Lanxi

Ok I just wanted to share w/ America how I wash my clothes.

This is Penguin. He

 is my friend! I thought I would have to wash all my clothes by hand but Penguin is like a giant blender for clothes. I take the long gray snake hose and attach it to the sink to fill penguin then I set his little timer and speed knobs and let him go to work. When he's finished I take the second tube that is hooked to the lid and let it hang into the sink where it drains the beautiful clean Jinhua washing water. (Note: the water is this color before washing clothes as well)

So clearly my clothes always get very clean! haha Then I carry my clothes down the hall to a spinner and then I hang the clothes up to dry. It's an entertaining process. 

I don't want to ever hear anyone complain about doing laundry ever again ok..;-) 

So today was fun. We went to Lanxi City and to an ancient city that I cannot 

even begin to spell or pronounce. At the entrance there was this beautiful Lotus garden so I climbed down into it and took some pictures. The lotus were growing in this shallow pond it was so beautiful! Very peaceful. 

Then We walked all around this ancient city that was designed just like this intrinsic Kung Fu symbol of Ying Yang. It was insane! I was very impressed. We had lunch there and I struggled through translators to purchase some gifts. I got two very cute things for Delana and Dara (it may take it a month to get to you but I hope you like it!) 

Then I came home, ate dinner, had devotion, and as you saw above..I did laundry. On that note, it's time to finish my laundry. :-)

Matthew comes tuesday. Yay!! (I'm totally going to school him in Ping Pong)

Silent Night

Here's a video of all our students singing silent night at the talent show. It was nice to be there for this. Most aren't Christians but they were taught this song and they really like it, I do too.

This one girl told me she knows this is a children's song because her daughter learned it at school and told it to her, I thought that was interesting. I told her it wasn't just a children's song but she didn't believe me.

China Olympics!!

It's official! The Tiger class (my class) are the winners of the first ever China Olympic Games!!!! By a mere two points during the final game of slipping an oreo down your face into your mouth they became victorious! This picture was obviously taken at the 'awards ceremony' after our talent show where the Tigers obviously did an amazing job at "The Moose Song" (yes I taught 100 chinese adults the moose song, Be proud robins/ Widjiwagans) and at the skit I taught them from camp. They played fire victims and rescue squads very well in various ways (another Widji favorite) Rufio you would have been impressed. 

I considered teaching them "Little Red Wagon" but I remember all too well, or maybe not well enough, what trouble that song gets people into;-). 

Today was a great day, I'm tired and I still have to do a lesson plan for tomorrow..better get on that. One last picture of my proud students...

P.S. for those of you who have never lived and played the Oreo game here is what it looks like..

Nashville in China.

Look what I found all the way in Jinhua, China!!!

One of my students was wearing this shirt today and I obviously freaked out and took her picture. I told everyone in the class.. "this is my city! This is where I live!!!...well close to where I live. This is where I'm from!" haha It was nice to see that today. 

Aside from this exciting discovery today went fairly well. My skirt is already finished and I'm a

waiting the dress' arrival. The skirt turned out very elegant. I'm pretty pumped about sporting that when I go out on the town.. if I ever do go out on the town haha. 

We did our last day of ESL Olympics today which I thought was fun, but a little tense at times. Glad thats over with. 

I've eaten all of my M&M's I really should have rationed those better... Hindsight right.. 

I practiced ping pong again today w/ Mr. Wo. He's a really great teacher, I am a very poor student. But I think I've learned a lot already from him so thats nice to think. 

For those of you who like those cooked water chestnuts that you find in a lot of stir fry.. this is what it looks like before it's cracked opened.  It looks like this tiny little root or a spiky potato. You break of those pointy parts and then bite down on it to crack it open and out comes a water chestnut.

Turns out I don't care for raw water chestnuts just like the cooked ones. Anyway I never knew what they looked like pre-stir fry so now I know, and now you do too! Or  maybe you already did and you might find this part of the blog a complete waste of time, maybe this is common knowledge to most people aside from myself haha But... you read this anyway so we're all entertained really.. 

Today I read this out of Psalms 63:5-8 and I wanted to share it: 

"You answer us by giving us victory, and you do wonderful things to save us, people all over the world and across the distant seas trust you. You set the mountains in place by your strength, showing your mighty power. You calm the roar of the seas and the noise of the waves; you calm the uproar of the peoples. The whole world stands in awe of the great things that you have done. Your deeds bring shouts of joy from one end of the earth to the other."

