy was gone may be an indication that they keep better track of the kids than it looks like from our point of view. They start real fires in the school to make it feel more authentic, and our school does not have any built in fire alarms, so we are going to have to rely on people with pots and spoons screaming down the hallway. I think: way cooler than running around a car...

Halloween pre-party

2014-11-07T07:56:00.001-07:00

Our kindergarten got so excited about Halloween that we had a party for another school the week before. The teachers got all dressed up and even performed a dance. there was singing and dancing and games that made for quite the fun time for teachers and families alike.

Adventure is out there!!

2014-10-19T02:03:00.001-07:00

What's the point of living in a foreign country if you can't go out and find adventures? That was my thought process for this week. With our last vacation a couple weeks behind us and our next vacation a month away still, I was craving something exciting to fill my time, so I decided to go find adventures!

Monday was a good beginning to my week since it was my birthday and I turned 24. I feel old, although everyone and their dog reminds me that 24 is not that old and I have accomplished a lot in that time. I like being 24 as opposed to 23 though because 24 is a much prettier number: it's divisible by a lot, it's even, and it is just nicer to say. Random, I know. But, those are my thoughts on that. So for my birthday I did not want to go out and make everyone pay a lot for my dinner, but I definitely did not want Kaiyin school food. I have been craving my pasta concoctions for weeks now, so I decided to make dinner for everyone! I've never made dinner for so many people before (13 people ate) so I was a little nervous about proportions and having big enough pots to cook everything. Best thing about woks? They are huge. We cooked 4 bags of pasta and 4 bags of tomato sauce. I was in heaven in the kitchen, making sure everything was going according to plan and running smoothly. I planned just enough for everyone, but there were no leftovers. Maybe that's a judgement on how yummy it was...that's the story I'm going with.

The next day there were some errands I wanted to get done, like get a smoothie I didn't have time to get the day before and buy some jeans since an old pair of mine ripped pretty bad. I was craving adventure so I decided to take the bus that passes right by our apartment complex, but that we never take because it's just a loop so it doesn't look like it goes anywhere fun. I got off at a random stop that had a shopping mall next to the bus stop and immediately found cheap, cute jeans. I bought a pair of lime green jeans that are blue on the inside so when I cuff them the blue peeps out. And a pair of dark jeans. I thereby checked two things off my to do list: get jeans and buy jeans in China. I've made a goal to buy a pair of skinny jeans from every country I've lived in.

But then I had a lot of extra time after buying jeans so I thought I'd explore the area. I walked down a small street full of scooters driving and honking past me, stores dedicated to men's clothing, and the randomest junk throw together in a store ever. I enjoyed looking in and seeing what all the stores had to offer and how eclectic some of them got. I found shampoo next to pocket knives, next to pillows, next to tea pots. What?

Near the end of the street I finally looked up at what I was walking towards and saw a pagoda on the top of a hill. It was really close, so I decided to go find how to get up there. I found stairs, comparable in steepness to the avatar mountains, if not as long, and started the hike up. Seriously, the most beautiful view of Zhongshan I have ever seen. I will go back just for the view again.

Thursday our school opened their "dream stage" so the students can practice their English outside of class. But since it was the first time the stage was open, they wanted us teachers to start it off with a bang, so we sang the Disney channel version of A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes. We did a practice run on Wednesday, and it wasn't that great because we didn't have any plans for dancing or anything. But we made some dance moves for our Thursday performance and it went a lot better for the parents and all the students. Seriously we got more pictures and recordings of us than the students got!

Friday night we went with our coordinator to another part of the city to explore a market and eat some outdoor Chinese barbecue. The bus ride was an hour and half, so quite a ways away, but it was worth it. We found a mountain, but the pollution was so bad I didn't think it was going to be a good view, so I waited half way down whilst most of our group hiked all the way up.

Then we went to an outdoor restaurant where you choose what you want boiled or grilled, then they cook it for you: outdoor BBQ! I got an eggplant, broccoli, green beans, and some green onion looking thing and got them grilled. My first bite of broccoli I about died. The Best broccoli I've had in a long time. It was crunchy and had seasoning on it. I melted in my chair with how good it was. We walked around the market neighborhood a little, but since it was an hour and half bus ride, and the buses stop running at 10, we couldn't stay out too late. It was a lot of fun though!

