Basketball Camp & Scavenger Hunt

Evan's week of slaving over multiple grills is over now and he's actually back in town.

Things went really well for him.  The cooking facilities were definitely different from what he's used to, but he got things figured out pretty quickly and then everything went great.  The kids loved him.  He had a nice group; not too big and chaotic.  I got to spend the last 3 days up there for most of the day.  I had to come back at night to tutor and then would just go back up in the morning and help him out.  LONG days of cooking they were.  I don't know how he cooks for a living.  I would die.

Evan's kitchen for the week. 

Evan decorating Alli. War paint status. 

Summary of us.

It's finals week for me now.  I am officially done with 3 of my classes. One more final next week and then grades to finish off and send to my boss.  It's almost done!

The huge camp is going on now.  Evan and I put together a pretty cool scavenger hunt in town for all of the kids at the camp.  That happened this morning.  It was part photo scavenger hunt and part timed challenges at various locations in the park.  A few of our tasks were removed due to their potential to frustrate some parents (we wanted one challenge to be an eyebrow shaving station.  Each team would get 70 pts for every eyebrow shaved off of their team members, but each member could only shave one eyebrow, not both.)  We also had an egg thing that would carry on through the whole event but I guess one of the kids is deathly allergic to raw eggs so we had to scratch that also.

One challenge required a player from each team to fit a whole order of baozi in their mouth (7 pieces). 

Hop scotch.

Evan and I rented a little paddle boat and cruised around the lake while the groups were all finishing their tasks.  It was fun.  Those boats are pretty strange.  If I paddled, it was fine, but if we both tried to we didn't really go anywhere.  It was fun though.

There are ALWAYS people napping on the benches in the pagoda in the park. ALWAYS. Sometimes homeless people, sometimes business men. Sometimes people play violin and sometimes women are knitting. It's quite great.

Last night was my last night of tutoring with my little ones.  It's pretty awful knowing I won't see most of them again.  We had a really fun night though.  We always do though.  Two more nights of goodbyes and then it'll be easier for a few days.  I am very anxious for our next few adventures once we leave LC.  And then Evan and I (really just Evan) made deep fried oreos and decided to throw some nutella & peanut butter and then roll them in cinnamon sugar... because we're healthy like that.

Oh, Gordon. Cutest little Chinese boy ever. 

Meditation after our ninja fight we had after class. 

If you see her wandering around America, it's because I snuck her back with me. 

The best part of this week has been seeing Jenny 2 days in a row.  Yesterday she brought Nicole with her and the 4 of us (those 2, myself and Evan) went to get ice cream and do some shopping.  Today Jenny met us at the park and we hung out for a bit.  We are planning on going to her hometown (near the farm) early next week.  Evan hasn't been there yet and it's one of my favorite places to go around here so that will be a fun outing.

AND... Evan bought a remote controlled helicopter. He's currently flying it around my apartment. I'm a bit paranoid. 

It's 3 million degrees here right now!  WAY HOT!  It's supposed to be rainy season but apparently all of the clouds have died and the sun is just beating down on us.  It's crazy.  It's gorgeous outside but insanely hot.

That's about all for now.  Time to start packing up the apartment and figuring out how much stuff I've accumulated in the last few months on top of what I already brought home in January. AH!

-Hails

Closing Time

(That was a song reference.  For those of you with it now stuck in your head, you're welcome!  For those of you who are confused, continue on like this never happened.)

Today reality really hit me.  First it was just telling someone on Facebook that I'll be home in 8 weeks.  Even typing that now is hard for me.  Then I finished giving all of my classes their instructions and sign-up times for their final exams.  The worst one was this evening.

Tonight I had to tell one of my closest friends here about my last day of tutoring - next Friday.  I almost cried while telling her and then she was trying not to cry as I explained my schedule for the next few weeks.  She was so sweet about it.  She said my last day was fine and she just wants me to enjoy my time here.  She told me that I am always welcome here and I can come to her house whenever I'd like.  I never thought this woman and her super shy daughter that I got connected to through a friend last September would turn into such a close relationship.

I have 8 weeks left here.
2 weeks from today my apartment will be all packed up and I will be making my way to another city for a few weeks of work.
6 weeks from now I will be back in LC again, leading the same english camp that started my year long journey.
8 weeks from now I'll be getting on a plane (with Evan by my side) and beginning the transition back to the states.
8 weeks.  That's all.

