Monday Day 61: CrAzY hAiR DaY!

School was so much fun today :-) I made pudding, so of course the kids were great. They practically drool at the sight of any sugar. The school really regulates it here, so they don't get much, and if we give them anything it has to be super tiny, like an eighth of an Oreo, (which is harder to divide than you might think). Or maybe a grain of rice... ;-) 
Today they all got a lick of the spoon, but don't worry, they each got their own spoons. 
We got to play around and take tons of pictures with the kids today too, which is my favorite. Most of outside time we just took pictures of the class.

Lindsey :)

Bonnie, one of the Chinese teachers who is in my classroom :) Shes super cute

It was also a Monday, which usually means that waking up is a nightmare, which it was, and it usually is everyday, but there is also no Opening on Mondays which makes it all the better. We have an extra half hour to eat breakfast, plan lessons, sit and relax, or for today make our hair super crazy. Everyone looked pretty dang good. I was too tired last night to do my pin curls, so I just put some colorful curly strands in my hair that I found in my store items. 

Allisons hair was awesome :)

Sunday Day 60! Pianos and Harry Potter

Mckenna taught our Sunday school lesson for church today. It was about prophets and it was pretty good too. I love Sundays :) Its so nice to get a break from everything. Brooke hung out at our apartment for a little and we made some French Toast with the red bean bread the school gave us, (Red Bean is the nastiest thing, and they like to put it in EVERYTHING here! Dumplings, bread, soup, smoothies, you name it). We had to do something to make the bread bearable, and some Eggs and Powdered Sugar sure do the trick. We played some hymns on the piano at Kaiyin after that, but I got bored and walked around the school for a while. It is huge! There is so much that I haven't seen yet, and they have everything here. Have I even told you about the pianos? They have about 20 practice rooms two floors above the cafeteria. It is super nice, because we can all go up and have our own piano to play and I actually get to practice. They are never locked either so we can go up whenever we want. Luckily Zach brought a huge binder of music with him too, so he lets me steal it and I get to play some new songs. 

One of our favorite pastimes: Eating ice cream :)

Harry Potter time :P we watched the 5th and 6th movies tonight after dinner. We also did some back massages because we were all ridiculously sore from playing at the park on Saturday. I think it was just from playing ultimate Frisbee which is sad.

War has begun...

We found a bunch of balloons at the school, and the kids are not allowed to have them, so Allison and I took them and I filled one up over at their apartment. We were playing catch and as soon as I caught it James popped it with his key :( I guess I should have expected it...I made him give me a ride home on his scooter though because I was freezing cold, so at least one good thing came out of it all, ha but it really was fun tonight. 

Saturday Day 59: Park Day!

Woke up nice and early this morning, made some egg sandwiches for breakfast, got some snacks, made some PB banana sandwiches for lunch, and left for the park.
It was a perfect day and we had a blast! The park was beautiful, but my allergies started to get to me for a little while. I should have brought more allergy medicine :/

James awesome skateboarding skills 

John helping somebody get their kite out of the tree

Allison and Brooke :) and noah falling in back ;)

Noah and John. I don't know how they do it, as soon as I step on i start shaking like a leaf, and I fall right off :P 

Camille, Brooke, Allison, James, and Mckenna

Carmen, Sabri, and Brittany

Brooke, Trent, Hayden, me and Allison waiting for the bus.

Some random Chinese guy who played ultimate frisbee with us and then showed us how to do some tricks. He was pretty good. He kept forgetting whos team he was on during frisbee though, so we never knew who he was going to throw it to :P

Pyramid number 1

Pyramid number 2

We played some tangled and ninja :) Good thing we have been practicing our splits in kung-fu!

Pyramid number 3

All of the people who played and danced with us :)

They are so friendly here! As soon as we walked up, they made room for us in their circle and let us play with them. It was some kind of dare game, where the person who picked the lowest card had to do a dare. I was only playing for about 10 minutes and somehow I got the lowest card 3 times, out of about 40 other people too. What are the odds? I had to dance and sing and even act like a monkey for one...thanks to James for that :P I did get a few kisses on the cheek though, as soon as I walked up. They all want to kiss the Americans. I think Zach got a few also.

Teaching them the "tootie tah" This was hilarious! 

Sadly I didn't get any picture of the chinese girls, but apparently they were supermodels so they just decided to strut down the sidewalk for us..ha it was the weirdest thing. The boys decided they wanted to go next.

