Kidos!

Here are some of the kids that I teach every day. I am only writing about the kids that I have pictures of so far. Hopefully I will have pictures of them all soon. Enjoy!

Me and Grace. I love her! She is our only girl in the group of 30. She is my little helper during class. She does everything that she's told and she speaks really well. I tell her that she is my favorite every day. :)

A bunch of Kindergartners trying to line up for dinner. They are so little and cute!!

Even the little kids know how to line up in two straight lines and march to class while they chant.

Paul. He is solid meat! He likes to beat the other kids up, but I just want to squeeze his cheeks all the time!

Charlie, Max and Greg. Charlie is one of those kids that convinces you that he's stupid, but he's actually really smart and can speak English in full sentences. Max is the quiet, sly type. He knows how to get what he wants while being sneaky. Greg is just hyper. I've learned not to chase him when he runs around the room because he sings Chinese songs and snaps his fingers like he's dancing with me.

Phillip. Sometimes I wonder if his parents work on the black market because he somehow manages to get all of the kids to give him their tokens (fake money). This kid will probably grow up to be Hitler someday. ;)

Sam. Like Phillip, he always has hundreds of tokens. He is always mad at something. I don't think I've ever seen this kid smile. He's really smart though and knows a lot of English. He's the leader of his class. All of the kids listen to him.

Mark. I'm not sure what it is about taking pictures, but nobody smiles. I promise that these kids are not depressed. They spend a lot of time laughing, but when it's time for pictures, the mug shot face goes on. I like to call Mark the SBD (silent but deadly) because he's really quiet but he causes a lot of trouble. He's the sidekick to a lot of the louder kids so he doesn't get caught as often but I can see right through him. You don't fool me, Mark!

Mid-Autumn Festival

September 12th was the Mid-Autumn Festival in China. I'm still not sure what that means but I think it's a celebration of the harvest. Tim said it was as important as the 4th of July in America. To celebrate, we walked around to different classroom parties. The kids gave us more food than we could carry and then we handed it out to the next class we went to. It was fun because they would all cheer and clap when we walked in the room. Then we would take pictures and sign autographs. It was so fun!

Natalie and the one little girl that wasn't interested in us. haha!

J-Biggs with a cute little boy!

Me and a cute little boy. I really wanted him to give me his grapes...but he didn't. We don't get a lot of fruit here.

All the kids called their parents on their cell phones. It was funny to watch them.

And what Chinese celebration would be complete without fireworks? :)

Linchuan!

Angela, Josh, Natalie, Me, Nathan, Jessica, and Tim setting off on our adventure!

Sometimes they forget that we aren't Chinese and they try and squish us into small cars. Good thing we are all friends!

I literally couldn't move my legs at all for the 45 minute drive to the city.

All 9 of us in a little car. Oh the pain!

Tim took us to the fair. It looked like it had been closed for 50 years but it was actually open.

Me at the fair. Doesn't this look fun kids??

This was probably my favorite part of the fair. It's sad that the most exciting part was sticking my head into the mouth of a fake reptile.

Random box of fish. We weren't sure if we were supposed to just look at them or try to catch them.

This is both beautiful and disgusting at the same time. This was the entrance to the fair.

This is probably the only picture that you will ever see of Tim smiling! This is a historic picture!

Everyone fits their whole family on scooters. It's amazing! This little girl was sitting on a chair between her mother's legs.

Natalie likes taking pictures of butts...even her own.

Live frogs for sale! Everything here is served very fresh!

The markets are filled with live animals. If you want to buy a fish, they give it to you while it's still swimming around.

Everyone wants to be white, so they use umbrellas to shade themselves from the sun. They even use them on their scooters.

Maximum Bacterium

We have to hang all of our clothes out in the hall to dry. One morning, I was feeling my pants to see if they were still wet. When I wrapped my hand around my pant leg, it squeeked at me. I thought it was a cricket or something small so I got a stick and tried to hit it out. Then, a bat flew out of my pants and started flying around my head and down the hall. I screamed and ran back into my room. Let's just say I wasn't in a good mood after that. Then I went down to breakfast and ate REAL AMERICAN ROLLS! It was the first real bread that I had had since being in China. Thank you, Cook for making my day better by making me rolls for breakfast! Do I still hang my clothes in the hall to dry? yes. Do I feel them to see if they are dry? no. I hit them with a stick and THEN I check them. :)

Famous!

When we first arrived at Mayflora, they took us into a building to meet the headmaster. I noticed some pictures of Americans on the wall. After taking a closer look, I realized that I knew them! These are some of the pictures from various buildings and ILP classrooms of my friends that taught here before me. I hope you enjoy these Ashley, Brooke and Cait!

My New Home, MAYFLORA!

How true that is. They have many of these sayings around campus. haha!

So, I guess we're experts! All you have to do is speak English and you are an expert!

Every Saturday night is movie night. Some of the kids sit out there and watch it on a huge screen.

This is a garden area on top of a huge hill in the middle of the school. It is really pretty.

Small fishing lake across the street from my school. I love how green it is here!

This is a little shop across the street from our school. We like to buy fake pringles and oreos there. Yum!!

The arch is the front parking lot of the school. This is also the only gate to enter campus. It is has guards there 24/7. I think I'll be safe here. :)

I live in the Mayflora Hotel (big building). It is at the front of the school near the gardens.

Chinese people LOVE basketball. When they have free time, they spend most of it playing basketball outside of the student dorms.

This is the kindergarten. It's so cute and it has the only play place one the whole campus. I think these kids start coming to school at the age of 3 or 4. They are SO cute!

This is the school's gym. This is where all of the school assemblies and important events are held. I want to play basketball in there, but it is locked most of the time.

Now, I'll take you on a tour of my room. This hallway is where we prep ourselves for the hike to our room. At night, they light it up with blue lights. It's pretty cool.

Flight 1 of 12 to get to our room. At first I hated the stairs, but now I like them. I am going to have the best legs and butt when I get home. We counted how many stairs we climb every day. We average around 1,000/day just from going to eat and class. If you add working out on top of that....yeah, sometimes I get sore.

My room! We're on the top floor of the hotel. They usually don't have any Chinese people stay up there so we have the whole floor to ourselves! Awesome!

Angela and I outside of our room. :)

This is our shower, toilet, washer, and shelf. The Chinese sure know how to pack it all into a small space.

This is our bathroom sink and mirror. We love that the shower is so close because we can just spray the sink off with the shower when it gets dirty. LOVE China!

Since the floor is usually wet from the shower or the washer, we have to keep a towel outside the door to dry our feet off.

This is my bed and room. Our rooms are really nice for China rooms. The bed is a box spring with a sheet and a blanket. I'm getting used to sleeping on a rock.

This is our doorway to our room.

We hang all of our clothes out in the hall to dry. I can't wait to have a dryer again when I get home.

This is our hallway with all of our hanging clothes.

This is the window that won't shut. When we first got here, the floors were all wet because it had been raining. One thing I've learned is that I always need to watch where I'm walking. The floors are slippery and wet a lot. Unlike America, I have to actually pay attention when I walk. There aren't signs that tell me I'm going to slip.