photos of the week

say hello to a student of mine that Joe has nicknamed " count dracula bangs" Look closely at her bangs and you'll understand why.

We saw this incredible sight at the arcade! Chinese women are soo girly, shes even wearing heels, ofcourse! i saw a chinese women wearing heels ,hiking up a mountain once, what we do to look pretty!

News story: good thing we're almost outta here, eh?? Hunan is our province!

Saturday May 19, 08:36 PM
China confirms bird flu outbreak
China has confirmed an outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu virus among poultry in the central province of Hunan.
The Xinhua news agency says there were no cases of human infection in the area hit.
The outbreak was in a village in Yiyang city in Hunan and it killed 11,172 birds, a Ministry of Agriculture spokesman told Xinhua.
Scientists had sourced the poultry deaths to H5N1, the strain of avian influenza that scientists fear could mutate into a form that jumps easily from human to human, threatening an epidemic.
China, with millions of backyard birds and a strained medical system, is seen as key in the fight against bird flu.
The country's last reported human death from bird flu was in March.
Hunan authorities have taken steps to contain the outbreak, culling close to 53,000 other birds, Xinhua reported.

V is for vacuum flask, o is for omni bus

On a recent scavenger hunt activity I did the teaching in a large multi level classroom un think able. I let my student go outdside!! dun dun duuuunnnn! Its true they might have run amuck, or just played basketball to their hearts content, but Its been nice, so I thought hey they don't wanna be inside as much as I don't , so we'll give it a shot. After about 10 minutes of threats dealing with You better come back or you'll never go outside again. I was ready to set them free.
The activity was write the A,B,C's and write 1 word for each letter. Its called what do I see outside. So if you see emily you can use emily for e, and tree for t. Simple enough right?? Well first these kids have never been allowed outside. (all my worrying was really for nothing) I mean I let the kids out and they just stand right at the door or right next to the classroom. They really had no idea that I was letting them go, go free!! I had to push them to even go down the hallway! Then when a teacher would walk by they would freak out and run back into the classroom. I finally got them to see that I was really letting them have a little fun and this is what I got back in return. Here's a list of the best ABC words. Do you think these kids aw these things?? Aren't dictionaries the greatest!

A: Agriculture ( a unit in their book), Alien,
B: Bacon
c: Clothes, Cow
e: earth, environment
g: good looking girl ( awesome)
i: ice cream
j: junk
l: insect ( does that start with l??)
m: monster, mother, hmmm
n: nostril ( i had a kid that did all the body parts), nothing ( can you see nothing?)
o: omnibus ( what is that?), Oprah Winfrey!
q: quilt, quad, quill
r: rocket
s: sleep, slim girl
t: tobacco,
u: undertaking, UFO
V: vegan, Vacuum flask
w: Witch
X: X-man, Xylograph, X-chromosome ( my fav)

Speeches:
I am half way threw listening to my speeches. The kids have been giving some really great ones and some really horrible ones. My favorites are the kids that don't think I'll notice when they give a real speech copied out of an english history book. Like the kid that gave 'I have a dream", or the kid who recited a famous song. They always say,... but i really did write it!!ha ha ha now i know what my teachers felt like and man do I respect them now.

best shirt ever!!! She has no idea what it means!!!

Jack Ass most hilarious china happening!

So I dont know if I wrote this yet, but we did a really awful americans go to china and show there culture type thing. Joe downloaded the movie "jackass" and one night when we were watching it as usual our neighbors Bear ( the phone guy) and the barber came up and we decided oh what the hell, lets see what they think. China is a pretty conservative place, they freak out when they see cheer leaders on tv, much less the Jackass movie where guys are doing horrible things to there bodies with electricity! So we let them watch and at first they are shocked, but then as it goes on the just start cracking up!!! Now for me to laugh at the jackass guys I have to have a few drinks, but these chinese guys were rolling off their chairs!! The barber seriously was hyperventaling he was laughing so hard after watching a part where a guy farts into a funnel and steve-o is wearing an astronaut helmet that is attached, which steve-o then throws up into. I was totally embarassed to being showing them this horrible american culture blooper real, but they just loved it!! I never laughed so hard watching someone else grip their stomach from laughter. The barber seriously couldnt stop laughing!!
Then just last night we were introducing them and their wives to gin and tonics and just sitting outside in the summer heat when Bear brings up this movie. They then start explaining in chinese to these two poor women the goings on. The barber then gets up and starts motioning a funnel and bear acts like hes wearing an astronaut helmet and start making farting noises!!! All in chinese!!! Maybe you just had to be there, but it was the only thing that could top watching the barber laugh that first time. The ladies gave us this look like what the hell?? I guess Jackass is something you just have to see, cause telling it in a story is just not as funny.... point taken.

