I'm a teacher?!

I just have to come out and say it. Asian kindergartners are adorable.

Throughout the day I teach about fifty 'Kindy' kids in five separate rotations of ten kids. We have five subjects that we teach which are gym, kitchen, shop, arts & crafts, and drama. Right now I'm teaching gym. It's surprisingly hard to entertain 5-6 year olds for 25 minutes. When we teach we use what are called BMCs which are basically you pick like a sentence or phrase that you try and get the kids to repeat back to you. For example we bowled today and the phrase I needed them to understand was "We are bowling," which is a concept of action in progress. When the kids relay this back to you they get a token and at the end of the week we have store where they can pick out prizes based on how many tokens they got during the week. The reward system is supposed to work really well but right now the kids don't know us yet so they think they can do whatever we want. They told us to assert dominance haha. Also I now have pity on those teachers that could never remember the student's names because these kids are so dang cute but they all look the same.....

The first day of teaching was good for the most part. I kind of felt like I was a chicken with its head cut off cause I had no idea what I was doing. Fake it till you make it is a real thing out here. The second day of teaching was a disaster. I tried to teach kindergartners who speak minimal English how to play 'fruit basket' and they all just stared at me like I was crazy. So I improvised and just let them run around on the playground haha. There are Chinese teachers who watch us while we teach and take notes and its so stressful when something goes not according to the lesson plan and you see them mark something down in their journals. Speaking of the Chinese teachers...I feel like they're so mean to the kids. If they aren't listening they hit them really hard on the head with a pen or yell at them in Chinese. Yikes. "1,2,3, eyes on me," has been a lifesaver.

The teachers keep all the doors and windows open so by the time I'm done teaching for the day my hands are numb. There's no insulation in the walls here.

One of the little boys in my group who usually ignores everything I say and is a total pill looked at me today and said "Thank you teacha," and I about died it was so cute. They call us teacha instead of teacher in their tiny little Chinese accents and its freaking adorable.

The other teachers here with ILP are great. My group is awesome! Get this. This poor girl in my group got a kidney stone...we've only been here for five days.

The fruit here is so good. Some of it is weird but the things I do recognize are delicious. The grapefruits here are like the size of my head!

China is crazy green. There are palm trees everywhere which I definitely wasn't expecting. Also fireworks randomly go off all the time. Sometimes even in the middle of the day. Guess they're really proud of their invention.

Everywhere we go people take pictures and videos of us.

Today after school we went to this place called Walking Street which is about a 45 minute bus ride from our school. The driving in China is nuts....people just go wherever they feel like. It gives me anxiety to watch the bus driver drive. I swear the lanes aren't big enough for the cars...Anyway, back to Walking Street. It's just this huge place with shops and such but then up this huge staircase is a Pagoda. It was so cool! Just right there in this shopping area is this old temple up in the jungle.

We found a McDonald's on Walking Street. I don't even like McDonald's when I'm in America but fries and a Sprite have honestly never tasted so good. Nothing here is salted either so that was the first taste of salt in nearly a week. We ordered Mcflurries too but they only had Pink Flower ice cream. It tasted like lotion. Bleh! The McDonald's had packets of salt so you best believe I swiped like 20 to bring to school and put on my rice.

I got this sweet pair of New Balances for $8! Everything here is insanely cheap. Dad, you'd be proud. I bargained for them. Even walked away the first time!

When we were leaving Walking Street we thought we missed the bus so we all booked it to the bus (which turned out to not even be the right bus haha). It must've looked like quite the scene. All these white, blonde, college girls running at full speed with backpacks down the streets of China. Coming home I nailed my head on the ceiling of the bus...Asian people are so short so some things are so dang low haha.

I was reading a talk the other night and one line was from the hymn "Lead, Kindly Light." It read "the night is dark and I am far from home, lead Thou me on," which was just totally fitting because I'm 6,000 miles from home in the most foreign place where people don't understand me when I speak and I look nothing like the people. And the food. Have I mentioned how weird and gross some of it is?! Anyway I just got a huge wave of wow America is awesome and I miss my mom and my bed. And my friends and family and basically everything that's back in America. Everyone back at home enjoy some pizza and Sodalicious for me. Isn't it funny how much more you appreciate something when its not easily accessible anymore.

I have never loved peanut butter more than I have in the last five days. Only source of protein since there's not a chance I'm eating Chinese cafeteria mystery meat. Yesterday they served intestines.....

I don't think people understand the concept of being quiet at night.....it sounds like someone is trying to hammer something into the cement walls all night long...please just let me sleep!!

This is totally random but one of our Chinese coordinators, Marine (the nicest lady ever. I thought she was like 20 but apparently she'd 30! Gotta get my hands on whatever face lotion she's using!), told us that one semester these girls didn't lock their balcony door (keep in mind we're on the fourth floor) and thieves climbed up the gutters and snuck into their room and they woke up with strange Chinese men in their room!! Yikes! For those of you who have seen Miss Congeniality, I need to freshen up on my attack skills if anything happens like that haha. I would've been on the next flight home no joke.

Things I wish they had in China:
Dr. Pepper
Pizza that isn't gross
Raspberries
Cereal
2% Milk
Cheeseburgers
Reese's
Salt in their food