"To Live Will Be An Awfully Big Adventure" : We've made it a month!

We have officially been in China for an entire month! It feels so good to know we've gotten over the one month mark and we're adjusting more and more every day.

It's been quite an eventful week. On Monday we were told that we need to do small English lessons every other morning during the student exercise time. We are supposed to teach them one introductory phrase every school week. This week's phrase is "nice to meet you." It was my turn first so I stood in front of all the upper grade students on the back court and prepared to teach them how to say it. I was a little surprised when I said, "Hello! Nice to meet you." and they all yelled back "Nice to meet you too!" Oh dear. We have to teach them this phrase they already know for the next week? I turned around with a panicked look and Jason just laughed. I decided to teach them how to shake hands instead which is something I've noticed they don't do unless they are meeting an English speaker. It went pretty well, but I feel bad these poor kids are going to be learning what they already know for the next few days. I have a feeling they will already know the other lessons too...

Tuesday we woke up to no water. So no showers, no washing our dishes, and no doing the laundry we had been planning on doing. They turn our water off quite often, but it's usually for only an hour or two so we didn't say anything to Fay because we expected it to be back on after our first class. Well, the water didn't turn back on. At 4:30 we finally got a hold of Fay and she told us that since Spring is coming they turn the water off in the buildings to water the grass and plants. Urgh. I guess it really doesn't rain much. She said she's going to talk to them about watering and try to get the schedule to us. We'll see if that actually happens.

The water was back on Wednesday, but when we came back for lunch the electricity was off! This is also not uncommon so we didn't say anything. Fay came to tell us around dinner time that the entire area's power has been cut off and they had no idea when it would be back on. The traffic lights around the corner were even out. So we had a cozy candlelit night and figured the power would be back on in the morning.

Thursday, I woke up with a killer stomachache and stuffed sinuses. I think my body is sort of angry at me for putting it through such trauma this past month and it let me know it was not ok with it! Jason told the school I couldn't teach and I basically stayed in bed all day. We still didn't have power so I read and slept almost all day long. I started feeling like I needed to eat something by lunch time, but of course since the power was out the meal schedule was messed up and we were told lunch would be an hour later. Jason went to grab some food for himself and a steamed bun for me (for some reason mushy vegetables and fatty meat flavored with star anise (which is the nastiest spice ever invented) just didn't sound appetizing to me). He came back empty handed because apparently someone got confused and told him the time lunch ended instead of started. So off to the grocery store he went to get some ready-to-eat food. I guess this was a small blessing in disguise because we discovered we can get a decent amount of rice with vegetables, 2 steamed buns, and a thick fried tortilla type of thing for the equivalent of $1.50! Woohoo! Jason took really good care of me the rest of the day and attempted to get me some Sprite and saltine crackers for dinner. I opened the crackers and they tasted like the fake meat sticks they have here - so gross! The Sprite was great, though.
I've been feeling much better today besides the constant need to sneeze or blow my nose and both the water and electricity have been on. Hopefully today remains uneventful :)

The weather has been pretty cold again and the sun hasn't come out to play for over a week. We got a sprinkling of rain the other day which was exciting. Further proof it doesn't rain here, though, is everyone had their umbrellas out at the first rain drop and the students had books over their heads while they ran between buildings. We just had to laugh at the cultural differences again. It's funny to realize how much more aware we are of China in the media now that we're here. We try to stay updated with American and world news and we saw a story about pigs floating down the river near Shanghai. All of a sudden that story made so much more sense than it ever would have before. Not only do I actually know where Shanghai is, but the idea of pig carcasses floating in a river is actually believable! We were also reading Utah news and saw something similar, but it was several dead fish carcasses by a river in Tooele, Utah. Sorry, but that's just not nearly as cool anymore especially after going to the supermarket yesterday to see someone put a "dead"fish on the check out counter and it starts flopping around!