1,611 Stairs

It is May Holiday!! Kelly, our native coordinator, said that since the Chinese don't have weekends, they take a lot of holidays. But this holiday is celebrated around the world. It is known as May Day! To kick off our May Day celebration on Thursday, and because we thought we'd have the day off, we watched a movie with our kids. We showed the kids "Kung Fu Panda." They loved it! I have NEVER seen them so well behaved. I think the candy we bribed them with helped too. It was nice to be with all of them and not have to be getting after them. I felt like we bonded a little more.

Today we woke up early to enjoy a yummy America tradtion. We went to Mai Dong Lao (McDonald's in Chinese). Then we got in a taxi to visit a pagoda we see almost every Sunday. We called Tim to tell the taxi driver where we wanted to go. Somewhere the translation got mixed up and we ended up at the newly built Buddhist temple. It was a good mix up. This was traditional Chinese culture, and it was beautifully built. We bought our tickets, and started hiking up the mountainside. It was just like the part on Kung Fu Panda where he tries to climb all the steps on the mountain to reach the temple and watch the fight.

To give you an idea of how crazy the hike was, imagine how many steps (actual stairs) you climb in a day. 20 steps make a story. Probably you go up and down the ones in your house three or four times, plus a couple of curb sides, and maybe a couple of ten-stair sets leading up to buildings and rich people's houses. That gives you about 85 stair steps. We hiked up over 1,600 stairs, then turned around, and hiked back down all 1,600. I painstakingly counted them one at a time. Bruce nonchalantly counted them two at a time, skipping down the mountain, and almost had a accident.

There were crazy large temples, and we got pictures of them. There were dozens of HUGE jade statues, and a giant fountain shooting water in different patterns. At the top there were real Chinese monks with their hair long and tied up in a funny bun, and they would let you bow down and pray to their statues if you wanted to (and also drop some money in a box). We chose not to. To our surprise, there were thousands of fake Chinese dollars and paper coins scattered all up and down the mountain, pinned down with rocks. It's like monopoly money that they leave for the gods or their deceased relatives, to use as money in the afterlife. They also leave real fruit for the statues on platters, for them to eat in the afterlife. The whole trip was pretty fun and interesting.

Theena Had Kittens!!

This post is like a week overdue, but . . . Theena, the ally cat our group adopted, had her kittens. She had a black one, an orange one, and a gray black and white one. They are sooo cute! Despite being the first born, the gray one wouldn't nurse for the first few hours. We weren't sure if it was going to live. Sometimes, when a mama cat knows that a kitten won't make it, she abandons it. After a many attempts to feed it through a syringe, and shoving it up to the nipple, it finally got the idea. It is now healthy and happy. They haven't opened their eyes yet. Here are a few pictures.

CCTV

CCTV- We woke up around 7am to get ready for our big debut. We all wore black shirts and dark pants and big red ribbons in our hair and Michaela wore her bright red lipstick. We piled into the school van and headed for the TV studio. We got there just in time to see the beginning of the show. The kids were dressed up in their costumes. There were starfish, sailors, ballerinas, frogs and a few other sea creatures I didn't recognize. We sat in our seats just in time for the opening performance. We found out later that the show's theme was supposed to be for their school's 5th anniversary, but it was changed last minute to be a fundraiser for the earthquake relief. There were about 20 acts. We only saw 6 or 7. The kids were unbelievably cute!! While running onto the stage, one of the little butterfly's tutus fell off. She stopped to pull it up, causing a pile up of kids on the stage.

CCTV

Then the little kids came on and sang a song. It was something equivalent to "I Love You" by Barney. Their version was much cuter! Then we were called back stage. It was hectic trying to get microphones set up and the guitar tuned. Then we were thrown on stage to preform. It wasn't our best, but the crowd seemed to like it. After our song, The Climb, we called our kids out to sing Bingo. It was the best act of the night!

Tim: "Jesus Told Me to Eat It All"

One of the best qualities of ILP is that the organization stays in touch with their volunteers throughout their stay. This weekend we had our mid-semester visit form Jared, one of the three owners of our non-profit organization. He arrived Friday morning just in time to observe our classes. Prior to his visit, Kelly lined up all of our students and basically told them to behave for Jared's visit or they would be punished by a Chinese teacher. We didn't understand what she said to them in Chinese, but I could feel the fear in the room. Well, the good behavior effect lasted about 10 minutes; then they were back to their usual rowdy selves. My evaluation went ok, it was too bad that he hadn't come a day or two earlier, when the kids were better behaved. After teaching, the school took us out for lunch at a pizza buffet. Bruce was giddy with joy! They had 5 different kinds of pizza, soft-serve ice cream, fruit, deserts, french fries, stew, noodles, and much more. We stuffed ourselves! After lunch Jared met with us individually to go over our experiences in China and make sure we were doing ok. It is nice to know that they have our backs. For dinner, the school took us out again to a Chinese restaurant, it was basically another all-you-can-eat, but Chinese food instead of pizza. Let me tell you, we have not been that full since we left the states. Dinner was full of laughter and us trying to speak Chinese. Tim tried to marry off Michaela to the principal's son (jokingly) and we learned about Mongolian prisons. The Chinese directors kept telling us that we had to eat all the food before we left . . . our tummies were very full, and we all got to sleep around midnight and slept like babies. The next morning we had to get up at 7am to perform live on public China TV!

