Day 82: Ailments

I feel as though there have been so many things that have gone wrong today, most of them being physical matters. That being said, it has definitely not been the best day I've ever had, just kind of a "blah" feeling to it. Everyday that I've been here has been so wonderful, that when I have a slightly bad day, it seems so terrible because I compare it to all my other terrific days. I was just so somber, and nostalgic, today, that the hours just seemed to drag on and on. Thus, I don't want to write much about the day, I'll just jot down some of our pathetic issues of the day.

First off, Lexi woke up feeling rather sick; mostly she was nauseous and had a fever. The fever might have just been because her air conditioning wasn't working properly and she was wrapped up snuggly in her huge, furry, Asian blanket when I walked in her room. She was resistant to the help I was offering her, but I helped her anyways. I just turned both of her fans on, aimed them at her, tried to figure out her air conditioning issue, bought her a sprite and some little crackers (that turned out tasting like some gross, strawberry, freeze dried, puff things, whoops), got her some nausea medicine, and put cool rags (well, the cut off sleeves of my t-shirt) on her head and back. She got some rest and began feeling better around noon, so that was good news.

Then, I was feeling super homesick and just down for some reason, so I stayed in my room and played sappy love songs on my ukulele while Lexi and Jenna went to lay out at the pool. They were gone for a good three hours or so, so I had plenty of time to practice. Upon their return, I noticed that sweet Jenna came back with a different colored skin tone: bright pink. It was overcast today, so she didn't realize how strong the sun was while she was laying out. The front side of her body is bright pink, but there is a direct line that separates her pinkness from her normal skin tone. I feel terribly for her, because theres almost nothing you can do for sunburns, yet she is in a lot of pain and nearly nauseous from the severity of the burn. I rubbed some lavender lotion on her before she went to bed (and she about died because of how cold it was), fanned her down with her t-shirt, and then lightly tucked her into bed. I feel like the mother hen, taking care of her sick little babies. However, she said that she felt much better afterwards, so I'll take it.

Finally, my little issue of the day was the incredible number of mosquito bites that I have on my legs and feet. I don't know if a few little guys were eating me while I was sleeping last night, or if I got bit when I sat outside of Gina's pizza with Lex and Cameron. Either way, I have never had this many mosquito bites; I look like I have a disease. I tried counting them today, and I counted 88, so that's that. I'm miserably itchy, but I am trying to refrain from scratching. I just need to sleep and let all these problems pass. It may have been a bad day, but it isn't a bad life. There is so much good and that's all I've seen this trip, so when even the slightest bad thing happens, it seems huge. I'm just not used to it. So, I guess I am taking my fair share of badness and hoping this will be the last of the bad days. On that note, I'm going to bed now, goodnight.

Day 81: Day off

The kindergarten teachers have the next two days off, because the board of education is visiting our classes. Thus, I have two free days to finish all of the things I've been meaning to finish for the past few weeks. Sometimes it's so nice to have a day to catch up, outside of the weekend days. Weekends are crazy, but a separate day off is just blissful.

I got to Skype my mom, dad, and Booker last night, and I was so happy about it. I miss them so much, it's crazy. I think I've been especially homesick this week due to the holiday, as well as having Amanda's mama here. I can't wait to see my family. Also, seeing is picture, how could you not miss them? They're incredible, I just love them.

Day 80: Happy Mother's Day

Today, I was lucky enough to hear from two members of the seventy, Elder Chan and Elder Gong. All of the schools in Zhongshan gathered together and ordered a charter bus so we could drive down to Shenzen for another district conference. It was another wonderful experience; all of the speakers had beautiful messages to share with us. I was really taken with Elder Gong's message, as he reminded us that we have to be willing to follow through and act on the answers we receive from the lord, in order to receive the answer that we are praying for. Also, that we are who we have chosen to be; who we have become is a direct result from the choices we have made in our lives. That being said, I can't thank those who have influenced me and the choices I've made while growing up enough. I am especially grateful for my wonderful mother and all she has done for me. She has not only been an incredible example to me and my siblings while growing up, she has been right by our sides, helping us all through our hardest times or when we have faultered. She is a constant example to me through the clean and giving life she lives and how she always puts others first, even when it's rather inconvenient for her. She is never one to complain, but she will willingly and intently listen to any of her children's issues, questions, excitements, etc. at any time of the day or night. I can always look to my mom for the best advice, whether it's about life, school, or boys, or even what to cook that night. My mom knows it all, and she is my best friend. I'm so lucky to have her in my life and I am extremely grateful for all she's done for me. I love you mom, Happy Mother's Day!

