Thanksgiving blues

Alright, I admit it, I am officially bad at blogging. But it's not my fault! Do you want to know why I haven't been blogging? Because in all of my spare time, I am either sleeping, wishing I was asleep, or so braindead from speaking Chinese all day that I can't put normal human words into sentences, regardless of the language. I. Hate. School.

Also, I am less than pleased with the Flagship program. My classes aren't really teaching me that much, and I feel like most of the work is busywork. I was willing to put up with all of this because I just knew the internship was going to be worth it. But what if it isn't? I can't seem to find an internship position that I am super into, and when I do apply, not a lot of people respond. I almost had an I'm-wasting-my-time-and-my-life-is-going-nowhere panic attack today, but then I reminded myself, that all of this is a learning experience and at least I get to be in China and eat delicious noodles all the time right? Right. Crisis averted.

Speaking of delicious things, it is Thanksgiving and I am sad. I am totes grateful that there is an awesome ward here and we get to play football and have Thanksgiving dinner together this Saturday, but I do miss my family. I sure am grateful for Skype, look at me, spreading the spirit of Thanksgiving throughout the land of China. I'm grateful for life, and traveling, and pizza, and nice people, and my family, and cellphones, and the internet, and VPNs and water heaters, and crunchy leaves, and all forms of chocolate. Look at that I'm in a better mood already! Thankfulness for the win.

The past couple weeks have actually been quite awesome. I got to go to Hong Kong! To see my wonderful friend, Vikram. We went to the peak, and got froyo, and went grocery shopping, and most importantly just chilled. It was nice and warm and I got to take a break from being constantly stared at by strangers. It was a great weekend.

The view from his balcony. Gorgeous right?

At the Peak, in front of a cool rock

I'm adorable. And this tree is bomb.

 

The view from the Peak

So that was amazing. What else is new? We've been on I think two class field trips since my last blog post. We went to a 旗袍 (pronounced chee pow) museum which just showed a bunch of formal Chinese dresses and how they have changed through the ages. Also they had this cool machine where people were hand-weaving material. It was really cool.

This is all the weaving machine. There is a person sitting at the top feeding thread to the person at the bottom weaving     with her hands and a foot pedal. Righteous.

pretty dress

pretty dress #2

Ok, so I've been teaching English at a 补习班 （it's like after school school... I weep for the students). This is different from my volunteer English teaching that I'm doing every Monday, I'm getting paid for this. Shh, don't tell the government. And it is so freaking fun. The students are little brats but they are so adorable. Last time after class I helped some of them pick English names and the girls were all like: “teacher, you are so beautiful, is your hair natural?” I'm going to get a big head if I live here for too long.

So... we have another mouse problem. When I was in Hong Kong my roommate said she was woken up in the middle of the night by mouse noises. She ran into the kitchen and she saw it run back into the bathroom where it probably came out of in the first place. She is terrified of mice so I felt bad that I wasn't there to help. The next night when I got back, we spent the evening putting all of our food into the fridge in case it came back.

It's getting cold in Nanjing now. One plus about that is that there are no more cockroaches! That I know of... But the heater in my apartment is in my roommate's room and doesn't reach my room at all. So my roommate lent me this adorable little Spongebob-shaped water pad that heats up. I sleep with it every night. Otherwise I would freeze to death. And all of my teachers are telling me that it hasn't even gotten cold yet. Bully.

So I was grocery shopping the other day and this guy selling me red bean buns asked me where I was from and I told him America. He was all, oh I like America! And I was like, ya you like Obama, right? Because, normally Chinese people that I talk to really like him. But this guy said "no, I don't like Obama". When I asked him why, he said "he's black". And I was like, "so"? And he went on to tell me about how China is a more traditional country and is not "used to" black people. And I'm like, "well, I'm white, I'm different from you, and you like me, so what's the difference?" And he was all "that's different, we're used to white people but we are still afraid of black people." So that was an experience. I wasn't about to get mad and tell him that all his traditions were wrong and he was an idiot, so I said that I disagreed with him and that the color of your skin doesn't make you a good or bad person and whatevs. I have never in my life heard anything that outwardly racist. I've heard plenty of people hint that they don't like a certain race, but even in white-dominated Utah, never like that. Come on China.