I am SO excited for home life.  There are so many things to look forward to.  There are tons of people I can't wait to have around me again, simple things I've missed, luxuries I can't wait to have again (like cereal), and just the atmosphere of home that I long to have.  But leaving China... is going to be tough.  This is my other home now.  

I'd keep this to myself, or share it with only a few people, but this is my journal for the year and I want to document it all.  This is part of the process, and I want to have this to look at one day when I relive this trip, which will probably be quite often.

I'm trying to soak up my last few weeks of adventures here.  It's not like I'm leaving this place behind forever, but it will definitely not be the same when I come back only for short periods of time.  Who knows what the Father has in store for me though.  The options are always endless and, if called back, I would be obedient!

QiShan & Squid & Jiaozi

Week 2 with my guy is almost over and then I have to release him to the farm where the wild animals - I mean jr. high and high school kids - will attack him as he tries to feed them.  Poor guy.

I can't remember all we've done since my last post.  We DID climb the evil mountain in town.  It's a fantastic workout - one which we are still feeling in our calves - and brutal on my pasty white skin.  The purpleness on my back is starting to fade to a deep red.  It was supposed to rain all day but of course the sky was blue and there were few clouds and the sun shot onto us like it was trying to cremate us before we could get down the mountain.  (I've been in a decent amount of pain the last few days in case you weren't understanding that).  Basically, Amanda and Evan kind of hate me for making them climb the mountain but I think they are sort of proud too.  I don't feel too bad about it considering I'm the one who was/is closest to full cremation.

Imagine this for 2 straight hours going up. Stairs and slopes and stairs and more stairs.

That was Wednesday.  Monday and Tuesday... don't remember.  I had class, we did lots of laundry, ate good Chinese food.  Nothing exciting there, oh, except for going to my boss's house and making jioazi.  Jiaozi everywhere.

Thursday and Friday we went back to the farm.  We cleaned the outdoor kitchen area Evan will be using starting tomorrow.  Thursday morning we went to one of the bigger markets in town.  My sunburn was making me want to cry and there wasn't a whole lot in the market but we some good fruit and a few veggies for dinner.  Plus, it's just fun to walk around markets.

They call these dragon eyeballs. They're super sweet on the inside and have a pit. Addicting, sweet, and expensive. But we don't have them in America so the splurge is worth it!

It's opium! Yup, just scoop some up and eat it like peanuts. 

FRIDAY was squid day!  We went to this grocery store in town that I had never seen or been to.  We had a van driver who pretty much was a stranger who stopped and picked us up.  Hitch-hiking in China!  He didn't know where the place was that I asked him to drop us off so I just told him to stop at some point and then we spent almost 2 hours in this Walmart looking paradise that had been hiding from me all year.  We bought a squid (one of my favorite things to eat) and then my awesome chef of a boyfriend figured out what to do with it and we had a delicious dinner 2 nights in a row.  One happy girl is what I am!

Isn't she pretty? I think she's gorgeous!

Evan's new baby that he bought and spent 2 hours sharpening. It's quite lovely I think.

Saturday was another day at the farm.  We shad trouble getting a taxi so we walked up tot he grocery store that has the vans.  Then we had a drunk guy hop in our van and he started talking to me.  He was slurring his words a lot but I understood a lot of what he said.  He asked if Evan could speak chinese and I said no so he just said "Oh, he's handsome".  Then he explained why people take vans.  Later, he told our driver she was going too slow so she sped up and THEN, when we needed to stop after our driver started taking us further than we wanted, she didn't hear me so he yelled at her to stop the car.  Drunk men in a van with you doesn't sound ideal, but he was quite a nice drunk, and very helpful.

We then ended the day with a ride back to town in the back of a truck (driven by one of our American friends - I saw 'our' because Evan has been working with him since he got here on menu stuff and they had dinner one night and seem to be pretty good buds by now.  Evan wanted to high-5 someone on the road but nobody got close enough.  We just waved to everyone and watched them freak out at the white people trying to get their attention.  It was great.

Today we went to get jiaozi partially because we're obsessed with it but mostly because I needed to order some for him to pick up for tomorrow's lunch for the start of basketball camp.  I'm pretty proud of my Chinese right now.  I'm doing more than the basics at this point and it feels so nice to be able to say what I want in Chinese.