I wanted an adventure Saturday night as well. It was 10pm, but I didnt want my night to feel like it had gone to waste, so I decided to go on a walk in our neighborhood. We walked in another apartment complex neighborhood and found the biggest houses I've seen in a China city. They could be considered mansions in the United States! And as we walked we found some houses that were definitely abandoned. The yards were full of dead leaves and branches and the doors were left open. I was disappointed that I hadn't brought my flashlight and my phone was dieing, or I would have gone exploring more. The houses were so cool!!! But it was too dark to get a good picture; just know they all had a tower on the top of them and we could hear fountains in a lot of the backyards.

So, I learned this week that adventure is out there! Sometimes you just have to look around for it a little bit.

Planes, trains, and automobiles

2014-10-11T18:02:00.000-07:00

Sometimes whilst traveling one must get really resourceful if one wants to get from point A to point B in a timely manner. Take, for example, our last vacation. I think the only form of transportation I did not manage to take was motorcycle. I did take buses, bicycles, boats, vans, golf carts, cable cars, rickshaws, trains, subways, a plane, and even at one point 8 escalators in a row. That was a long ride down.

My adventure with travel started with a sleeper bus to yangshou. I've been there before, we went the first vacation, but it was such a cool spot and some of the other girls hadn't been before that we were willing to return. For those of you wondering, a sleeper bus is literally a bus with three rows of the narrowest bunk beds around. But it is better than a regular bus overnight because you have beds. The bus official was nice enough to give us the back bed all together, and rearrange some of the Chinese people around us, but it ended up being the beds right over the engine or something because that is the hottest bed I've been on here. I didn't get a lot of good sleep, but I got enough sleep to navigate Yangshou at 3am, for, once again, the bus dropped us of at 3 in the morning. I was glad I knew where we were going this time so we didnt have to waste hours trying to find our hostel and we could just go straight there and fall asleep in piles in the lobby until we could check in.

The next day the other girls decided to go bamboo rafting, but because there was an odd number of us, it was national holiday, and the prices had jacked up 3x as much as I initially paid, I decided to chill at the hostel and save some of my money. Plus, I'd had such a good time with Regan when we went, I didn't want to ruin that memory with another memory on top of it.

If possible, yangshou was even more crowded this vacation. National holiday is when the entire country gets off work and school and decides to go traveling. We struggled to find transportation and hostels a month before vacation because everything was booked up already. But even with all the additional people, we found a lot of fun things to do, like get henna tattoos and airbrush tattoos, and just having fun dancing in the street.

By far the best part of Yangshuo was the white-water "drifting" we did on the second day. We were in rafts of two, with helmets and white water, but we didn't have paddles to steer at all, which is why I call it drifting. They would stop us before the big drops just to build up suspension and I went down backgrounds the first few times. I absolutely loved going down backwards, but going down facing forward was awesome as well because then you got some serious air as the raft dropped. Either way it was so much fun! And we made friends with a German family drifting with us. They were fun to talk to and cheer on as the children passed the parents and such. When we finished, I wanted to get right back on the bus and go again. That is something I will definitely be doing again in my life.

The next day is when we rented bikes and went biking out in the countryside. We found the most beautiful field of flowers and the word LOVE that we had to stop and pose next to. But we kind of got carried away with our amazing selfies, and Taylor ended up falling in a pond.... That's a funny story. Regan told Taylor to go stand on a boat and pose with her rice hat. Taylor ran over to go climb down onto the boat, and started crawling. Then she stood up and ran almost all the way across the boat before realizing that she was very balanced and she needed to be in the middle of the boat, not the end. She walked back to the middle, took a bunch of pictures and then started to walk back to climb off the boat. But when she jumped to the shore, the boat slipped and she missed the shore, landing in the water. I've never seen someone throw their bag out of the water faster, but iPads don't do well with water... After she finally got out and we headed back to our bikes, we decided to go back to the hostel so Taylor could shower (who knows what was in the water???) and then we just explored in the city on our bikes for a while after that.

