Day 9&10: Bikes, Interesting Eats, and Cross Dressing

Yesterday, we had such a fun and packed day. It was packed so full that I came home last night and passed out on my good ole' hard bed and did not wake up through a series of events: people coming in and out of my room (and having full conversations with Jenna), the lights being on, and even with falling asleep in my jeans. I was beat, but it was well worth it because the weekend was such a good one.

Bond, the company who sponsors our program, wanted to show their appreciation for us so they decided to rent out bikes for each teacher to go out and tour the city to become more familiar with our surroundings. Also, they wanted to as serve us lunch afterwards and put on a talent show during lunch to entertain us. With only a few days notice, we found out that we were in fact a part of that talent show and we were supposed to prepare a skit to perform in front of "a few people". Our native coordinator said that the audience would just be the other English teachers in Zhongshan and a few parents, which in reality turned into being about a crowd of about 500 or more. So, this "small event" turned into something more along the lines of the Americans getting on stage and making a fool of themselves, while the Chinese laughed and took pictures of us. I must say, we did put on a pretty good show though.

After our bike ride around the city (with the like 300 of us in the bright orange jackets we received and all on matching neon green bikes, as if we didn't stand out enough already), we rode up and parked our bikes in front of this incredible building, both in size and in beauty. I had seen other groups stopped earlier to take pictures and such, so I thought that's what we were going to be doing. However, it turned out to be our final destination and the place where they were serving us lunch. The building was amazing, it had a large pond with dozens of Coy fish lining the walkway to go inside, incredible chandeliers, beautiful table and place settings, porcelain and automatic squatters (have to include my toilet reference of course), etc. It was phenomenal and way above and beyond my expectations; I thought we were just going to get our average cafeteria food that we were used to, not have this fine dining experience.

There was a table of about 10 of us, all with assigned seats, and a lazy susan type thing in the middle of the table. Our native coordinator, Marine (or Mayling, which is her Chinese name), sat with us and explained that it was for serving the food family style, where we get multiple dishes and you just take a little bit and share everything with the table. I had heard of this before but never eaten this way, so I was excited to try it out.

The first dish they brought out was some funky like rice porridge with different organs in it: liver, intestine, and tongue. I wouldn't have taken such a big bite if I had known that before hand. I don't want to day it was extremely horrible, but it was extremely horrible. I have definitely been spoiled and exposed to some better soups in my days.

Next, a little ball thing came out. No one knew what it was, and still might not know, so we all took a bite together. It tastes fishy and Marine called it a fish ball; and the only description I can give was that it was sick nasty. I was worried because I was 0 of 2 so far and was pretty hungry. this fine dining experience thing was turning out to be a bad idea and it was way weirder than what I was used to at the cafeteria. I would almost say I would rather eat chicken feet over this, and that's saying something.

Next thing that came out looked really promising, it had asparagus, some kind of meat, and a variety of different veggies on the side, all cooked in some sauce (that looked like soy sauce). Jenna and I loaded our plates because it looked normal, and something that would not make me gag or possibly shut down from rejection. As we took our first bite, we were surprised with a horrible vinegar/wine/rotten taste. I have never put something in my mouth that had as horrible of a taste as this dish had. I can't even explain how horrible it was, even thinking about it kind of makes me sick. I don't know what it was with the first three, but it was a rough experience.

Finally, some normal things came out, like noodles and bok choy. I was seriously the happiest person as soon as I saw those noodles, and I have never really been a huge fan of pasta. They were delicious, and oh so satisfying. I loaded up on those and the bok choy for the rest of lunch, so I was set.

As our meal went on, it was getting close to the time that our group (the Kaiyin teachers) were supposed to perform our "talent". The night before the big performance, I had taught my group a dance I had learned in Zumba at BYU last semester. It was to the corny One Direction song, "You Don't Know You're Beautiful" but it was something easy to learn and teach and would work with the little amount of time we had to prepare.

To spruce up this Zumba dance, we decided to take advantage of the fact that we were the only group of teachers who had boys in the group. So, we had the boys dress up as girls and dance really flamboyantly to this corny little boy band's hit song, while the girls danced, or fist pumped really, in our boys' attire. We started out with the girls in guy's clothes and walked onto the stage, with so much swagger I might add, and after the first round of the chorus ended, the "boys", dressed up as beautiful young ladies, came on the stage and took over our stomping ground. They were dressed up in our skirts, had on tiaras, wigs, boas, etc. and just came on the stage with so much sass. They had the choreography I had taught them down to a T and were so good, it kind of concerned me a little bit. However, the Chinese people LOVED it, and all ran up to the stage to take pictures and film us. I seriously thought it was the funniest thing. In fact, they loved it so much that we ended up winning the talent show, along with 500 yuan (equivalent to about 80 American dollars). Hooray for procrastination!

After the talent show, we went to a place called Walking Street, which is about the same as the China Towns are in America. This place is where you can do all of your bargaining and buy all of the touristy and knock-off items. There were so many random trinkets and useless things that you just couldn't help but to purchase. What a wonderful reminder it brought to me of my beloved canal street: the annoying people you can't understand, people running into you left and right, the horrible dead animal smell, etc. Just felt so right ;)

Today, we had the opportunity to hold a sacrament meeting with the other teachers in our group. We walked over to the Sirqui girls' apartments and skyped into the branch that meets in Guangzhou, which I've heard is about two hours away. Even though there were just about 15 of us, I found it to be such an incredible experience. I am so glad that I could be a part of it, especially where I am in a place that does not have freedom of religion and openly speaking about your religion is strictly prohibited by the Chinese government. Yet, we could gather together in a small apartment and take the sacrament and listen to the testimonies of other members of the church together. Also, the ward members just sent us sacrament trays, cloths, cups, and a bunch of chairs to our school in our first week here, so we could comfortably hold meetings in our apartments. It just really goes to show that the Lord is truly looking out for each and every one of us and recognizes our needs wherever we are. I was so happy everything worked out, it was such a neat experience.

The night finished off with our group telling each other scary stories in one of our apartments. After several scary stories, one of the other teacher's in Kaiyin, named Sharae, decided to tell us this freaky story about her sister, Shalisa. Side note: Sharae has a twin sister, who's name is Shontai. They are the sweetest, giggliest, and most easy going girls and I just love them dearly. When Sharae said that her sister's name was Shalisa, the people in the room asked if they had any other siblings and what they were named. We were just curious because there were so many sha somethings already in their family! Sharae then ever so calmly responded with, "There's just three of us, but my mom is so white that she didn't even realize that she gave us black girl names". I immediately busted out laughing, I would have never expected that response from her. The scary story wasn't really scary after that, the comment kind of killed the authenticity of it, but it was well worth it, it was the best comment made all night.

Pictures:
#1: Me in front of a park in Zhongshan
#2: Our bike gang
#3: Our cute little native coordinator, Marine. I just want to take her home with me.
#4: Some of my little babies were at the talent show and came and sat with me :)
#5: A chicken dish served at lunch, dig in folks.
#6: Our manly swagger for the talent show.
#7: Mrs. Preston, what a dashing female he was.
#8: We won da prizeeee :)! Most dynamic, oh ya.