November 28, just a normal weekend day in Ningbo

I decided instead of trying and failing to catch up on four months of amazingness in China maybe I should just try to record the normal day to day things as well as all the exciting adventures. Today was just a typical Saturday in Ningbo but I sadly realized that I only have 2 Saturday's left here. Which is so bittersweet. China has taught me so much about life and about myself. I just felt like here the world has endless possibilities around every corner as opposed to normal life in the states. Anyway... today.

Well first of all it was a weekend so of course we slept in until like 11:30. Then we got up and got ready slowly and we all (minus Ashlyn and Kenzie) left the apartment around 2 and walked to the bus stop where we jumped on the 330 bus. The 330 is our normal bus that can take us pretty much anywhere we want to go. We rode on the bus for around 45 minutes and then got off and walked past moon lake to get to the GouLou Mansion. We had never been before, we had just heard about it. Basically it was a really cool pedestrian street with fun shops, souvenir vendors and crazy food. It was so fun! First we found an amazing place to eat that had the most delicious dumplings I have ever had. Pork dumplings with vinegar is just so good! Plus we got our whole meal for 12 yuan which is less than 2 dollars! Then we ventured through some cool shops, there was this one store that had the most adorable baby plants and a random wall mural with a face and hand coming out of it. After that we went through the souvenir vendors and I got some cool wooden chopsticks (I have actually come to enjoy eating with chopsticks, I think I have only used a fork in China maybe around 4 times) 10 pairs of chopsticks for 30 yuan (less than 5 dollars). We looked through the rest of the vendors, a few girls got their names written out in calligraphy and at that point it started raining so we decided to start heading home. Except on the way we saw all these people with this weird food on sticks and it smelled and looked decent so we decided to try some. First we found a twisted potato on a stick, it was so so delicious! Potato on a stick is the best way to eat a potato I am sure of it. Then there was a super super long line for this weird corn thing so we figured it must be good if this many people are waiting for it in the rain. We all got one, it was the strangest thing, fried corn with this sugar stuff on it and then ketchup and some other white sauce all over it. Definitely one of the weirdest most difficult to explain tastes I have ever experienced, it wasn't bad but I'm not sure it was good either. Then we headed back to the bus and headed home, after stopping at Auchan, the grocery store, first. Then we were home and it was hot shower time, we only get hot water 1 hour per day, so we warmed up with a hot shower and then all went our separate ways into our rooms. However an hour later Mikala got a call from Kaila saying that the mouse was back. A few nights ago Kaila called Mikala screaming "MOUSE! YOU LIVED ON A FARM! YOU LIVED ON A FARM!" and we ran in there to find Kelsey and Kaila on their bed screaming with the mouse running around crazy and Mikala tried to catch it and failed and then the mouse somehow disappeared. Until the next day when they called her again screaming and we went in there again to the same thing and the mouse disappeared again. This time however after losing it again they decided to just try and wait quietly to see if it would come out and it did. They called us back in a after watching it go around the room Mikala somehow caught it in a basin! Then we had to figure out how to get it out, we decided to slip paper underneath it and then we taped the basin to the paper and voila we had a mouse trapped forever in a basin. Mikala then went and threw the whole thing into the trash and that was the end of the mousey that was having fun torturing Kelsey and Kaila. It was quite the excitement for our usually boring apartment life. And that was our Saturday.

Oh how I am going to miss China!

GouLou Mansion!

The weird mural on the outside of the store. I have no idea whats going on or why there is a unicorn but hey I'm just gonna go with it. 

The most delicious dumplings I have ever found in China, and thats really saying something!

The calligraphy vendor had a book with english names and the chinese of it and he told me to look for name so I looked definitely not expecting to find it but there it was! Even spelled right!

It was really fun to watch him easily just write out these beautiful characters.

Twist potatoes!

The weird fried sugar ketchup corn! (Excuse my mess of a face and hair, give me a break it was raining!)

The mousey! Trapped at last!

Pictures! Beijing!

I am oh so behind on blogging it sucks! So I'm going to try to backtrack by doing pictures posts and just talking about the pictures. So this one is going to be Beijing!

Ok. ok ok ok. So we were supposed to leave on a Wednesday after teaching from 8-12. However it had been raining a ton and I mean a ton and apparently overnight a typhoon happened and flooded Ningbo! We woke up oblivious at 7 and innocently walked downstairs to go get breakfast at the cafeteria, however we were treated with a flood up to your knees! And then it was kind of hilarious, instead of going to get food people brought food to us! Delicious fried rice right to your door! What could be better right? Anyway for like an hour we just thought it was kind of fun and exciting we were just walking around (apparently when it floods the uniform is short shorts and house shoes instead of pretending that your pants won't get wet haha) the school campus taking a zillion pictures. Then all of the sudden things got real when our coordinator sent us this picture:

and told us that it was all of Ningbo that was flooded not just our school campus or our street. Which meant that getting to the train station for our train to Beijing would be an arduous task. So immediately we packed up and were told to expect water up to your chest so we would have to carry our luggage over our head if we wanted to have any hope of dry clothes for our 10 day vacation. We trudged through the water out of our campus and saw the whole campus migrating out to the gate. It was crazy! There was high schoolers carrying elementary kids on their backs and gate guards rolling tall wheelbarrows full of tiny kindergarteners and eventually the got out a blow up raft as well. Luckily we made it to the gate and to a bus without too too much hassle. And then we were off on the worst bus ride in existence! It was so packed and so humid and so long! Eventually we made it to the train station and got on our 7 hr train ride to Beijing! 