We had bought train tickets from Guilin to Changsha that evening, so we needed to make it three hours on a bus to Guilin. We had talked to our hostel about the bus station, but somehow we still made it to the wrong bus station. So we ran out into the road and found some rickshaws to take us to the other station. The rickshaw we were in decided to take ALL the backroads to the other station. Literally we crossed main roads to take the backroads instead, and we kind of were worried that with translation errors we were going to get hopelessly lost. Luckily, that was not the case and we made it there just in time to catch a bus.

Which by the way buses in China are crazy. They go off-roading if there isn't a road to get us there. Doesn't matter if the bus is huge or crowded. They just go. Bouncing along. So funny, although it's not very conducive to napping on the bus.

The first train ticket we had was for hard seats. Those are the worst because the seats are straight up and down and pretty narrow. The ride was 8 hours long and yet, I did not get a wink of sleep that whole time. We made some friends and bought some shamwow towels though. Very useful and something I've wanted for years, so I was excited for that part. I was much more excited for the second train, where we had bought beds. Oddly enough though, when we got on the second train, all our beds had been slept in earlier in the night. It was a bit disconcerting, but I was too tired to care much. I just climbed into bed and fell right asleep. Didn't wake up til 10am the next morning when we thought the train would be getting in.

When we got off the train and out of the station, we called the hostel and asked for directions. The hostel owner is the nicest man we have come across in China, which is saying something because everyone always wants to help us. He told us that instead of giving us directions he would just hop on his bike and come pick us up. It is only a 10 minute walk from the station so it wouldn't be a big deal. While we were waiting for the owner, a police golf cart pulled up to our group and asked if we needed help. We told the officers that we were taken care of and waiting for our guide, but he insisted on takin a few of us in the back of the cart. So I hopped in along with two other girls and they dropped us off right outside our hostel door. It was really kind but really random of the police to do that, especially since I don't think they ever intended to go back for more of our group. They just wanted to help three of us out.

That day we ha hoped to buy cable car tickets and make our way up to the tienmen mountains, but due to high volumes of people they had already stopped selling tickets, so we decided to talk to a travel agency around and see what we could do for the afternoon. We wanted to go zip lining, so we talked it over with the only agency that had an English speaking man, and bought transportation and tickets into the park. The ride was a lot longer than we expected, nearly an hour and a half up the canyons, and when we got there, the park was unexpectedly closed! It was really frustrating trying to figure out what we were to do with a driver who didn't speak English at all. Luckily the agency man had given us his number so we called him to figure out what was even going on. He said he could change our tickets to somewhere else, but by that time we were tired of being in a car, and we just wanted to go home and try again the next day with our own plans. So we drove the hour and half back down the canyon to the agency, where we got most of our money back (they had to pay transportation even though we didn't do anything because we did use the van) and then hung out in our hostel for the evening.

We had asked our hostel man about hiking the Tienmen mountains and got all the best info on where to go and what to see, so the next day we started out really early in the morning. We didnt want to take any chances on tickets being sold out, and the line would still be atrocious. I think we waited in line for two hours (at least) before we got on the cable car to go up the mountain. Lots of line games came up, and I learned a few that I'd never played as a child, so that was pretty cool.

The Tienmen mountains are beautiful. They are so much taller than anything I had ever been on before. They are so tall that the clouds seem to come down and kiss the tops of them. Everything was a little misty and hard to see far. We contemplated if that was all cloud or if some of it was smog, but the air felt so much fresher and lighter that I doubt a lot of it was pollution.

There is a glass walkway in the mountains where you can walk on it and look down forever. It was amazing, and we had to wear little booties over our shoes that were so funny. They gave us pointy toes and heels. Other than that we spend the day walking up and down and around places and mostly embracing the picture taking enthusiasm of the Chinese. They must get bored of so many Asian faces so when they see us westerners it is so novel they have to take pictures with us. If we stand in a big group for more than 30 seconds there are always people with phones and cameras suddenly out taking pictures of us, or hopping in to take pictures with us. We decided to embrace it while on the mountain, so we allowed that to happen a lot.

The next day we went to the Tienzai mountains, also known as the Avatar mountains. The background to the movie Avatar is loosely based on those mountains. It is spectacular there. I have never never nor will ever see anything like them ever again. Pictures cannot capture what I saw, and hopefully my memories will never fade so much that I'm not able to recall the beauty and magnitude of those views.