Heng Shan.

Recently we traveled to a mountain in our province called Heng Shan. It is one of the 5 holy mountains of china. When you get there you stay in hotel rooms that are above restraunts. Kinda like a bed and breakfast. It was a little weird when we first arrived because the taxi driver dropped us off at his friends hotel place. We were like man, this always happens to us, but we were able to bargain the room down from 100 kuai a night to 70, so we thought oh well it can't be that bad.
We spent the first day exploring the town, The town is full of mainly insence shops and temples. When you walk down some of the roads near the temples you can also see carpenter shops that are full of wooden buddahs not yet painted. You can sit there forever it seems and just watch the men squatting usually ( a normal chinese stance, when you have no chair around. ) and they are just using there small tools to shape these huge tree trunks into massive buddahs. I wish we could have taken a picture, but theres always a respect issue that you must up hold when your in another culture. I have been told by one buddist that it is bad to take photos of buddahs in temples because its disrespectful. I thought about her words when I was watching the men and thought how horribly disrespectful it would be to take a photo before they even made it off the essembly line. I will just have that memory in my mind forever instead and have to remember the street forever. It was really interesting to also see the female monks or nuns, walking around with there interesting hats and long socks and black pointy shoes. This trip has made me want to know more about the religions in Asia. While we were in Tibet the people and monks looked really different from the monks here. Chinese buddism is alittle different from tibetan buddism and this trip has really sparked my interest to read up on those differences. While climbing the mountain we visited many temples and we wondered if they were daoist or a mixture of buddism and something else. Really interesting buddahs and like nothing I had seen before.
The next day we decided to scale the mountain. On the way up we walked through many beautiful scenes. There were little pagodas and waterfalls. It took us 5 hours to get to the top. Each few meters there would be a temple to see and pray at. They had huge insence burners and some people even threw firecrackers inside it.
When we finally reached the top I thought I was going to die. Hiking up huge marble stairs until I almost passed out. When we got to the top there was a huge temple on the very highest peak. People had started kowtowing up the walkway to it as far back as 400 meters. Really amazing to see even the oldest people getting down and doing this while chanting and singing. As we walked all the way to the temple doors, you could see the clouds rushing all around us. At first I thought it was the insence smoke, but no this air was really moist and you couldnt see more then 20 feet in front of you. We scaled down the mountain after having a banana and a snack. When we got down to the bottom I once again thought my legs wouldnt move, a feeling I had when hiking at another place last fall. When we got back down to the restraunt we told the owners that we made it to the top. They all had jaws dropped and eyes open wide and said to each other "Foreigners are strong and crazy! Chinese people dont even do that and its their mountain!!". So we had a good time there, We hope to maybe go back and see it when the weather is better. Maybe the clouds will clear and we can see more. It is said you can see Dong Ting Lake for the top peak on a clear day. However many thing are "said" in China.

Dancing with Bear

So we thought we were going dancing with a friend which to us means dance around the room in a crowd of people doing the same thing, like at a club. Well we ended up going Ballroom dancing!! When we walked up the stairs we were greeted by lights and two older ladies at a table. We went with bear ( the phone guy) and his wife who we named "Honey" (we also named there son cub, but he didnt go with us) We pay the ladies and feel really high school danceish. Then we enter the big room where there are two ladies line dancing and a bat is flying around the room. I thought what is going on here??? We sit and have a beer, ( the only ones drinking anything all night!) The music starts and more people show up. The room then becomes filled with people ballroom dancing. and I mean really ballroom dancing. They were doing some amazing dancing like on tv..minus the elaberate costumes. Joe and I ended up doing our best and dancing around as much as we could stepping on each others feet mostly. It was really fun though. Then this guy came up to our table and I totally thought he was a teacher from our school I knew I had seen him a bunch. He asked me to dance so ofcourse I had to. We danced this really awkward slow dance where I tried to speak chinese but he didnt respond to anything I was saying. Then after it was finally over I went to sit down and asked bear what he taught. Bear said oh no hes not a teacher. Hes the guard at school!!! Sweeeet so now everyday when I leave campus or basically whenever i step outside my apartment I have this creepy guard waving at me. Its really funny!

