extras:

1. went to pizza hut, they have a western toliet, saw a girl in a puffy white dress standing on top of the toliet squatting.
2. we have given names to some of the people in our lives, because they resemble or share similar manarisms. We have a professor cuiso from the Pink Panther. We really want him to say "hamburger", we have a Tom Sanchez, because this one english teacher kept toasting us at this banquet and at the end the night there was some rice wine left and he tried to pocket it. we mostly call him tom because he looks like tom with squinty eyes, but with the rice wine thing it made it more funny.
3. When asain people drink alcohol, they turn red. Seriously its a medical thing, they dont have some kind of enezyme, really funny when professor cuiso gets red!
4. Meg asked us over the phone, about our toliet one day "why dont you just sit on the floor" we said ewwww noooo the floor is bad, then thought later we thought how funny it would look if we had a toliet seat sent over from america and put it on the ground, then a chinese person walked in on us. Boy would that be funny!

Our first day!!!!
Well our first day teaching went great! We were both soooo soooo sooo nervous! 65 students in one class is alot to look after, but once we got in there it went great! I know this sounds weird but they are smaller then you think, so 65 chinese students dont take up as much room as 65 american students. Sounds weird, but true!
Well I can say that before my first class I was shaking in my boots. I was nauseus and kept thinking to myself, "what have you gotten yourself into, why would you ever think you could teach in china!!" I was literally about to cry., but then I went into the classroom and all the students looked at me and smiled. They all have such huge smiles. and some of them gasped, took there seats and said huuuuooo its a lady! I think they may have been more scared and nervous about me then me of them. So after seeing there smiles I calmed down and relized, I can do this!
Next I felt a little uneasy again as the network wouldnot work on the computer in the classroom. We are very lucky to be at a school with such technology, but alot of times the computer doesnot work so you always have to be prepared. So I was damn prepared to run down the hall and get someone to help me. I ran to the next door which just so happens to be an office. and who do I find there??? Only 3 men sitting having a chat. I look at them and notice one of them is our non english speaking head head head master. When I say head I mean head he is a very serious man defiently runs the place. chatting with 2 other guys. For one second I think oh shhhh*7*7 t its him, I dont want to look bad! , then my survival speed kicked in and I just looked at one guy and ushered him into my classroom. I made charades type motions of a computer and a no sign meaning its broken. He looked at it and couldnt fix it. Then looked at me and said something in chinese. Somehow I looked at him and in my head I knew he said dont worry someone is coming ( seriously I have not had enough chinese to know this) I looked at him blinked and prayed thats what he said, and started class!!!
In china the students are very respectful. Its awesome, If I become a teacher in America I know I will miss this, but when you want to start class in a chinese classroom you shout Class Begins!! then all the 65 students stand up and say Good morning teacher, you say good morning, you may sitdown, they say thankyou teacher and sit and you start. Its kind of amazing actually. You feel really important! So I started class hoping someone was coming. Then right before I needed the computer, mr mao our computer man friend was there to rescue me!!! I love mr mao!
So its pretty funny the rest of the class went awesome and I am so excited that I did it right!
I think its funny though the head masters daughter in law is our foreign assistant. When he saw me come in frantic to his little meeting he called her and said go help her!! She came running in during my class, I really hope I didnt get her in trouble!

well that was our first day. We also got our cell phone number today. Its crazy you can buy a cell phone number here and pay 4 yuan cheaper if the number has a 4 in it. Why? the chinese think its an unlucky number. Crazy huh? Well we chose one without a 4 we thought a couple extra yuan a month isnt that bad, we have already lost enough face being foreign.

emily
ps I tried to speak chinese today, I said I want to buy an egg plant in chinese, the word kinda sounds like if you were to say ce-a zuh.
the people I was talking to thought I said cheese , like cheese in america. I said no Im speaking chinese, and they all looked at me and said ohhh thats chinese, we all laughed. I need more practice

Well we have arrived in our new apartment in Yue Yang county. It seems that our blog is working from our internet here, thank goodness!
The apartment is amazing! It is huge, the biggest apartment I have ever lived in or been in. We have a huge bedroom with an armoire, a huge living room, with a leather couch and chair. (much fancier then old handme downs, I dont know what we are going to do with ourselves when we leave, we'll be so pampered! We have these great window shades that have scenery on them, the one in our bedroom is a winter scene of a frozen lake, boy dont we feel right at home, and the one in the living room is a swimming pool somewhere in the carribean with a couple walking along the pool. Joe and I are going to cut out our photos and put them on the couples heads. We are also buying some shades to bring back home. They are really funny! There are two big apartments for foreign teachers so if anyone wants to come and stay, they would be able to live in the one above us!
Well we found out yesturday that joe and I will be teaching 22 senior 1 classes. So thats only 11 classes a week. Wow are we lucky. Most of the other volunteers are teaching 16 per person. So we are lucky, plus we only have to make 1 lesson plan per week, so technically we could make the same one and share it since we are teaching the same grade and material.
The first night here we had a banquet with all the schools head masters. Wow it was scarey. There were 7 english teachers that could speak english and the rest could not, so there was alot of translating and charades going on. There also is a toasting culture in china. Joe was not feeling well and didnot want to drink anything, but he pretty much had to, as not to be rude to the head masters. They have this thing called the one finger dip as they call it and you have to drink all of your drink when you are being toasted, so we had to do this. Sometimes I wonder if its like a right of passage, just like your 21st birthday, lets see what the foreigners do if we give them drinks. It was amazing, the food was great, and there was even a time when I embaressed myself with chopsticks. I tried to pick up some pumpkin and it was so slippery that I couldnt hold on to it, the whole table laughed,
Just two nights ago in changsha we took a friend out for steak. We saw how he used a knife and fork, so the getting made fun of over the chopsticks thing makes me feel better, ha ha