English Corner

All the Girls Like the Handsome American Boy

Whew! We just got back from our "English Corner" and it was a blast! The times were mixed up, so we got there a little late but it all worked out! There were about 24 college students and 6 of us. They bought us dinner and we sat and ate. I had noodles, they were almost better than the ones in the noodle shop. It was fun to have them ask us questions. Bruce sat next to me so we could play off of each other. We talked about everything from music to vacations. The conversations were endless. After an hour the cleaners were asking us to leave the school, so we decided to head to KFC for ice cream with the students. As we were walking and talking a group of the girls formed around Bruce. They loved listening to his stories. (And they thought he was sooooo cute!) It was funny to see how interested they were in him. I was almost jealous, lol. One of their favorite topics was 'Friends,' the TV show. They knew their favorite characters and lines. It turns out that Chinese kids aren't so different from us.

Cookie: "Teacher! Shhhhhh"- Translation: "I Have To Pee"

Another week has flown by! I can barely remember what we did . . . The most exciting day was Monday by far. Our Chinese coordinator, Kelly, took us roller skating. Apparently it is almost as cool as karaoke-ing. We rented skates (they didn't have blades). We were all a little hesitant at first but soon we were rolling around. There weren't many people there cuz it was a Monday. But there were a few of those guys that you know spend way too much time roller skating. The ones who can do a ton of cool tricks. So after almost colliding with a few of them we decided to make a mamba train. One of the pro-skaters took Bruce's hand and led us backwards around the ring. We started going faster and faster. It all fell to pieces when one of my skates knocked into the other and I fell :( It was a pile up of about 4 or 5 people laughing as we rubbed our bruised bums and knees. We retired our skates and checked out the rest of the arcade. It was cool to see that almost all the games had English writing on them. We found the most strange game. It looked as though it was meant to shock you through 2 metal handles, until you can't take the electricity anymore and let go. So of course we had to try it! Lucky for us, it only vibrated our arms to death (no electricity)! To wrap up the evening we went out for another fine Chinese dinner (we went to a cheap restaurant, but ordered good food, so it was inexpensive and good). Tonight we are going to hang out with some students from the Weihai University. Should be way fun!

How to Distract 5 Chinese Soldiers with Michine Guns

These are some of the pictures we took while exploring Weihai. We found this boat yard that was kinda scary looking. Oh those noodles are the best ever! They were 5 yuan, less that a dollar.

Parade A Group of Americans In Front of Them

It's Not Just Rice, I Can Taste Flour and Salt Too . . .

Switch It! Change It! Rearrange It! Last week our group of teachers decided to redo our weekly schedule. We have been teaching at 3 schools. At our main school, Daguanghua (also where we live), all 8 of us teach every morning (tues-fri), every week. The kindergarten only needs 4 teachers per week (wed, fri, sat), and the public school only needs 4 teachers per week (tues, thurs, sat). For the past two months, we have just been rotating who has to teach at which school each week (kindergarten vs public, then trade the next week), so we all kinda had a steady "pace." However, over the weekend we switched it up. Starting this week, 4 teachers will bear the burden of teaching at all three schools for an entire week. This is called their "hard" week. At the same time, the other 4 teachers get to relax and enjoy an "easy" week, only teaching once each morning at our main school, and being done for the day. It is our turn to have the "hard" week. To tell the truth, it feels the same as every other week we have spent in China. I can't wait until next week.

Well, one of the boy teachers in our group announced that he will be going home on Sunday. Grrrr . . . !!! I suppose it's best for everyone. He was the bum in the group. He has been "sick" for the last 2 weeks. Bruce and I think it is a conspiracy so he can go see his girlfriend who is in another city in China. Not to mention he tends to lie, a lot, about everything, to everyone. Lies, lies, lies. Goodbye to him. But putting all that behind us, I feel like I am starting to get comfortable in China. I ran out of my chocolate from home today. But I found some gummy things that are grapefruit flavored. I think I may write a cook book for Americans living in China who only have a toaster oven and a microwave to work with. I have also found that peanut butter makes everything taste good. I can't decide what food I miss the most. Maybe when we get home we should just have a buffet day where we eat all day, anything and everything we crave at that moment . . . yes, that is what I want!