Day 79: Xiaolan

Earlier this week, our school and Shiqui's school were asked by the head coordinators at Bond to each prepare a lesson to teach a group of students in Xiaolan, for the school there is considering adding the IlP program into their curriculum. The parents and teachers wanted to see how it worked, so we demonstrated the method early this morning. However, they not only wanted us to teach, they wanted us to do a performance for them. We didn't find out about this performance until a day or two before the event, naturally, so we threw something together last minute.

Since about half of our group bought ukuleles in Beijing last week, we figured incorporating those into our performance would be a fun experience. Konner and Zach bought guitars earlier in the semester, so we decided to join forces, and make a band. All of us had learned how to play, "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz, so that was what we decided to play for everyone.

We practiced for about an hour last night, mastered it, and performed it this morning. It went quite well, even though we didn't all quite start playing at the same time.mWe picked up the correct beat, eventually, and the song turned out just fine. I guess composing and practicing the night before didn't entirely work in our favor this time, as it had last time.

After performing and teaching the students, Bond treated us to lunch, family style! These sort of lunches are somewhat tricky, because you never know what you're going to get. However, this lunch was rather successful. They served two noodle dishes, lots of vegetables, some weird jellyfish looking cakes?, dumplings, etc. They did, of course, serve some nasties, like the array of mysterious fish/meat balls, deep fried green bean bread (or something like that, couldn't quite tell what it was), fatty meat still on the animal bone, noodle rolls cooked in fishy water, etc. Eating out, or eating wherever really, in China is almost always bound to be an experience. We did, however, enjoy ourselves as had funny conversations with some of the girls from Shiqui, as well.

Day 78: No teaching

Today, we didn't have to teach because the board of education was visiting the school. This, Jenna and I went and got breakfast, came home and slept some more, went to walking street with Amanda, Preston, and Mama Tilly and showed her around, came home and finished my book, "The Time Keeper" by Mitch Albom (it's amazing, read it), and then practiced for our performance tomorrow. Our group will be playing "I'm yours" by Jason Mraz, for our company's demo. We have five ukuleles and two guitars, so it should sound pretty good. I can't wait.

Day 77: Light show

Today I made little flowers with my kids to give to the moms on Mother's Day. They turned out so well and the kids loved them, but the process in making them was quite the ordeal. Getting fifty Kindergarteners to trace their hands and cut them out is a much larger task than I had thought.

We also had a meeting this evening about this weekends travels to Shenzen and attending the district conference. However, the meeting eventually turned into a meeting about life and unrelated topics, and hen a wrestling match, to Amanda "birthing" Jenna through our large Chinese blanket, etc. Meetings here typically turn to mad chaos after a short period of time, and everyone ends up singing, chatting, battling, or something along those lines.

After the meeting, we made a light show to dub step music with the cool lasers everyone got in Beijing. These lasers are so string that they can light things, in close proximity, on fire; it's crazy. The lady selling them in Beijing actually demonstrated lighting a match with the laser, it blew me away. The show was super trippy; we had like three going in, so it was quite a visual. Afterwards, i decided I need to invest in one or two of these and bring them back home to share! Anyways, this is short, but I'm so sleepy and am off to bed. Goooood night :)

Day 76: Snoodley Doodley

I don't know whether I was in a peculiar mood today because of the rainy weather, because I finally started feeling better, or perhaps because I've gotten far too much sleep these past few days. For whatever reason, however, I don't mind a bit. This day has been full of surprises and funny occurrences.

My day began rather early this morning, as I restlessly tossed and turned in my bed. I couldn't sleep, and I believe it was because my room was filthy hot and the fact that I've been sleeping for the past two days straight, I was all "sleeped" out. I sat there, singing songs in my head, then tried counting sheep, then tried counting the number of students I had in my class, gave up quickly, and the decided to look out my window (which is strait in front of my bed) and count the hangers out on our drying rack. I had done laundry the day before, so all of the hangers were being used by clothes of mine, which made the task of counting them, in the dark, much, much easier. I counted them several times, and kept getting different numbers; I wasn't sure why. So, I decided to venture outside, only to notice I had an empty hanger. I figured that one of my shirts had blown off or something, and landed in the bushes four floors below us. I looked over the balcony, saw something draped over the bushes, and figured it was a shirt of mine. I obviously wanted my shirt back, so I quickly devised this plan where I would run downstairs, bring our broomstick, and fish my shirt out of the bushes. However, I saw one of the guards pacing back and forth, near the doorway and I reevaluated my plan. I figured that a tall white girl, charging towards the bushes, with a broomstick, at two thirty in the morning, might just possibly startle him or maybe get me arrested, especially because I cant explain myself, I don't speak Chinese. I decided it was a lost cause and that I would just check in the morning. So, when I woke up round two, I looked over the balcony with a little bit of daylight, and realized that the cloth draped over the bushes was just a rag; I was then reassured with shutting my operation down earlier.

