china china china. where to even begin! this place has an adventure around every corner. it is amazing here. first off, i have never ever met more genuine and kind people. they are willing to do anything for you. i cannot get over it!
i live in changzhou, china which is about an hour and a half away from shanghai. this city is huge! way way bigger than salt lake, but since it's china...it is considered very small and not visible on any maps we have seen. there are 11 of us english teachers and they are all so darling! i love every girl in my group. we are teaching grades 2 & 3 and the kids break my heart. everywhere we go they yell, teacha!! teacha!! and hug and give us kisses on the cheek. they love us no matter how disgusting and sweaty we are :)
the humidity has been killer...but since the sun hardly exists in china, we aren't having to bear with the sun beating on our faces. so that's good news.
my dorm is hilarious. we live on the fourth floor so we are climbing flights of stairs alllll day long. my room-mate is brooke foster and i couldn't ask to live with a better person here in china! we laugh all day at all the funny chinese random occurances.
first off:
1. i sleep on a wood table. literally. they put a sheet on it and call it a bed.
2. we have a squatter. worst thing ever at first...slowly becoming not that bad!
3. we are celebrities. we are constantly stared at, and i mean STARED at, double takes, pointing, laughing, and getting spoken to in their cute cute broken english.
4. the WORLD is their toilet. literally. on our way to nanjing to go to the branch there, we were waiting in the train station and i look over to see a mother holding her child in the corner of the room and him just wizzing away. i was so grossed out. little did i know, that on our way home from church something much worse would happen. we got on the subway and i was standing next to haylee and felt something wet on my foot. i thought she had spilled her water, then look down to see yet another mother holding her child near the ground and him peeing on my foot. you can imagine my reaction, but everyone looked at me, besides my friends, thinking i was crazy for reacting that way! there are no limits here!
5. every morning at five-six AM we wake up to the school blasting the chinese national anthem. sounds like you are going through 'it's a small world' at disneyland over and over and over again. we laugh cause it is so hilarious, but also are pretty upset considering it is so early and that is the last thing i want to listen to. oh and accompanied with the cranes and all the construction going on at the school. just lovely :)
the food. ohhhhhhhh dear the food. our school, tsingying foreign language school has the most rank food ever. to me. some of the girls are very good about eating it, but i start to gag when i walk into the cafeteria. BUT on the other hand, there is some food to die for. for example, growing up my dad would constantly talk about a yellowish-white fruit called "nashi's". they are fantastic and my family loves whenever we can find some at the store in america. they taste like a apple and pear and are seriously heaven on earth. they are everywhere here and i am a little bit overly obsessed. also, we are so lucky because there is a street full of vendors about a mile and a half away from us that is delicious! well some are nasty fishes (don't get me started on the fish...) but we tried this one guy's little station and it is amazing! he grills corn, zucchini, cauliflower, beans, some veggie that looks like a grass hula skirt? (actually pretty good) and yummy chicken. we named him chef boyardee. love that man.
ah i could go on forever about the funny things here. my personal favorites are the sentences that have been translated so poorly that are all over every chinese person's shirts. HYSTERICAL. once i can post photos i will be proudly presenting those gems.
well i feel like i have so many random funny things to tell, but it will be much easier when i can SHOW rather than TELL. i cannot express how much i love this place. tonight we are getting chinese lessons and going to the market for my yummy corn on the cob and to get yet some more nashi's. until next time...
sheh sheh!
xoxo abigail louise
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