Love you all!

Us at The Great Wall of China!

Do you-er want Spirit?

It feels like it's been 2 weeks since we got back from vacation (even though it's really only been 4 days). First, Wednesday was Michaela's 19th birthday (an ILP teacher). We celebrated by eating at a "hot pot" restaurant and having cake. As she was blowing out the candle I leaned over to Whitney and suggested she rub some frosting on Michaela. Whitney said the staff probably wouldn't like it. The next thing I knew, Kelly, our Chinese foreign teacher, had a chunk of cake and was smashing it all over Michaela. The cake fight was on! I hid in the corner after 3 other teachers were attacked by Kelly. It didn't work . . . Kelly got me with a glob of frosting. After the cake was demolished and frosting was everywhere we made our way through the crowd of employees who had stopped to watch us and we washed up. It was fun to see how Chinese people react to food fights.

Later in the week, Tim (a Chinese vice principal) gave Whitney (our head teacher) 2 bags of freshly cooked crabs. It turns out that most people in our group don't like seafood, so Chris, Sam, Whitney and I ate most of the crabs. They were soooo good. Not at all like Red Lobster. We had a whole crab, eyes and all. We cracked them open with our brute force, and ate their insides. Our common room still smells like fish.

Those were the high points of our week. Other than that we found out we are adding an extra teaching day at the kindergarten class. Of the 3 schools we teach at, the kindergarten is my favorite. But we will have to wake up at 7 am every other Saturday morning. I guess we have to take the good with the bad. =)

The Rest of Quingdao

More Aquarium Photos

Qingdao Polar Aquarium

While it is always really neat to see wild animals in captivity, this was mostly sad. A lot of the animals were in habits too small for them. It was eye opening to see how animals could be treated. I wanted to free them all! The saddest was the 5 Artic wolves who were in an aquarium the size of our living room apartment in Provo. I hope they have it good in the next life . . .

One of our many, many bus rides . . .

At this point I thought we were about half way. Turns out we were about 1/8 of the way to the top.

The part of Mt Laoshan we were at didn't have a lot to see. But there were a ton of killer stairs. Almost as bad as the Great Wall.

This is a temple built between 200- 400 B.C.

Stopping for lunch.

This is a small harbor thing that we passed by on our way to Mt Lao Shan.

Our first meal in Quingdao was fried squid. It was very yummy! A little chewy. But mostly yummy.

Qingdao

So I was too lazy to rewrite our experience in Qingdao, I just copy and pasted Bruce's email. Hope you still enjoy:

This past weekend we had a couple of days off from teaching, and we decided to go to a beautiful coastal city very close to us in our province, called Qingdao (pronounced ching-dao). We left in a bus from Weihai this past Friday morning, and it went 4 hours to the south. We had fried squid and rice for lunch, and found our hostel (a cheap hotel). They did have a 2-person room, so Katie and I were able to stay in that one. Last time we traveled, we were put in a 5-person room with other people from our group. Then we walked the 2 blocks from our apartment to the beach. On the way there were a lot of street vendors. One of them was selling live baby turtles for 50 cents a piece. We begged our head teacher to let us get one, but she said no. There were a lot of people flying kites as well. We took a couple of buses, and found an Italian restaurant. Katie and I shared a bowl of gnocci. That's something I had a lot on my mission in Argentina! It was great.

Saturday we woke up, and I had a sore throat, I think from the pollution in the air. Every day I went to bed healthy and woke up with a sore throat. We got on a city bus that took us to Mount Laoshan. It's one of the tallest mountains on China's coast (it touches the ocean). It was very beautiful, and after we got off the bus we hiked on the trails for a few hours (and a little bit off the trails, too). There were a handful of attractions you could hike to on the trail, and we decided we wanted to see the "jade pool." After hiking for an hour to the crest of one of the mountains, we descended on the far side. In the valley, there were trail signs in Chinese, but none of them went to the jade pool. We were kinda lost. We kept hiking up to the crest of the second mountain. By then, our faces were red, our heartbeats were up, and we could barely walk. Luckily, we found a cable-car station on top of the second mountain, like a ski lift, that would carry us back to where we started. They let us get on for free, and we rode for a few minutes back to base. When we got off and they saw we didn't have any cable-car ticket, they charged us $5 per person. We were glad to pay. After riding the public bus back to our hotel, a few people in the group thought it would be fun to go out dancing. We stopped a cab, and had him take us to a local club. He took us to a little plaza with at least five different clubs. They were all free, unless you ordered food or drink. We went into the first one, and no one was dancing. They were all sitting down at tables, listening to a guy sing karaoke. We went to a different club, but it was the same thing there, too. By the third club, we realized that it wasn't going to be different. Also, the singers were not just doing karaoke; they were professional karaoke singers hired by the clubs, and only they were allowed to sing. So we finally decided to stay at one of the clubs. There were only about 20 people in it, and it was small. They sang us a few American songs, and then Katie got up with 2 of the girls in our group and started dancing. The club liked that the 3 girls were dancing (including Katie), so they brought our table 3 free drinks, one for each of the girls. We didn't drink them, though, because they were alcoholic. Then I got up, and then everybody in our group was dancing. I didn't get us another drink, but they did bring us free peanuts! The karaoke singer stopped, and the DJ turned up some techno dance music and turned the fog machine to "high." Everybody in the club was watching us dance, and then they started to get up and dance, too. The DJ kept sliding from one song to another so that we would all keep dancing. We felt like we had started the party we wanted! Then, the bartender in the back gets up on the bar and lights two show bottles on fire (just the tips) and starts spinning them and doing tricks with them. Then he lights a third one on fire, and juggles them! It was so cool! After that, we took a break from dancing, and after we were cooled down, we headed home for the night (it was only about midnight).

