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.