We started at the bottom of the canyons and hiked to the top up stair after stair after stair. It wasn't really that hard, but it still took a while. I decided to enjoy nature and took my time about it. Each new rest stop up provided a new and often improved view of our surroundings. We also made friends with a group of Chinese people hiking up at the same time as us. I had actually met them the day before on the Tienmen mountains, but this time we all became friends. He was so nice! And funny. The first rest we all had together they asked for pictures with us, and jokingly we said ¥5. They laughed but were careful around us for a bit until we explained that we were joking. The main man (we learned his name was Fish, or something) bought us all oranges and cheered us on. Later when we ran into him again he bought us bamboo sticks to gnaw on. Bamboo is surprisingly sweet sometimes (there were some hit and misses among our group) and full of water when it's fresh. For someone who forgot to bring a lot of water with her I was very appreciative of the moisture. Once we got to the top of the mountains there were so many people we didn't see Fish or his sister again, but it was a pleasure to hike up with them.

I don't know what else to say about the Tienzai mountains. We took so many pictures, saw a monkey, bought some whistles, and generally had a blast. At one point we looked over at an adjacent mountain and saw a man swinging from a rope along the side of the mountain. It was crazy. Legitimately. We don't know what he was doing, but then he calmly climbed up the rope and back to the top of the mountain. We aren't even sure if anyone else saw the performance or if he was just doing it for his own amusement.

The following morning we went to the airport to take a plane back home. We did so much on our vacation that we were ready for our own beds and schedule. But the adventures weren't quite over yet. We got to the airport at 8:15ish, and nothing was open. None of the counters or security points. We aren't even sure if the automated check in booths were working. So we chilled in line. The part that surprised me the most when the counters did open and we got all checked in was the fact that checking a bag didn't cost anything extra. I ended up needing to check my backpack because I had brought my contact solution bottle, which is way over 4oz, and I also had a pocket knife in my backpack... You never know when you'll need something like that, but security didn't think I'd need it in the passenger part of the plane. I agreed with them.

By far the plane was my favorite form of long distance transportation, although beds on trains are my second favorite. Altogether I had so much fun on vacation, and I'm glad we had the opportunity to take so many varied forms of transportation to and during all our different adventures. I'm grateful for all the views I've seen and all the people I met and all the pictures I've taken to try and capture moments that will live on in my mind forever.

I will never make a good rock star

2014-09-26T06:36:00.000-07:00

There are little quirks of China that I've started to get so used to that sometimes I forget how weird they should be.

One of the big ones is the amount of pictures and attention I get for living my own life. Honestly, for all the selfies of myself I'm taking here (ok...I don't take many selfies, but I take a few pictures of myself) China has two to three times as many pictures of me as I do. And they are always the most random pictures because of how common and uninteresting I am being at the time: riding the bus with only one or two other people, walking around the mall or playing games at arcades, being tourists like anyone else in Shanghai. Most of the time we are not bringing any undo attention to ourselves, so when we notice people taking picture, I am always confused. Sometimes they even shove children in our arms to pose with us. It really is random and surprising, when we notice. Who knows how often we get our picture taken without anyone noticing?!

Sometimes, though, we make complete fools of ourselves, and there are always people there to notice. In Shanghai one night we ended up playing a game with ourselves to see how quickly we could draw a crowd. It helped that we found street performers and instead of passively watching them, we decided to start trying to dance like them, but right next to them. We gathered a crowd as large (if not larger) in 30 seconds. We also bought lasers during the day, and decided to entertain children with the lasers. We moved around a few times, and always had to move within 2 minutes because there were too many people taking pictures of us.

But the reason I was reminded of all these incidents was our bus ride home today. We have an amazing bus driver, Sparky, who loves to turn on loud American dance room on our ride home and let us dance and sing at the top of our lungs. He will put in the cd and blast the music. He especially likes Wannabe, I'm Yours, Moves Like Jagger, and I dont know the name of the last one. Today was one of those great Fridays when Sparky was driving and blasting the music. We pulled up at a stop light next to a city bus and were jamming out. Suddenly the passengers on the bus started to turn around and watch us dance in our bus. One guy was sleeping in the back of the bus and actually woke up to watch us... We were definitely rocking the entire bus as we danced, and even Sparky, who is generally used to our wild ways, brought out his phone and started filming us dance.

