Until Forever Ends: Welcome to China

Where the kids are adorable, the food is questionable, the people don't speak English, the roads and crosswalks don't make sense, everything smells... But we still love it anyways.

My Adorable Kiddos

We live at the school, it's a boarding school so all our students live here too. We're in a building with other teachers, but we have the 5th floor mostly to ourselves. It's about a 5 minute walk to our school building. I teach third grade and first grade. They go through rotations each day, 3 teachers the first day, 3 teachers the next day. I'm the science and social studies teacher for the third graders for the entire year. With first graders, I'm teaching Drama right now, but will eventually teach all the subjects (kitchen, arts and crafts, gym, shop, and games). They already know basic english, the third graders especially. They sometimes have a hard time getting their ideas across because they can't think of some words in English. (They aren't allowed to speak Chinese in our classrooms) They each have their normal Chinese names, but for our classes they have English names. When they first started learning English they got to pick their english name... Which is how we have kids with names like Tank, Blaze, Kitty, Mew Mew, Sweety, Sunny, etc. They also have normal names too, like Spencer, Jenny, Jerry, Garrett, Mary, and Taylor.

The Questionable Food

I think it was chicken...

This was delicious, except oh my do the Chinese people like their spice! I couldn't finish because I was crying!

Fried squid!! It was actually pretty good. I wouldn't order it again, but it wasn't awful!

That sounds delicious... Not.

They have stuffed dumpling things everywhere! And they're delicious! Except for I don't know what's in them. I figure it's better not to ask.

Yum....

They have these everywhere! Not completely sure what they are, I'm sure I'll try them one day.

The People of China

The Chinese people are so incredible. I love every single one we meet. Even if they don't speak english, most of them are very nice and try to help us. We always get stared at on the metros (and basically everywhere we go) because we're white. One guy who didn't speak a lick of english was trying to talk to us on the subway and we could tell he was saying that we all have big noses. haha. They all love us though, we'll catch people secretly taking pictures of us, and some people are a little more daring and actually come ask us for pictures which is super fun! We're celebrities here!

This sweet lady owns a place with her husband where we go get chow mien or rice at least once a week for only a dollar. She recognizes us now and knows we want it "dâbāo" (to-go).

I feel like I should start a "Humans of China" collection. (Look up Humans of New York for those who don't know what I'm talking about!)

Cards in the park.

We were bombarded by a group of highschoolers at the metro station who wanted pictures with us! We spent about 15 minutes taking selfies with them.

There are obviously no child labor laws here. Many street shops are family owned, and older children will always be helping out, or sitting in the back working on school work, and the younger children are always just running around nearby. This cute girl was helping sweep up before closing.

Many people panhandle here too. They apparently make more money than most people! And they aren't polite about it, they will literally shove it in your face, and follow you down the street asking for money.

This cute couple tried their best to talk to us on the metro, and we had a good conversation that mostly consisted of us laughing at each other because we don't understand Chinese and they don't understand English!

These are pretty common to see around populated stops. They sometimes have fruit, sometimes hot dogs, or some other questionable meat.

Found a group dancing in front of a temple at night, and decided to join them!

This guy was painting on the sidewalk with water and practicing Chinese calligraphy. This park that we went to was so cool because everyone was just doing different things with their families and it was really sweet.

Everyone rides scooters or bikes around. There's even a lane on the streets specifically for them. It took us a few days to realize it because we would walk in it thinking it was a sidewalk.

Church

This is the building where we meet for church. It's a hotel, on the second floor, that is an hour and a half away from our school. There's Chinese decorations up from some party that still haven't been taken down. There's probably about 50 people in the ward. and we're 20 of that. haha. There's one nursery kid, and about 4 or 5 primary kids, made up of only two families. The ward is so amazing though. I love having that support. The branch president's wife, Sister Fernea, is AMAZING. She helps us with everything, and she even fed all 20 of us tacos last Sunday. I love it.

The Traffic

Literally makes no sense at all. They honk for absolutely no reason at all, all the time. Pedestrians never have the right-of-way. And even when we have a green walking sign, cars are allowed to turn right, so we still have to watch for cars. We've just learned to cross the street when there's no cars coming, regardless of a green or red light. We've almost been hit twice. (Okay not really.. well kind of really... but it was scary and kinda close!)