I have been teaching shop for the past two weeks and have rather enjoyed it, actually. This subject involves making something that has a specific function, so not just a craft, but when completed, it "does" something. I've made things like a television, a flashlight, a wristwatch, etc. All were such great successes in class, but I must admit today's lesson trumped all: the sling shot. Preston helped me come up with an idea where you clip two popsicle sticks to a half cut toilet paper roll, with a rubber band between the two,so overall a pretty simple project. The kids went crazy for it, they couldn't wait to try it out. We made a target and shot all sorts of things from it, including: their tokens, pom poms, eraser caps, and my favorite, crayons. When the crayon would hit the target, it would leave a little mark, so the kids knew exactly where they hit on the target. It was a great time, and I also got a lot of language out of it.

After lunch, we decided to take Amanda's mom to the Lunar market. It is only open during certain days of the lunar calendar, (I think I've written about this before) but today was the first day of the calendar that it was to be open. So, what better place than the Lunar market is there to take someone who just arrived in Zhongshan to?

We arrived at the market, got a fair amount of shopping in, bought some funny prizes, and then it began to rain. In Zhongshan, afternoon showers are a pretty typical thing, so we figured it would rain for a little bit, then slowly clear up. We waited, and waited, and waited, and then we finally realized, after we were standing in about an inch of water, that it was just getting worse. I'll tell you what, this was not a typical afternoon shower ladies and gentlemen, this was a full blown raining cats and dogs storm. The roofs above us were made of tin, and others just tarps, so water was leaking in, and occasionally dumping on top of peoples' heads. Jenna and I got separated from our fleeing group, so together we tried to find our way out of the market. This is a much trickier task then it might seem, there are several markets like within each other, and several entrances, but only one that takes you to the bus stop.

After a good while of searching and plowing through the rain, we ran into Chloe and Tyler, found the entrance, and couldn't have been happier! We ran together to the bus, with now about four or five inches of water below us, and herded our wet bodies aboard. It was insane, I have never seen such a strong downpour in my life! I feel like we almost could have we almost could've boogie boarded this body of water!

After we made it onto the bus, we all just laughed at how wet we were (except me, I had a poncho:)) and then began to make the journey home. As we got closer to Kaiyin, we noticed some of the people out walking in the streets. They were nearly calf deep in the water; I couldn't even believe it, I'd never seen anything like this!

After we all got settled back at our apartments and dried off, Courtney and I began to practice our new ukuleles. We have actually been pretty consistent with practicing, I am very happy about it! I love when my purchases are validated, it makes my shopping and bargaining much more worthwhile. Anyways, we began strumming and singing to Colbie Calliat's song, "Bubbly", when Konner came in and began to listen. He started out standing up, but then gradually began to move towards Lexi and Courtney's spare bed. Let me just add that some of these beds don't have the best frames, and most of them are broken, actually. So, one might say you're quite lucky if you have one that's not broken. Konner began lowering himself towards the bed, as Courtney and I just strummed away, oblivious to what was happening outside of ourselves. Then, as Konner was finally firmly planted onto the bed frame, he ever so quickly fell through and it collapsed around him! The first thing Courtney said after he fell was, "don't move, I need a picture"! I always wonder why people getting hurt, or potentially getting hurt, makes me laugh so hard. In the end, Konner walked away unharmed this evening, so all was well.

Finally, I was putting tomorrow's lesson supplies together, when Konner, Brent, and Lexi walked into my room. We all began casually conversing, as we always do, when the conversation suddenly changed to Konner asking Brent if he could borrow his heelies -- the shoes I bought in maybe fifth (?) grade that turn into roller skate shoes. I asked if he was referring to the shoes, and he said yes, and I instantly busted out laughing. I was laughing so hard, actually, that my eyes began to tear up and my laugh sounded more like an old man's than my own, thank you beautiful respiratory infection! Brent told the story about how some lady suckered him into buying them in Shanghai, but I still couldn't believe that heelies were coming back into the picture! If that news wasn't exciting enough, these ones even light up! My life is now, COMPLETE!

Gosh, today has been so good, comical, but good. I love days like these.


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