**Birthday Week expands Oceans**

The beginning of this post is solely for my parents because they will find the humor in it more than others. 

SO David and Ann are in town getting things squared away before they return to the US and they decided that they wanted to take the sisters and me out to eat. The sisters chose pizza hut because they'd never been there before and I was so glad! Oh sweet nectar that is American food! So we get to the restaurant and David announces to everyone that we are eating here to celebrate my birthday since it's exactly two weeks away! hahaha I laughed so hard and thought "wheres mom and dad when I need them" Yes birthday week even expands oceans, and maybe due to the time change, probably something about the international date line that no matter how hard I try I will never truly understand, my birthday week has stretched to two weeks now instead of just one;) hahaha. Then David went and asked for a birthday crown but unfortunately they didn't understand so they gave him a birthday button instead it says "I am 08" Sure I'll be eight again thats cool.  Then David had everyone sing to me, and today he took me to buy a toaster oven as a gift. hahaha He kept saying today that it was because of my birthday, and after all that he gave me a pocket chinese to english dictionary that has Pin ying in it which is amazing! Here I thought birthday week was going to skip a year... 

So I took all these pictures of pizza hut because of all the times the sisters made fun of me and my slow progress with chopsticks I was able to laugh at them and their attempts at using knives and forks, and even though I told them they should just use their hands to eat pizza, they refused.

There was ketchup on the table and the sisters wanted to try it on the pizza... I was clearly hesitant... 

The pizza was so amazing! It tasted very similar to real pizza hut, but this resturaunt was so fancy! It's pretty expensive too, but it was a great treat to relax and not have noodles for a change. Then after we sat in there for two and a half hours we decided to walk for a while. We walked towards the square and stopped in the park to take some fun pics, then we headed on home. All in all a great evening. 

Today I went and ate hot pot with Ann and David at this fancy restaurant where I managed to spill an entire bowl of sesame sauce (watery peanut butter-esque stuff) all over myself! Go me! That was probably because it's my bi-birthday week, it's part of the celebration. Before I did that though I saw this man making noodles so I took a video so you could see how it's done, unfortunately it's sideways because I can't get iphoto to flip my videos.. 

Also this week, I've been teaching at a school here in Changzhi where they have displaced an entire school of earthquake victims. 1000 students and 100 teachers have been brought here to live, and study. They will stay here for a minimum of 3 years while the government tries to locate a new location for their school to be rebuilt. I'll be going there more regularly throughout the year to teach, I'm looking forward to that. Here's some pictures I took there. 

Ok finally, I got my schedule for the school year! 16 hours of freshman oral english. I teach four classes, twice a week each for two hours each session. Down side: School doesn't begin for freshmen until October 6th! Yeah... so we'll see how I busy myself for the month.