All these statue pictures are from when we went to the Sacred Way. We had no real idea of what it was or the point of it but it was on our tour and there were cute statues so we posed with every single one (there were 24 statues). 

The Great Wall!!!! Definitely my favorite part of Beijing, it was just so amazing and cool to be there. It was also such a great clear day for it, you could see for miles! We took a fun cable car up and got to toboggan down! It was so fun! The Great Wall is definitely a lot more steep and hard to climb then you think. It was such an amazing experience tho. China is so ridiculously beautiful. 

So steep!!!

The Forbidden City! These door knobs apparently bring good luck and babies so of course we touched them all haha. 

 We climbed up the hill in the Emperors garden that overlooks the Forbidden City and al of Beijing.

 This was at the Llama Temple. Sadly you could not take pictures inside but it was a really interesting experience learning a little about Buddhism. There was lots of Buddha statues involved, inccluding the Guinness book of world records for biggest Buddha made out of a single tree. It was insanely huge, they had to build the building around the Buddha!

 This was the beyond gorgeous temple of heaven, you couldn't even go inside this one but it was still gorgeous.

We took a Rickshaw tour (being pulled in a carriage thing by a poor guy on a bike) around the Hutong which is like the old part of Beijing, it was really fun!

 The Summer Palace! It was sadly so so SO crowded here that it was hard to see or appreciate anything. It was literally wall to wall people. This is the longest covered walkway in the world, built so that the Empress could walk around the grounds without getting in the sun.

There is of course a lot more but those were the highlights of  Beijing! Hopefully I will do another post soon about Yangshuo! 

Why-fi???

Believe it or not this is the first time since I have been in China that the wifi has let me post on here because sadly you need a VPN for blogger and while yes I have a VPN sadly the VPN needs a certain internet quality to actually do anything. So the wifi has been a constant struggle but lets just say I'm not addicted to technology anymore! I guess thats a good thing huh?

China has been everything I ever dreamed of and more. I have learned so much about myself and what I can handle and the world and life in general. I love China. I love Asia! Theres just something about this country that is just really really great. We got here and teaching was super super SUPER rocky at first because of having a new coordinator and principal who had never dealt with ILP before but we eventually got that all figured out and I have been teaching cute 3rd graders and adorable preschoolers. I love the kids so much, honestly I don't know how I am going to leave them I just want to take them all home with me! And somehow I am 100% sure that Chinese kids are the cutest kids in the world. I also love being "Teacha Andaliese" haha. I definitely feel like such an inadequate teacher but I'm doing the best I can with what training I got. It's crazy, while over here I have met so many people who come to live in China as permanent english teachers. They say its a great life traveling this beautiful country and teaching adorable kids and I can see how amazing that kind of existence would be. I almost think that I would like to consider that for my life but who knows. I love Ningbo too, this school campus is beautiful and its fun living in the same place as the kids so we get to see them all the time. The food is a real downside its kind of really really gross. I mean rice is good.... well not good but edible. Lunch is sometimes ok but dinner is always squishy mystery meat...no thank you China. Our apartment is nice, very roomy and light and open. The girls I am living with, Breanna, Anna, Mackenzie, Ashlyn, Kelsey, Kelsey and Kaila and Mikala (obviously) and all pretty great 97% of the time. We have had such great times together. It definitely gets hard sometimes because we literally cannot get a break from one another but no one has killed each other yet so thats good.

Traveling China has been the greatest thing obviously. We went to Beijing and Yangshuo on our long vacation in October. I am going to eventually do blog posts about that trip because it needs to be documented but it needs to be when I can upload all the amazing pictures I took. We went to Shanghai once at the beginning and now we are going again tomorrow for a four day weekend. China is seriously so so beautiful.

I can't believe we only have 40 days left before we go home, the time here goes faster I swear. It's weird I feel like this has just been a much needed 4 month break from regular life. I'm scared to go back and have to get back in the swing of things, i.e. school and job and all that stressful stuff. Can I just stay in China forever?? Please??

