Long time no see!

Well long time me no post! But did you know that "long time no see" actually comes from Chinese. It's literally translated from a Chinese saying. It's used when you haven't seen someone obviously and it goes like this: hao jiu bu jian. Like I said before hao means long when coupled with jiu and bu jian means no see so that's where the saying came from! Now you can impress your friends and family by revealing your deep knowledge of Chinese sayings. You can thank me later ;)

Teaching has been going very well. This week I've been teaching them the different parts of the body. I go through the arms the legs the torso and the face. But before I actually start teaching them the parts I get them introduced to it by having them do the Hokey Pokey and Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes and they love it! All of my classes have enjoyed it. Well my classes of all guys may not have shown their excitement for it but I know that they secretly fell in love with the song and they just didn't want to admit it to their buddies. However this one girl is the lone exception. As we were doing the Hokey Pokey she had this look on her faced that was kind of a slap in the face to me. Her face just screamed, "You're insulting my intelligence by having me to do this silly little dance" and I had a very strong urge to just... growl at her. It was weird don't ask me where it came from. Other than her everyone loved it and laughed. I love being able to be goofy and funny in front of these kids and being loved for it!

Although I'll be honest I don't always feel like I'm teaching college age kids. They certainly don't look like they're in college and they don't act like it either sometimes. It seems like they're in high school. I'm sure it doesn't help that I'm teaching them the Hokey Pokey but it doesn't really change much.

Yesterday me and one of the other teachers wanted to get our students' opinion on the best place to eat. Natalie (the other teacher) asked her class and the whole class decided to take us out to dinner! It was very cool and lots of fun. I got to try some great dishes. I liked this potato dish and this eggplant dish and I even tried some fish! But the fish didn't taste what I thought it would taste like and that was a good thing. I'm slowing starting to get used to the spicyness. The Hunan province is known for it's extreme spicyness in all of China. And of all the places I could have gone I got put here :P I love it here though it's so amazing! I wouldn't change it for the world! Actually I would change it for a lifetime supply of Sprite. That substance is so wonderful yet so addicting you don't even know! I drink like at least a bottle a day. I'm going to die :(

Today I went into downtown Xiangtan with Miriam (yet another teacher) so she could get an A string for her violin. She knew two chinese girls that wanted to take her so I just came with for fun. We went to like 5 different musical instrument shops. I got to take a look at all the different chinese instruments and they were way cool. There was the Two String Violin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhu) and some sort of a Lute (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipa) and then there was the Guzheng (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guzheng). I looked at the Two String Violin and was like "That would be pretty cool to learn" and I thought the same thing when I looked at the Lute but when I saw the Guzheng I fell in love. I was like "I don't care how but I am going to learn how to play that instrument!" It turns out there's a music shop in the Xiangtan campus that gives lessons for 40 yuan a lesson. If I have one lesson a week it's 160 yuan for the whole month. That's about $23ish! They give us 600 yuan for food a month which is really more than enough. I could easily get by with only 440 yuan a month and spend the other 160 yuan on lessons. I'm so excited! Tomorrow I'm going to the music store to get lessons figured out!

About a week ago I came the closest to being deported I've ever been. That sounds bad but I wasn't anywhere near close to being deported although I'll admit I was kinda scared when I got a call from one of the other teachers telling me what happened. The building manager named Hunter apparently told the local police that "the Americans are spreading their religion around" which is not true. All of us American teachers are Mormon and we are allowed by the Chinese government to worship on Sundays in private as a group because we are foreigners. We just can't spread our religion around and we haven't ever. But the local police are kind of ignorant of the laws of China. We just have to be very careful what we say to anybody. Not gonna lie I got the call at night and I had to decide whether or not I should sleep with my back to the big sliding window that lead to my balcony or the door to my room. I chose the door because it was smaller and if the secret police came they'd have to go through my front door first before getting to my room door and I'd wake up before they surprised me.

Like I said before life is slow in China which is good but it's going to be weird going back to the States and entering a busy life! If I have like 2 or 3 things in a day I'm like wow I'm so busy! Even if those three things only take 3 or 4 hours total out of the day. It's hard to explain but I feel overwhelmed if I have 2 0r 3 things to do in a day. All of the other teachers feel the same way so it's not just me.

It's crazy but I've been here for almost one month! On Sunday it will be one month since I left. It feels like a dream! Well that's it for now I'll try to do a better job at keeping this updated. Yell at me if I don't ;)