So that's pretty much it. I shall post again soon. Maybe. If I feel like it. For now,

Here, is a picture of an adorable chicken curry dish. 

And a dog wearing jeans. Yes, jeans

 

And this is kind of boring but it made me really happy.

If you can't tell, I'm on page 5, and I have 1234 words. :D

I love you, American friends!

What's that smell?

Remember that weird smell I mentioned coming from around my washing machine that I couldn’t find? I cleaned for hours when I moved in and still couldn’t get rid of it. Well I found it. It was a dead mouse. Rotting away on the floor behind my washing machine. After I was done gagging and almost booking a flight back home, I scraped the mouse (literally, scraped) off of the floor -  resting occasionally to jump up and down and scream – like a man. I scraped it directly into the trash can and then threw away my entire trash can. It’s not worth it. So that happened. Why am I here again? Education… internship… future opportunities… rotting mouse in my FREAKING KITCHEN. I don’t know guys… is this worth it?

The show must go on, for now. Midterms are here already! This semester is flying by! I've already been here for two months and it feels like I just got here! Time flies before midterms, and I'll be wishing I could say the same when finals get here.

After my three page Chinese essay and ten minute presentation that I had to do last week, I had a Shanghai weekend! I tagged along with some friends that had wanted to go for Halloween, and it was a blast. The club scene is amazing there, and it was awesome to hang out in a westernized area. My friends Corinne, Brooke, and I stayed on the couch of our friends Michael and Damian (from Belgium. Awesome accents) and we pretty much just clubbed and shopped all weekend. Have I mentioned the Forever 21 there with 4 floors? It is heaven. I could spend hours in there. And I did. And I bought all the things.

At the Bund with my beautiful girls

Chilling on Nanjing road

Clubbing!

But now I’m back to the old grind. Finishing up the rest of my midterms this week. I won’t be done until next January. January! And I thought 16 weeks was long at BYU. The semesters are so long here! And there’s no Christmas break so I might be going a little crazy soon. This is definitely going to be a legitimate China experience.

Hmm okay, so what’s new? Midterms are happening, boring. We went on a class field trip the other week! We went to see the palace of the Forbidden City which used to be located in Nanjing when it was capital. It was gorgeous. We also saw the main gate of the Nanjing city wall which was fun. They had archery! No bulls-eyes for me sadly.

My friend JP looking awesome

Cute girls at the palace

I wanted to write an update on the English class that I'm teaching for my volunteer hours at the school for children of migrant workers. It's going quite horribly, and I feel quite horrible about it. I would love to just show up and sing some songs in English and have them understand everything and give them candy. It would be bliss! But there are too many students! As soon as I get some of them to quiet down and listen, there's a group somewhere out of my eyesight throwing things at each other. And nobody absorbs anything! I literally spent an entire hour trying to teach them how to say "what do you like to wear?", and by the end of the period, not a single student knew what the word "what" was. It is so frustrating! I need some way to teach them that they will retain. But they understand nothing I say except "good afternoon students". What do I do? Any classroom advice would be greatly appreciated.

I'm coming up empty on other things that are actually interesting. I have an ikea trip planned tomorrow, and I'm going to Hong Kong in a couple of weeks to see my friend Vik! Other than that, nothing too new. OMG except the new Panic at the Disco album. Listen to it. Love it as I do.

I shall post again soon, perhaps. In the meantime here are some fun pictures.

Love love.

This was a cute moment. The 老外（foreigner）

Me and my adorable roommate. #inlove

I <3 him

I got way too excited about a rootbeer float.