Wondering why there's have a random picture of a tree? Thats what I thought too, keep looking ;)

We had the whole bus pretty much to ourselves on the way home. It was a miracle. Usually we are crammed in like sardines. We went to Muslim noodles for dinner which is quite delicous. I don't know if that is actually the name of the place, but thats what we call it. Then we washed all our park grime off and watched Despicable Me 2 which is the best!  :) It was a good ending to our awesome day

Friday Day 58 Night Games

Not much happened today, at least that I can remember... :P
School went well, we made cute little ghost pencil toppers and flew them around the classroom. The kids practiced their little dance for our Halloween Party, and they are so cute. The dance moves that they come up with here are hilarious! Video to come soon!
We went to the market tonight to get some PB and bread for our picnic at the park tomorrow. Allison got some sweats which I was very jealous of on our walk back home. I was freezing! Its definitely getting cooler here at night. I can actually wear a sweater and some pants now without becoming a sweaty mess.

We played some Night games at the Kaiyin Kindergarten again!
It started out pretty fun, but after an hour of looking and not finding anyone, it got a bit old. We just gave up, layed out in front of the school and waited for everyone to come out :P It was a little too big to play Sardines, because it just took too long to find everyone. It was also super creepy walking around in the school by yourself! The mirrors are the worst!

10 DAYS LEFT UNTIL SANYA!! :)
And just 52 more days of adventure in China! Craziness! I have had so much fun here, I can't imagine leaving this all behind. I do miss my family back home, but I love my "family" and students here too. It has been a blast!

Thursday 57 HALFWAY THERE!

HALFWAY POINT! I cant't believe it has gone so fast already. We are at our exact halfway point. It calls for a celebration, good thing it was Zach's birthday too. We went and celebrated at Gina's Pizza. Allison, Alli and I split a Hawaiian pizza :) And kyle bought a cake that we all split. Afterwards we played games at Anna and Brittany's again. Signs is the best. I love playing any and all games!                    
We had to stay at school until 4:30 today to practice our dance for the Halloween Party. We had a whole rehearsal, and I must say that our dance turned out pretty awesome. The kids were laughing and cheering when we were done. They especially loved the pelvic thrusts in our Time Warp dance haha :P

Cooking class! Next week we are gonna ask Michael (our cook) if we can make something to teach him, like some chocolate chip or PB cookies. The food he makes is super good, but we need some sweets after lunch. Maybe we can do a trade off... :)

Courtney eating some pork/ Sarina creepin in the back.

Mmmm :) Green Beans never tasted so good before China.

Party on the bus! Sparky took us to McDonalds with everyone today, and they actually had ice cream!! It was great :) Sparky didn't even get ice cream though, he just gets these rice wrap things every time. He is a true asian, rice for every meal. But he played some American music for us and we jammed out to the spice girls the whole ride home, so he's still awesome.  

Ali!

:)

Wednesday Day 56 Calligraphy and Fried Rice

Today we had calligraphy class and I learned how to write the characters for my Chinese name Mo Li Sha. Fancy huh.

The fried rice we got for lunch today. Its always a good day when we get fried rice :)

Did you know that they have Dora in Chinese? Cuz they do. My kids were glued to it today. They all got to watch it while they were getting ready for lunch. 

Sam is a sweetheart :)

Oscar! He is adorable and definitely one of my favorites

Allie, she didn't get to play cuz she was being naughty, but she was still as happy and mischevious as ever.

The trouble kids of the day

Tuesday Day 55: Changes Changes Changes

Well the Chinese teachers like to change everything..They told us we are no longer doing a 10 minute dance, we are only doing 3 minutes, so we are just doing our group Time Warp dance. They have been changing so many things lately. Luckily we don't have to do our dance still, but it sucks that Karina and the other girls had to choreograph and cut music for it all, just to not do anything. They also changed all of our lesson plans for next Tuesday. A Board of Education is coming to watch us teach so everything has to be perfect. It's kinda annoying, but I guess if they want to plan lessons for us they can. They also told us what 3 songs we are going to be singing and what game to play before class. And they told us we aren't allowed to talk with each other when they are around because they have good English and will understand us...

On the brightside, we didn't have to teach any lessons today. It was Park Day and we went on an "excursion" as the Chinese teachers call it, or in our words: FIELD TRIP!! We walked across the street to this really nice park. We saw some fish swimming in a pond and the kids loved it. The rest of the time we just played games and ran around with the kids. It was a nice little break from teaching. It was a perfect day outside too, not too hot and sweaty. The humidity has dropped down to about 50% It feels like a different world. 

Getting ready for our field trip. The all have hats and a water bottle necklace :)

Leo and his little panda hat 

Eli's selfie

I went to the hair salon today with Allison, Karina and Camille. The place is called D-Works and all of the guys wear pink shirts ;) ha they are pretty good at what they do though. We got head, back, shoulder and hand massages, a hair wash, cut, and style for 8 american dollars. It felt so nice! 

My hair finally got done for once in China! It was insanely poofy, but it died down pretty quickly thanks to this fabulous humidity.