life in china: too much rice

I survived another week of teaching! It really is starting to get easier and the kids are beginning to listen better which makes the classes run so much smoother. I've been teaching gym for the last week and its so interesting to see how different cultures do gym class. Obviously in this case I'm here to teach them English so its more about the speaking and less about the games. But one thing I did notice is that the kids don't understand the concept of being 'it' or teams. Its all about being equal and not really winning the games. Weird. America is so competitive.

I saw this article about this man living in space for a year and taking pictures for NASA and my first thought was 'well china can't be as bad as living in space for a year,' haha whoops.

The food in the cafeteria is absolutely repulsive. I tried cow kidney this week...yikes. They also served chicken feet and duck vertebrae. gross. The floor is always sticky and definitely not because its clean. They also serve us rice out of this huge garbage can. We bought our own soy sauce to put on the rice so that's what I eat for lunch and dinner.

Every time we come back to our room the stench of mildew assaults your nose so that rocks. But I sure am grateful we have western toilets even if they're always wet from the shower.

We started Chinese class this week. So far I can say 'hello, my name is Hadley." They told us to practice our Chinese with our students so I tried it with one of my kids Kevin. His eyes got huge and then he started speaking Chinese really fast and I was like woahhh I don't know anything else haha.

We also started a Kung Fu class. It was hilarious. My friend Malia is really good at Kung Fu. She learned everything she knows from Po the Panda in Kung Fu Panda. He likes dumplings, she likes dumplings. Its a match made in heaven.

We go to the One+One almost everyday which is the local supermarket. Its our daily outing haha but we found this really good lemon bread stuff and we finally found some salt!!! Chinese people don't salt anything...yuck. They also don't really eat dairy. Basically they don't eat anything delicious. No wonder they're all so dang skinny.

We went to church today in Shenzen which was an hour and half drive each way and cost $25. I'll never complain about having to walk or drive 15 minutes to church again. This super nice family, the Jacksons, fed us dinner. I literally teared up when they brought out the pot roast because I was so excited to eat American food. They gave us a ton of American snacks that were so good holy crap.

The motto for the city we were in was "Time is money, efficiency is life." China is crazy.

Syd:
"I feel like I'm at fat camp. We walk 12 flights of stairs and don't eat anything."
"Do you think its a turnoff for guys that I can't drive on the freeway?"

We're going on vacation on Thursday to Yangshuo!

Also my group rocks. It could've gone either way and I definitely lucked out.

Miss you mom!