April 9, 2010
Wow, sorry I haven't written before now; things have been rather busy lately. So, last week was a pretty normal week- I finished teaching about sports (golf, football, ping pong, and swimming) and then we learned some tongue twisters. Thursday night Shelby, Cierra, Mariah, and Savannah all came in and we went with Twinkle, Cold Ice, Bruce, and William to Dicos (Sam had promised Twinkle he would buy her some food from Dicos). The next morning Shelby and Cierra came to my 3rd hour class and we had a lot of fun- my students loved having them come visit. That day we left for Guilin at 12 so as soon as Nikki and Sam got out of their classes we left for Lengshui Tang so we could catch our 1:45 train. It was about a 4-hour long train; we met up with Alyssa and Nora on the train and we were off. Matt and Kristal joined us on the train an hour or two later.
Guilin was awesome! We even got to go to Pizza Hut; the only problem was that they used fish oil for our pizzas so there was a slight fishy taste sometimes. After that we went to the night market; I hadn't been planning on buying anything there because I had gotten souvenirs last time and plus I was told there were better things in Yangshuo, which is where we were going the next day. However, I came across a stand that was selling instruments and they had a bamboo flute; I had found my temptation, but I couldn't resist it. The guy told me that because I'm a "beautiful girl" for me the flute was only 200 instead of 260 (this is all in yuan, not US dollars). I got him to go down even more, and apparently, he wanted to be my friend so he even gave me his QQ number (it's like their version of email/facebook/im all combined). I could've gotten it cheaper had I been able to act like I didn't want it as much as I did and had been able to pretend to walk away; but I'm okay with paying a little more than the "lowest price" for it- I got it for 25-30 US dollars and that's way cheaper than any good quality flute there.
The next day we left for Yangshuo, which was quite awesome! We took a bus down there and I sat by a mother with her baby- it was so cute because sometimes when the baby was starting to fuss, if it looked at me it would just stop and stare at me. It's so strange how even babies will stare at us all the time and seem to be fascinated with us. It happened again on the train ride home, actually- after Dong'an a grandma sat down with her grandson. He loved playing with my watch and then he kept trying to come to me. Later he was hungry and so she went to get him a bottle while his father held him in the seat next to me. The father let me hold him for a little bit, but he wanted to go back because he wanted food. Whenever the baby would be looking over at me, the dad would say "jiejie" which means "big sister" so I gained a new little brother. When the grandma came back with a bottle for him, the dad gave him back to me (with the bottle) and wanted to take our picture. As the dad was taking the picture then putting the camera away, Sam called for me to give the baby back because we had to get off soon. It took a bit of time but I got the baby back to his dad and got up to stand and wait for five to ten minutes for the train to pull into the station. We headed back home in a tightly packed taxi and went to bed.
Okay, so I kinda skipped over Yangshuo here, so I'll tell a bit about that. That place is beautiful, and apparently you can't trust in reservations because if someone decides not to check out, you get to find another place. It was rather ridiculous; but at the same time, I've realized that as long as I'm relying on God that everything will work out the way it's supposed to. Without Him answering our prayers, everything would be much worse and a lot more stressful. He really does look after us and answer our prayers, and I've noticed it especially here; I mean, he does back home, but I've been able to recognize it better here. Anyway, while in Yangshuo a bunch of us girls decided to get traditional Chinese dresses made. It's pretty awesome to be able to say that I got a custom made dress in China, even if it looks almost exactly the same as some of the other dresses. See, two of the girls got 2 dresses, one exactly like mine, and then another one (strangely enough, both like their other dress better).
Alright, so I'll probably be updating again soon because I'm not going to be traveling this weekend. Thus, I'm going to call this good enough and bid you zaijian. God be with you!