Fatty (Evan) thought he was sooooo hungry.  To put this all into perspective: one basket of jiaozi has 7 pieces (it was 8 but recently they changed it to 7 I guess).  A normal human being eats about 1-2 baskets for a meal.  The other day we got 4 baskets and I ate a little over 1 and he finished the rest.  That was a little shocking for me.  TODAY, crazy guy said 6.  SIX BASKETS OF JIAOZI.  Unfortunately he didn't eat breakfast prior to our outing so his stomach was all tiny and he only made it through about 2 1/2 baskets.  Somehow I ate the same amount.  A lot for me, a little for him.  But then we managed to get mango milk tea, made a grocery run so we can deep fry some oreos later (because we're healthy like that) and tonight we are having dinner with some American friends who recently moved here.

Only 2 more weeks in my apartment and it's time to pack up and start on our massive summer work adventure.  I'm starting to get details of what we're going to be doing and it looks like a lot of hard work and a lot of fun.  I can't wait!  Home is getting closer and my time here is winding down, but I'm feeling really good about it all.  Having Evan here makes all of this feel a lot easier so I am very, very thankful for that.

(And now he's just showing off and making sourdough.  This. Guy. Is. Awesome.)

Reunited

After almost an entire year with only getting to see each other for the 3 weeks that I was home, we are DONE with this looooooooong distance madness.  No more skype dates, no more figuring out the time change every time we want to talk, no more being on opposite sides of the world.  It is sooooooo nice.

We've had a pretty great week.  He had a little hang up with his flights and got here a bit later than we hoped, but he got here.  The first night we got into town we did Chinese BBQ, and have been eating out every night since.  He absolutely loves China so far and I could not be happier about that.

We've gone to the lake, walked around the majority of town, had jiaozi more times in a week than most people do (and we're still craving it), worked our butts off at the farm (and by 'our' I really mean 'his'), gone to tutoring, and last night we had dinner at Summer's house with several of our tutoring girls there too.  It was delicious food, duck-duck-goose, hide-n-seek, more food, cute kittens, and lots of tea.

We went to this little park thing for the end of tutoring. Luckily Evan had his camera!

Traditional Dragon Boat Festival food. It's sticky rice inside of these leaves. Good stuff. 

He's up at the farm today trying to help a guy out with as many projects as possible before everyone shows up for camp next week.  One more week of him in town before the summer madness really kicks off.  He'l have 2 weeks of cooking, a few days back here in town as I finish up school and then we hop on a bus and travel around while doing service projects for the next few weeks.  It's going to be a blast and a lot of hard work, but I am so thankful that I get to do all of that with him here.

We're trying to take pictures.  This week we'll tote our cameras with us more.  I plan on visiting the camp a few times so I can see all the fun they're having.  I'll get plenty of pictures of that.

I'm (we're) down to 2 months and 3 days before we head home.  It's coming so fast.  I am still very much in love with this place and so thankful for that.  It will just make saying goodbye a little harder than I hoped.  A lot of great things can happen in these next 2 months and I'm just staying excited about it all.

Still Here

It has been a few weeks hasn't it?

I have been so busy the past few weeks.  Nothing really exciting has gone on in my life, BUT I do have some great news.  There is a new brother here!  I am thrilled about it.  He is a fantastic guy and knowing that he is someone I will get to see again in eternity is such a beautiful thing.

Small group is going great!  We're really digging into what it means to make this decision something that changes your life - how to integrate it into your habits and how to build that strong foundation.  It will be ending next week and I am so sad about that, but I know that the work has been good and every second has made some sort of an impact.  I am thinking we have another sister, but I have not confirmed that yet.

I have one of my favorite people ever coming here in 2 days!!!!!!! I am beyond anxious at this point.  I just want him to be here.  I have been finishing up lesson plans, planning finals, getting odd things done and out of the way so I can just relax and we can enjoy our time we have together before he starts cooking for camps and I have to pack up my apartment.  SCARY!  Then it's projects and summer camp until we jump on that plane home :)

70-something days until I land on U.S. soil again.  I cannot wait for what is to come when I get home, but I am still so in love with this place.  Leaving it behind until who-knows-when I will get to come back is going to be tough.

Rainy season is sneaking in now and every time we have a storm it reminds me of the first time I came here and then I just fall in love with this place all over again.  I cannot believe I am in month 11 already.  I thought this part of the journey was forever away, but here it is.

Not much else to share.  I am hoping to take lots of pictures once Evan gets here.  Hopefully there will be some fun culture shock stories to share.  I am curious to see how he takes it all in.  Things are just normal for me now.  The spitting, snot rockets (normal, but still grosses me out), language barrier, squeaky baby shoes, crazy traffic, restaurant behavior, grocery shopping, it is all just normal life for me, but for him it is going to be a whole new world!  Should be fun!

Back to my to-do list and watching season finales.