I find it hilarious that China thinks I'm worth documenting, but I'm also always confused and a little weirded out by all the pictures. If this is how rock stars live their lives I'm not sure I'd be willing to get used to it. Not long term at least...

Children make the worst photographers

2014-09-20T01:53:00.000-07:00

I brought out my phone one day to take a few pictures, but kids would rather be behind the scenes. I pointed the camera, but they were the ones taking pictures.

A day in the classroom

2014-09-20T01:06:00.001-07:00

I realized that I've not really ever gone over what a typical day in class looks like. Now that things have stabilized (ok, not really, but I know our current schedule) I figure I could explain better.

We start out our mornings bright and early, getting picked up at 7:20am and getting to school by 7:40ish. If everyone (bus driver included) is on time. Rarely happens, but that's the plan. We start to gather material and prepare for lessons, eat a fast breakfast, and then we lead openings. Openings go over the days of the week, the date, the weather, songs, and the rules. Then the kids go eat and we finish preparing our lessons.

We start our first 20 minute lesson at 9am, then they have a bathroom and water break. If I can say anything, I can definitely say these children are more hydrated than I ever was as a child. We have our second lesson, and the teachers move around to the different classes so the kids don't get confused on where to go. It was confusing for us teachers at first, but it does make it a lot easier for the kids. After our second lesson we have another bathroom and water break, then the kids get ready for outside time (aka recess).

Recess is interesting. We don't lead it, thank goodness, but it is always structured with warm up exercises and dancing or games to get the kids moving and expending energy. And with how humid it gets, the kids get really sweaty, so they always change their clothes after outside time. Half the time I wish I could as well, and I'm not running around as much as they are.

They also have snack time where we introduce the fruit they are eating. I'm lucky some of the kids know a lot of English because apples and pears look exactly they same when they are peeled and just in slices. I love hearing them say pistachio and dragon fruit. They have such cute little kid voices! Along with introducing snack, we have to introduce lunch to them every day. That one is harder because it is more food and more varied. And some of the food doesn't translate over to English well. We have yet to figure out what "asparagus lettuce" is...

When they go into nap time, we get our culture classes. So far we have only had Chinese and Kung fu, which is more like tai chi right now. But I am excited for all the things I am and will be learning.

That is the basic structure, but every day is unique with its own problems and adorable episodes. I love the kids I teach, even when they are punks or cry. I can feel their love and their enthusiasm for life, and while some days that is overwhelming and exhausting, it alway makes me smile and willing to go back for more.

Shanghai pictures

2014-09-16T06:40:00.000-07:00

A metropolitan adventure

2014-09-12T23:32:00.001-07:00

While I was still figuring out where everything in my city is in relation to each other I thought we lived in a large city here in Zhongshan. My thoughts have changed a little since visiting Shanghai, which is a much bigger city.

Last weekend we had a short vacation so we could travel and be tourists here in China. Seven of our group of 13 girls decided to go to Shanghai and see what all the fuss is about, and along the way we discovered there is a lot to fuss about. But our trip started with an ordeal I'm not sure I'd wish on many people: a 16+ hour train ride on "hard seats."

At first I didn't think it would be that bad, I've been on uncomfortable transportation before and have managed. I've been on trains and on buses overnight and while they take some getting used to, I've gotten enough sleep to still have fun. Until this train. The seats were set up back to back so there was no leaning back and little lean at all to the seats, and then there was a dinky little table by the window that wasn't big enough for a pillow and the seats were pretty close to each other, so not a lot of leg and luggage room. That wouldn't have been that bad, except we were near the back of the carriage and on Chinese trains they allow smoking in the entry way. There are no doors, so the smoke drifted to us sitting two rows away. A couple of the girls have asthma that immediately began to act up, and after the first hour all of us had headaches. Not surprisingly, Kelita immediately fell asleep and was out for a few hours but the rest of us sat there trying to get comfortable and tired. We played some quiet games and by about midnight when people were sprawled on the floor asleep we followed suit and a few of the girls laid down on the floor to sleep. My only other voluntary memories of that train is that I got out my bandana to block out the smoke, which helped a lot; Kenzie gave me a melatonin which I think immediately knocked me out until we got to Shanghai; and the train was going at what felt like 5mph for a few hours, so what was supposed to be a 16 hour ride turned nightmarishly into 20 hours. But then we got to Shanghai and were free of that leg of our adventure.

