May 14, 2010
So, this is a bit of an unusual day for me to be writing, but I have some free time and I figure it's better now than never, right? Well, last time I stopped was after Zhangjiajie. Well, last week (when we got back from our May holiday) I taught my classes about small talk and different things you can talk about; I figured most of them have trouble enough as it is trying to speak English let alone figuring out what they could talk about. I really love my classes a lot and I'm definitely gonna miss those kids when I leave. Anyway, that week we were told that we weren't going to teach on Friday so we got another little holiday. At about 10 my student Laura called me to see what I was doing that day, and since I wasn't doing anything she invited me to go with her to lunch with her family. That was an interesting experience- I met her mom, her mom's friend from work, her mom's old classmate, and one of her aunts and one of her uncles. The aunt was the owner of the restaurant that we at at, and the uncle taught Art at a primary school though he also did photography on the side. Well, the most unusual part about it was just that I was on my own at one of those dinner/lunch things. Usually there are a bunch of us laowai (foreigners) together, but this time I could only talk to Laura or eat. I had a mushroom soup (the mushrooms were really chewy and hard to bite off any of it), pig tail (surprisingly not that bad), bamboo, some tree-like greens (they had a very odd texture), duck, and a bunch of other things. All the while, they were drinking rice wine and getting really red in the face and drunk- oh, and they kept giving cheers. At the end of the lunch, Laura's aunt asked if I would come back the next day for lunch so I said I would. In addition, her uncle wanted to take some pictures of me, and again I agreed. So later that day, after having walked around for quite awhile, we met up with him on the island in the river and he took a bunch of pictures of me. Then he took me home on his motorcycle while Laura went home on a moto (motorcycle taxi). Well, he took me down this road to the new gate that was all dirt and had tons of holes and dips and it had just rained so there were tons of puddles. I definitely feared for my safety- I thought we were going to fall over or get stuck multiple times. Luckily, I made it home safely.
Students often come to visit, though usually they never come to visit me- they always go to Sam or Nikki's apartment. After I got home I went down to Sam's to practice guitar and soon after students began coming to visit. First there was Peter, and she (yes, Peter is a girl) left when Bruce and William came. I went downstairs after she left to talk to Nikki and found Shelby and Cierra there, and was told that Nikki had had students coming all day. Well, we ended up going up to Sam's after they ate their dinner (though, Nikki didn't come because she had another student come) and William came back. They had left to go have dinner, but apparently he finished and then Twinkle came by. Basically we spent the rest of the day/evening with students. The next day Shelby and Nikki came with me to lunch (which was fantastic- all of the dishes tasted wonderful and there was no drinking or any strange foods). Then we left to meet up with everyone else (Sam, Cierra, Quincy and Lawrence) to go to the tobacco factory (where they make cigarettes here in Lingling) which is probably one of the cleanest places within 30 miles. Later on Matt and Kristal came and we went to KTV- the Chinese karaoke place. It was a ton of fun! A bunch of laowai with one Chinese student (Twinkle) singing a bunch of English songs… good times! The rest of the weekend consisted of Church and hanging out.
On Monday Nikki, Sam, and I went to an old Confucius temple and we explored a few random places along the way. It was a ton of fun. We met an old fisherman who was just awesome; when I went past him his fish went off the hook, so I picked it up for him. He really was just a great guy and I didn't even talk to him, it was just obvious. The temple we visited really just made me so happy- there were tons of traditional characters and traditional paintings… and it just was a happy day.
This week I've been teaching about Manners and Slang; man, it's so fun to act out bad manners- the best part is the reaction I get from my students. It's a lot of fun teaching them; I really love those students a lot… they definitely brighten my day every time I see them.
This weekend Nikki decided to go to Daoxian while Sam and I went up to Longhui to visit Mariah, Savanna, Alyssa, and Nora. It was definitely an awesome weekend (though I did miss having Nikki there). The first night Nora, Alyssa, and I had a bit of a dance party and it was so much fun! I haven't had a dance party, actually I haven't just danced for fun in way too long. Oh, and their showerhead is so much nicer than mine is so I really enjoyed taking a shower there! Anyway, that was kind of random but meiguanxi (I don't care). I was even able to be a judge for an English speaking competition there on Sunday afternoon. After the competition, the school took us all out to eat so I got to expand on my list of things I've eaten. I had pig intestine with a special flower petal thing, fried wasps and larvae (they tasted like empty shells), some other normal food, and little birds that had their heads and feet cut off then they were cooked. I could still see the little bones of the legs sticking out; it was interesting trying to nibble around the bones and wings and things like that. Anyway, when Sam and I got to the train station we thought we were going to miss it because it was supposed to leave in about 3 minutes, but we found out it was late and so we waited for a ½ hour before we got on the train and headed back home.
Anyway, I would really like to hear from people back home- even if you think that things are boring back there it's still awesome to hear from y'all. I'm not exactly sure what you want to hear all the time in these things so if you email me I could send a more personalized email or whatever. So if you do email me (mreid08@gmail.com) that would be fantastic, but if you don't that's still fine. I guess I'm going to end this now and say "until next time!" God be with you!
Madi
Ps- I know the date says the 14th, but that's just when I started writing it; if I had sent it then this wouldn't have anything about Longhui so yeah.