18 days

                                         

I came to the realization today that in just 18 very very short days I will be leaving the country, the continent even to go live in China for 4 months. Do you know how fast 18 days can go?? That is CRAZY! I have determined that I am crazy! I am getting more and more nervous and it gets closer but I am really excited for this crazy adventure. Packing is going to be an adventure in and of itself I mean 4 months and 1 suitcase!?? That is going to be EXTREMELY difficult! I am also really scared that I will be a bad teacher, I am sure it will get so its super easy but I'm SO nervous for that first day! And I am nervous at all the people I am leaving behind, not to see for 4 months. That's going to be really really hard..... incredibly hard. Harder than I could've ever imagined. The thing is, I have been looking forward to this adventure for almost a year I mean, sometimes it was the only thing getting me through the day was thinking about how amazing this all was going to be. And at first it was just a crazy idea and then I shared my crazy thoughts with Mikala and got her on board but I don't think I ever really thought that something like this could be happening because its too cool! But it is happening and I am way excited/nervous/sad/scared. And no promises but I am going to tryyy to blog a whole ton while I am there, I don't know how great the internet situation will be but I want to try to blog every other day and while I am sure that won't happen maybe at least once a week...hopefully I can stick to that because I really want to document this adventure especially because I am sure it will go fast! Hopefully I can get all the things done that I need to before I go....there is a lot of things but the issue is that there is so many things that I don't know where to start so I keep procrastinating like I always do but oh well. I will get it done somehow. Anyways ciao ciao for now.

-XOXO-

Constellations

"My thoughts are stars that I cannot fathom into constellations" -John Green

I have so many thoughts and feelings swirling around my head and I just don't know how to get them out. Some of them scare me too much to say aloud and some scare others too much for me to say aloud. How did everything get so confusing and hard? Just two months ago I had a life plan for the next year and now everything is falling apart and its as if I am walking along in pitch black darkness with no surety or light in the future.

good vibes only

So yes I am back in good old San Antonio. Yes it is way too hot. Yes I am melting. I don't know it is kind of weird being back in Texas living with Mom and Dad again I mean its normal but its not you know? Like now I'm used to being on my own and just doing whatever and now all of the sudden I'm a kid again for the summer and it's like the last year never happened. It's very strange. But I love seeing Mom and Dad all the time, I really missed them when I was at Snow. Dad has been acting super weird lately, hopefully it is just from the meds of this new trial but who knows.

Anyways, no updates on the job front. I wish I could say I'm hopeful that I will get a job that I won't be miserable at but at this point I will probably end up working at some fast food place and hating it every second. I really need money tho! I was excited this week because this lady wanted me to babysit her 9 year old kid 20 hrs/week for 9 dollars an hour but the day I was supposed to start as I was leaving she called me and said Oh sorry we are going to our lake house all summer now. ok. So that was a bummer.

This summer is going to be a lot of getting ready for China. This week I finally sent in all of my travel documents to ILP and got a bazillion shots (Okay I got 4 but c'mon it felt like a bazillion! Shots hurt!!). I also had to get a physical which was fine except for I failed the mini eye test! Which worries me, hopefully I don't need glasses, I have to get an actual eye exam done sometime to see whats up. I don't know if I'm just being paranoid but it seems like my vision is blurry a lot recently! I don't know, we'll see won't we. Also this Wednesday (T-2 days!) I have to go get my wisdom teeth out, which I am beyond scared for. I've never had an IV or a surgery or anything so I just don't know what to expect so that fact makes me all the more scared when thinking about it. eeeeeek. I'll try not to think about it too much. Just remember...

-XOXO-

Some days.

a week in pictures.

As I am writing this I am currently sitting at the Salt Lake City Airport waiting to board a flight to Denver and then a flight to good ole' San Antonio. I am so excited to get there! I cannot wait to see my parents (its been 4 months = too long), and the new house that they moved into! The only super depressing thought about being home is that there are no cute doggies to play with and sleep with. Oh well. I am going to try not to think about that. Anyways I just wanted to update and post pictures of my last week at Snow. So here is the last week in pictures.

Caught both of these gals with the weirdest faces. XD

 What we usually do...

 The last Saturday in Ephraim, complete with selfies, mexican, the malt shop, and scary  movies.

 Tuesday night, after my social problems final, me and Marina just walked and talked around campus, it was really nice, not to mention pretty.

 Exploring San Pete County

 A tree full of shoes, supposedly for all the people that have died in the canyon but I doubt that because there are so many shoes!

 Probably my favorite night, we went up Ephraim canyon at 10pm an just sat, talked, listened to music, screamed the words to said music. It was a really fun cool experience that brought us all closer together if thats possible. The pics weren't so great tho.

 Our photo shoot day! I insisted that we look cute and take pics around campus before we left. This was the day when we all finished our finals so we were overjoyed!

 Friday, move out day!

 My car was super full but we wanted to make a last meal so we smushed in my car to get veggies from walmart. I couldn't stop laughing, they didn't think it was too funny tho haha.

 The one and only existing picture of me with my roomies. I look gross from packing up my room and cleaning haha. I don't know why we didn't get more pictures together I mean we lived together for 9 months! I am glad I met all these girlies tho, I mean we weren't super close but they were all great people and it was fun living with them.

 Us three spent so many hours at this table just talking about nothing. I'm going to miss that. 

 The last hug before we went our separate ways....sad.

And thats it. That was my last week in Ephraim and it was definitely bittersweet. See you in 6 months Snow College!

-XOXO-