Shanghai is gorgeous. After eating, checking into our hostel and dropping off our bags, we went out to see what Shanghai is like. My first thought was how spectacular the buildings are. We walked to the Bund, which is really close to our hostel, and I couldn't get enough of the view and the feel of the city. The Bund is known for its view of downtown Shanghai, but I kept wanting to turn around and look at the buildings on the side we were on. They are so ornate made out of stone. I loved walking past them every day on our way back to our hostel. On our first night though, we didn't want to let it go to waste, so we decided to find and go to the top of the financial building, to the observation deck. I'm not sure if we could have arrived there at a better time if we had planned it because we arrived at the building around sunset, and we got to watch it set and the lights of the city turn on while we were up there. It was so beautiful and I'm so glad we got to see that! Once we got down we wanted to wander around a little more, and try to find dinner but we were also fighting the exhaustion left on us by our train ride. Since it was vacation time, we wanted American food! But it was surprisingly hard to find any in such a big city...

On our only full day in Shanghai (dang trains!) we spent the day wandering the neighborhood of the temple of the gods and the yuyuan gardens. The buildings are what everyone imagines Chinese buildings to look like so of course I was happy to be there. The temple of the gods is huge. We walked in and saw the courtyard with the big temple on one side and a few smaller shrines on the sides. I went to look at the shrines and one of them is the god of accepting fortune, so of corse I took a picture with it. But then I walked into the big temple and realized that it went on farther back than I thought. It was cool, but I am still confused who all the statues were and why they are there. I've researched Buddhism a little since then, but that has almost confused me more because there are so many aspects to it. The YuYuan Gardens are beautiful and also a lot bigger than I initially thought. I'm definitely going back to those gardens when I go back to Shanghai. We spent the rest of the day looking in the shops and bargaining, even when we didn't buy anything. Just practicing.

We spent the evening on Nanjing Road, which is the longest shopping, walking street I've seen, but it is beautiful!! We bought lasers there which I've already used in the PreK class to stop them from crying. It works wonders!

Our last morning in Shanghai we all went to the Jade Buddha Temple. It was the day of the Mid-Autumn festival so there were a lot of people there but it was still gorgeous. The jade Buddha is huge, but pictures aren't allowed. He's not the fat Buddha though, but the skinny one (I didn't realize there were different Buddhas either...)

After the temple we split up. I wanted to try and find the gadget market, so Regan and Shalee went with me to try and find that. We took the subway to the Science and Technology Museum stop, which is where they say a market is. We had no clue where we were, but we saw a guy selling kites, so we bought one and tried to fly it for a while. Then we wandered over to the museum, which is huge! If I had had more time in Shanghai, I would have gone back to that museum! But by happenstance we found the pearl market. Which just ended up being a market. Where NO ONE ELSE seemed to be. It was amazing to not need to fight any crowds, but because we were the only ones shopping that day, the shop owners were like sharks chasing us down with their merchandise. I tried to bargain as best I could, but there are a few thing I bought that I still think I could and should have gotten for less.

Then it was time to travel back home on another train. Luckily we had beds that time, and that made the 16 hours sooo much better. Except Kenzie gave a few of us Dramamine and melatonin. We were out for the full 12 hours and then some...it took me two days to fully recover and wake up.

Shanghai was a great vacation, but there was not nearly enough time for all the things I found to do there, so I know I will be back some day. I was so glad to be back with my kids for the end of the week though! I missed them, even if they were being punks all week, falling over each other and barely listening to me, and I guess not listening to Kenzie at all. I wish I got video of them on Friday though, when we were dancing. I played gangam style on my speaker, which is a Korean song, but they all know the dance and were dancing it. So cute. But I guess that's not a metropolitan adventure in Shanghai.

PreK kids

2014-09-03T15:50:00.000-07:00