Sunday morning, we all slept in. That felt really nice. We got breakfast from a fresh bakery, and went to Qingdao Polar Ocean World (the local Sea World). It was really neat to see all of the animals, and I'm sure we took hundreds of pictures. The seals did tricks for us, and the dolphins did, too. Some fish liked to be fed from a bottle, so when I stuck my finger down by the water they would swim up and poke their heads out of the water and suck on my finger like baby goats at a petting zoo, but they were fish! Some of it was sad, because some of the animals were in too small of a cage. They had 5 arctic wolves in a display room about the size of 2 bedrooms, and 2 polar bears in an area the size of 2 living rooms. They didn't seem to like it very much. One of the girls in our group, Kilee, got to have her picture taken with a seal, and it bends over to kiss you on your head and holds its lips on you until you get a picture. That was really cute. After that we saw the beach one more time, and walked up and down it.

Monday morning, we had McDonald's breakfast. They are actually celebrating Easter in the Chinese McDonald's. They had pictures of Easter eggs, and posters in English, and even a person wearing a body suit that was a giant painted Easter egg! We walked to the bus station, and that's where our adventure home started. The bus ride was supposed to be 80 yuan (about $13 US). But a guy walking around the front of the bus station was trying to get us to go with him for cheaper. He said he would do it for 70. We decided to check it out, and followed him to his bus. There were a bunch of people on it already, most of them waiting to go to Weihai. Before I could firm up the details, half of our group had gotten on the bus, assuming it was what we were doing. Katie and I got on, and the bus pulled out. After 10 minutes, the bus pulled over in the middle of a road, and the guy walked around collecting the fees. Then he told us it would be 90 yuan. We said no thank you, and that we would get off. He said he would do it for 80, and we said OK and paid him. We also think we might have misheard him the first time he said the price, and perhaps he said 90 but we thought it was 70 (chio-shur vs. chi-shur). Soon the bus is on the freeway, and after an hour, they stop the bus on the side of the freeway and kick 2 people off. Then they keep going. 30 minutes later, they pull over and kick 2 more people off, in the middle of nowhere, on the side of the highway. Katie and I started to get scared, and thought that any time now we were going to get dropped off in the middle of nowhere. Finally, we pull into an actual bus station in Yantai (about 1 hour away from Weihai, where we want to go). Our driver/salesman gets off the bus and starts yelling at other bus drivers to take us. I think he was trying to pawn us off, and sell us under the table to the bus drivers, who would keep all of the secret profit, and not tell their bosses. None of the bus drivers would take us. He even blocked one guy's bus in with ours, and threatened him. But still, no one would take us. In the end, he paid a few taxi buses to take us all to Weihai, but he was really mad about it. I think he didn't make as much profit as he wanted to. The taxis had to split up our 8-person group into two, in separate taxi buses with 4 people each). I stayed with Katie. After another hour drive, we pulled up to the bus station in Weihai, and we were relieved to at least be in the right city (and not stranded on the side of the freeway). However, we did not have a map of Weihai, and did not know how to get home. And we don't have phones. And, the other 4 people in our group aren't showing up anywhere, and we don't know where they are. So we pulled over a cab, and showed him our school's business card with the address, which is how they always take us home. The first cabbie says no. The second one says no. They all say no. So we jumped on a cheap public bus and hoped it would take us somewhere closer, where a cab driver would actually take us. Lucky for us, the bus took us right to the central bus stop where all the buses come. We got off and waited until our local bus came that goes right in front of our school. 20 minutes later, we got off at our school, and went up to our apartments. The other 4 people in our group were already home, and had apparently gotten home 2 hours before us, and were really worried about us. We went out to eat to a really cheap Chinese restaurant, since we missed dinner. A big bowl of fried rice with egg was only 50 cents. That's Bruce's new favorite.