Sept 6

Friday was quite the day!

We got up early to head over to the school- we were ready in about 15 minutes, which was pretty impressive. Headed up, ate breakfast [mostly leftovers so I tried a dish or two but overall we mostly just ate their rolls], and headed to our office.

The day or so before, Greg was able to find a way to the free internet unrestricted through Google and so he set that up for us- Hello, Facebook! Only gone for two weeks! Haha… So Katie went to teach her class finally and I fooled around trying to sort out a blog and everything for us [I’ve set up about 4 now, at least, and it’s been very tiring and very annoying].

Then as she was coming back I realized I had a school assignment due for SUU and so I had to start redoing it since it was overdue by an hour or three and I had done it on my home computer, but we don’t have internet set up at our place and I hadn’t brought the laptop with me. So I began rushing through that- when I had one of my fifth graders start dragging me out the door.

Yeah, I wasn’t supposed to teach that day. I mean, the other day they gave me a new schedule and transferred a Thursday class to Friday- but I had taught them Thursday, the day before, so it should have been for the next week, you know?

Go, China, go.

Anyways, I had two teachers trying to sort out what I am supposed to do except they both ended up saying different things. I ended up just standing around the class and seeing no one was coming back to tell me what’s up, I just started… well, playing. I didn’t have a lesson or anything planned. Luckily, I had brought my little dice/box/classroom tool of mine to play along with my usb with lesson plans on it. We reviewed some things, I even played them two songs [the first, by the Kooks, really confused them]- and then finally started showing them some pictures of mine and got them to talk about what was in the picture. Mostly they stated the very obvious- for example I have a picture of myself with Spiderman from Universal Studios in Florida, and they pointed out red, blue, and black colors- so I started asking them questions about it and that got them answering a little better. And we did that until class ended! I’m definitely going to do this more often, I think! Haha…

Anyways, it all worked out fine enough in the end, although I do need to start on real lesson plans with them, so maybe this week we’ll really learn something new, you know?

After that was lunch, so I put everything down and we went to eat. They had these almost stale potato slices that were seasoned, so we ate those mostly for lunch, along with another roll [I know, we’re going to get so fat, but we can’t help ourselves!], and then I rushed back to my office to finish the school presentation and got that sent in.

Done with school for the day, we gathered our things and headed home for a few hours. We ended up watching a movie, I think, and then headed back to the school for dinner [again, lousy because it was a Friday. But edible, yay!], where we found Abby and Nicole waiting for us. Magi was going to join us, but it was her only chance to go see her boyfriend so we let her go. Oh, and earlier in the day she had brought her computer into our office and showed us a lot of pictures of her traveling and such- it was really cool, all the places in China she had been! Very nice!

Finished with our meal, the four of us ladies headed out to hit up the town! Only to wait for the late bus for about 20 minutes. And it was freaking crowded even though we were at the second stop. We stood up for most of the journey, which was VERY badly caught up in traffic. No matter where in the world you go, Friday nights are the not the nights to hit up the town.

Should have been maybe a 20 minute drive, 10 minutes longer for stops- but because of the traffic, it took us just short of 2 hours to get to our stop. It was nearing 8 then, so we didn’t get to go to the smaller markets Nicole wanted to show us, but a bit nicer part of town.

This didn’t really deter us, thank goodness!

We hit up the streets in the dark, through the crowds, and looked at all sorts of goodies. Katie found something in the first or second clothes shop we entered, and found a very cute orange hippie crocheted top. After a debate or two, she walked out with a cute shopping bag and we were off again.

Next stop: shoes! Lots of Toms-esque ones, and we all ended up buying a pair. They look pretty sturdy, and yes we all got stripped ones. Well, Nicole bought some platform flats [contradictory, but you get the idea] instead.

And so on! We crossed a time or two, debated a few things, I tried on a cute dress once, more shoes, and we even found some funny awesome pajamas that Katie and I plan on getting some similar ones eventually. Why not, eh? Long sleeves will keep us warm in the winter. I bought up some cute headbands, a ring, a watch and one more pair of shoes before we called it quits because everything was beginning to close finally.

Not wanting to repeat that ridiculous [but silly] bus ride, we opted for a taxi which would only take about 25 RMB back to our place. We dropped Abby off, then the three of us headed back to our area since Nicole’s just a few buildings off just inside our apartment complex. We bought some boxed noodles to eat, being hungry and all, and then parted after the first elevator ride.

Katie and I still had enough energy so we opened the noodles- the first one turned out terrible. We think it’s partially because they had the crushed things inside that numb your tongue and it just didn’t help the flavor so after a few bites each, we had to toss that one but were able to eat the other one.

And we watched a movie during that, of course.

Although there was the smell of garlic hanging around our place for the next day or so.