God is in China. I feel his presence here, and I see him everyday! These people are joyfully searching for a savior and they have found him and kept him in quiet still places and now they are shouting his praises and are excited and moved to speak of him. It's a blessing for me to just be close to that kind of devotion.

Dancin' in the streets!

Unfortunately I have no photos of my evening, but I will tell you all about it! So Sue and I had ESL Olympics today in class which went over really well I think, but what do I know haha.

After dinner Sue and I went with Mr. J to a seamstress to have some clothes made, which is apparently very common over here. I picked out this cute dress and a skirt (shocking right...) hopefully they'll turn out nice but I really dont know. They're going to cost me 280 yuan which is about $40 which I thought was pretty good for a brand new dress and skirt handmade specially for me. Plus I haven't bought anything except that power strip since I've been here so I figured I'd splurge. So if they turn out bad maybe I can give them away to someone, who knows haha.

On our walk home we saw about 40 older women doing this "line dance" in the street to this cool Chinese pop music so we joined in. It was just like being at the Pede! Minus the trashy men and drunks, but including the odd smells and crowded dance floor. But no Emily getting burned so it was not as exciting. Also "Mr. Clean" wasn't there which I can't decide if I was extremely happy about that or extremely disappointed.. you decide.

Ok so today was an adventure. We visited the Double Dragon Cave, and as we were told several times it is a "4-A" natural attraction, which for you Americans like me who have no clue what that means, is that it is one of the best natural wonders in China as determined by their national park service. YAY!! haha It was very beautiful. To enter the cave we had to lay on our backs in this tiny boat and they pulled us through under this huge rock. Here's a picture of me "and Andy" (I've decided to bring him with me on all my adventures in China) laying in the boat ready to be pulled through the rock, and then there's a video of Sue's boat coming out from the rock. Inside the cave was the second largest waterfall in a cave 

in the world! the first is in Panama for those of you who were just asking yourself that. 

Then we went into a Taoist Temple, where you are not permitted to take pictures inside for those of you who wanted to see the large statue inside,

you'll have to travel to China for that. But here is the courtyard.

We had a delicious meal in the mountains, adventured through another cave which had "no steps" as the guide told us, turns out it had about 450 steps (thats a rough estimate).  But this cave was even

 prettier than Double Dragon Cave. The Chinese are all about some dragons, let me tell you! So I have some more pictures of the Cave, and the city of Jinhua from the mountains (very similar to maryville only with about 4.4 million more people living there) but Chinese internet is finicky sometimes. 

After the hike Xiao Mei our translator saw it fit for us to have a foot massage, which turned into a full body massage at this really fancy spa. The full body massage co

st a grand total of 50 yuan, which equals to about $7.50, Yes I freaking love China! Here's another picture so Loretta, Sue, Janette, and Maggie enjoying their massage. 

After this lovely hour, I went shopping with Xiao Mei (pronounced shaow mae) and we rode a bicycle taxi home which made me think of Michael Dalton, because doesn't he drive one of those things? During this ride Xiao Mei asked me about my "pigeon tattoo" haha this is where i discovered the word for Dove and Pigeon in Chinese are the exact same word. 

So that was my Saturday, Church tomorrow and then rest. 

These are the pictures. This is Communion at Church and My bathroom with the shower head and hot water heater over the toilet. (two odd pictures to put beside each other I know! 

Jinhuan Week 1

Ok so apparently "livejournal" does not work in China. I'm not sure why, so my attempts at creating a blog there have failed. So I figured out how to convert Blogger to English, go me! I'm to PC generation, except I'm on a mac..anyway!

I safely arrived in China last Sunday. I spent one night in Shanghi and lugged all our luggage onto a bus that took me to Nanjing, which is the most wonderful city I've ever seen. If you ever visit China I highly recommend a visit to Nanjing. I spent a week training in Nanjing and then traveled by night bus to Jinhuan where I will teach for the rest of July. I've been here teaching for one week and I love it! But I'm sure I'm not that great at it right now. I'm living in a dorm on campus. I've put a picture of the bathroom on here because I wanted you to see that they installed this western style toilet in the shower just for us! I thought that was really nice, and I have greatly appreciated it! 

I have seen so many new things here! I wish I could think of everything right here but I will keep all this short for now. I'm also inserting a picture of the church service. We had communion on sunday it made the world seem very small seeing us celebrate so similarly to people halfway around the world.