We have been going around our new town buying some last minute things and seeing how to get everywhere. We now know where the market is and we even bought some bedsheets. Wow was that an adventure. We had 3 of the female english teachers go shopping with us, They have to be the most polite individuals I have ever met. One has a 10 month old, She doesnt look like it at all, really she is beautiful! her baby is soo cute too, very round head, and in china its good to have a puggy baby, so her baby is the cream of the crop!
They all helped us look for bedsheets, I ofcourse loves the nice thick ones, but then I was informed by the teachers that those were wedding gifts for people, so they were too expensive, but we found these weird bedsheets that look like they are for a childrens bed, but oh well there sheets right? I think I might bring them home and use them there.
We then had lunch and I asked if we could take the food home. Most times in china you arenot supposed to. But if you are around friends its ok, so the teachers said it was ok and we did.
Later we came home and tried to cook dinner. You should have seen it. We had 4 chinese teachers trying to show us how to do it. We have a gas stove top and the igniter needed a new battery, so we went out for that. Then we needed to go buy rice,because I thought there was some in the cubberd, but it was salt. Then we only had two bowls! so some of us had to eat our meal out of plastic drinking cups. The teachers must think we are so weird, or maybe incapable of taking care of ourselves, I bet they will check on us often. Our first dinner in our apartment was a hoot anyways!!!
Today we will go to yue yang city and buy cell phones. I will try and do my best to update our blog in the coming weeks. We start classes on monday! I am soo scared. But we are very lucky. Our classrooms have tvs and computers so we can make power points. Most classrooms in china arent so lucky, so we are thankful for these things.
hope everyone is well. please email us we love to hear about home.

Hey everybody!!!
Just wanted everyone to know that we made it here to China. After a 13 hour plane trip across the pacific from Los angelos we then took another 2 hour plane to the city we are currently in now. Changsha.
All the baggage got here too!! thank God! I was able to sleep a little, but joe had a hard time. Somehow we left on wednesday from the states and arrived on friday?? hmm go figure.
One girl in our group sat next to this little chinese grandmother who kept telling her to eat more cause she was too skinny. It was really funny, she said the women kept giving her meat flavored candy?? hmmm She thought it was cute for like the first hour of the 13 then it just got anoying.
We have met with some of the students here and they have to be the best and most polite people ever. They are even more polite the most of my friends. We are like super stars, which gives alot of pressure I think.
We have already felt the stares and in fact a couple of the girls in our group were filmed by a family, I guess they just wanted their picture with the americans or something. This is something we are told to expect everywhere.

We are at an internet cafe right now. It is a room the size of a banquet hall , with fake trees on the ceiling and desks with computers everywhere. There are kids playing video games mostly, and even one guy was sleeping. You pay 2 rmb for one hour on the computer, so we are using there computers, we dont know about the wireless thing but it seems not possible at least for now.until we get to our town in about three weeks. This is just oreintation. So email will have to do.
We havent slept at all, They are trying to get us used to the time change , so know now that while you are all sleeping I am typing this!! Awake! The sun also feels hotter here.
Oh and before I forget I just had my first squatter toliet!!
It was in this really dignified hotel that we are staying at. In our rooms there are american toliets, but in the lobby bathrooms there are these huge nice marble, and when I say marble I mean like palace marble!! doors and you open them and theres just this toliet looking thing, but its actually in the ground, so its more of a hole in the ground the flusher is gold and gleeming. Kinda a funny sight, but I ran out right away and screamed to joe!! I got my first squat down!! So excited!!

We love you all very much!! We will try to call soon. I think we will get some international phone cards, but we have to walk again another 20 minutes to get to a "phone cafe" We cannot call outside the hotel with the hotel phone.

Love you!
Joe and emily
We will try to call you as early as it is convenient. We had to walk about 20 minutes to get here with our group.
We arrived safely and are now getting accustom to everything from

We Made It!!!

Well we made it thanks to everyone out there's help.
China so far is a very beautiful country. Our trip was not to bad. we ended up in the 747's emergency exit row, and had over 6 feet of leg room. can not beat that.
our schedule looks pretty busy for the next 3 weeks. lots of trainging and language classes.

I hope everyone out there is doing great.
It is a little hard to work this because all of the pages are in chinese script. and i have yet to master that.

well i have been up for the last 2 days and we still have to go out tonight, since it is friday ( what happened to thursday.)


we are missing everyone!

---Joe