Big Update!

Hey guys. Sorry I haven't been able to update more regularly. This week/weekend has been crazy. Here's what's going on.

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July 19, GXUN
Thursday morning. Nothing to special. Taught class, had lunch, took a nap, and then a nice culture night: Talent Show. Oh yeah, that's right. We had a talent show. It was pretty much awesome. I only had 2 kids from my class doing something in it, but the one kid from class who is an amazing singer won first place. That's how Papa Steve* runs his class. A teammate and I sang L.O.V.E., and the crowd went crazy. They loved it. It was a fun night, and 1st place winner gets a paid dinner with a teacher of his choice. 2nd place gets ice cream with a teacher of their choice. Both 1st and 2nd place chose me. I laughed, but now I get to connect more with some students which is amazing.

*China fact 13: At a camp where you speak english, all the kids have english names. Seeing as they are chinese with english names, they decided to give me a chinese name. Now, at training, the team started calling me Papa Steve. Why? I don't know, but it stuck and I like it. But here at the school, we were talking and they name they came up with Xiao Xian, which means Little Mountain. Yeah, that's right. I'm a little mountain. That's my first name. My second name is Hao Ban, or Monkey King. I attribute that name to the carnival.

July 20, GXUN, City Center
Woot. It's Friday. Taught class, had afternoon activity, and then it's the weekend. Oh snap! Suprise! The school principal takes all of us teachers out for a Chinese massage. So we load up in some cars, drive to the City Center (roughly equivalent to Times Square, only imagine more people), and we get some massages*. We come back home, have a meeting, and go to sleep.

*China fact 148: When recieving a message in China, the following is considered common, and relaxing: sticking your feet in extremely hot water, getting punched in the calf, tickling your feet, finding every pressure point on your foot and pushing as hard as you can on it, digging your thumbs into your back and shoulder, and finally, trying to rip your head off. I have made no exagerations.

July 21, GXUN, Beihai
We wake up and load up a 15 passenger van and head over to the beach. It's about a 3 hour ride which was full of shenanagins; joking around; singing Eagle Eye Cherry, Arvil Lavigne (Same as Avril, but sounds cooler prounounced that way), Third Eye Blind, Dave Matthews, and some Tenacious D; and of course, a truck stop where we purchased several treasures (chinese equivalent of strawberry Little Debby cakes). We arrive at Beihai and go to this place to eat*. The food was good, and consisted of squid, chicken, whole shrimp, sea worms, beef, jiaozha, and some other deliciousness. After lunch, we rolled over to the beach and it was amazing. The waves were equivlant to O.C. on a typical Tuesday afternoon, but the water was honestly about 90 degrees. The only downside was the super salty water. After a couple hours there, we loaded up, hit up a place for dinner on the way home**, and had a quick meeting and went to bed.

*China fact 1: Expect nothing. Nothing is as it appears. I thought we were going into an aquarium due to the dozens of large tanks of various sea animals and the 2 giant sea turtles. Nope. That was just the menu.

**China fact 29: The roads suck. Think PEN-DOT in the 1800's. Yeah, it's like that. On our way home, we got a flat tire. It was fun because it gave for some interesting videos, but needless to say, the roads are no good.

July 22, GXUN
Sunday. Happy Birthday Grandmom! We took our time waking up, and had meetings all day. It was a good day. Also, we have a little apartment where we can meet, and it has a kitchen* so in the morning I made bacon, eggs, and french toast and for dinner I made some garlic chicken wings. Meetings took up the whole day, came home at night, and went to bed.

*China fact 31: The kitchen was a small sink, a heat thing, and a wok. I was able to use some chopsticks to cook with, and I picked up some ingredients at the market. P.S. The only herbs the chinese know about are anise, pepper, MSG, and salt, if you are lucky. As for other fresh ingredients, mucho garlic, so I was good.