Does everyone know that the chinese lunar calender is 1 month later then our western calender? Well it is and it makes planning anything in China horrible! You'll ask people hey what are you planning to do this year?? and they will tell you , well in the 5th month I will go to.... In chinese the months are not named like in other languages like spanish and english, they are named by number. This makes it really confusing when you ask someone about the date of something and they respond "the fifth month" now that is normally may right? well not in the chinese luinar calender! Its June. So we had a hell of a time planning our May break vacation. We had 1 week off for laberer day , a holiday celebrated in most communist countries and a few radical americans wish it was celebrated in the states. Its a day for workers to be off. However I saw alot of restraunt, hotel and general public service people still working. So its a holiday for some.
Our friend the barber invited us to his home town and we said yes, months ago because he told us our vacation was going to be in the fifth month. We thought he meant June he really meant the regular calender. So we decided we must hang out with him instead of going to Yunnan as previously planned.

The barber home town
The barber is from the province just north of Hunan. Its called Hubei and its only about an hour north of Yueyang. We rode a bus up until Dong ting Lake, where we got on a ferry and rode across to the neighboring province. The ferry was really scarey, we got out of the bus to just watch it all happen. The ferry was packed and we thought we might sink. Defiently regualtions on weight were not watched or monitored here. So we thought well if we stand outside the bus its better and at least we have a fighting chance of not drowning!! We made it across safely and just as our bus was next in turn to drive off the ferry the bus in front of us got stuck. We had to nudge it a bunch of times to get its wheels on the ground. When we finally made it to the barbers family home we were really surprised at how big it was. His sister lives there with her husband ( who talks like the god father) and her son (who's nickname is mimi, which means secret, dont know why) They have 3 bedrooms and a huge apartment with a balcony over looking the back road. There home is on the second floor and the buisness is on the 1st, they make wooden windows from scratch. The toliet is upstairs and the crazy thing was that when you flushed it all the contents just went right out the back and into the grass below. Really weird! They also just threw trash off the balcony. I dont know if they have a mass burning or not, but it didnt smell or anything. It was just another normal daily activity.
We also went out and caught frogs and fish in the small ponds around the house. They take a huge battery strap it to their backs , then wear weighters and go in with these huge sticks armed with dumpling strainers and wires all attached to the battery. Then ZZAP the crap outta the frogs and fish. Dinner is easy as one two! The frogs were really funny, they just stand right up , then 15 minutes later they come alive again, so you have to keep them in a bucket.
We went out to eat a few times where the locals were pretty amazed to see two foreigners. We also noticed that alot of the barbers family members had huge scars on their faces, makes us wonder if they too were in the same motorcycle accident that the barber was that made him get his jaw rewired! Speaking of motorcycles.... Joe got to ride one of theres, it was only down the block, but he had fun. The bikes gear were all backwards so you clicked up instead of down a few times. Then he said he smelled something burning and he looked down and relized he was touching the exhaust pipe! He burnt his leg a little. We had an awesome time at his place, they treated us like real family and we drank and had great food every night. The drinking was a little exsessive but I think they think we are american and we do that sorta thing. However on Sunday I was happy to be leaving and not drinking anymore beer!

We then traveled west to Yichang.( the place of the three gorges dam) The bus ride was long and bouncey!! When we finally arrived both Joe and I were exhausted and just wanting a good meal. We ended up meeting a kid that went Three gorges university and spoke good english. He helped us find a hotel and we took him out for dinner. He ordered the three colors icecream. I kept asking him, well what are the flavors, but he was like I dont know theyre three colors. I said well dont you want to know what flavors and he was like ehhh It doesnt matter. Ok whatever.
At that restraunt we were walking down the stairs and joe saw a huge spider! the size of my palm. I thought it was going to jump down at us so I ran so fast out of that place.
The next day we found a tour and went to see the dam. Its huge!!! Mostly long more then tall, it stretches across the gorges and looks really spectacular. We saw so many foreigners it was scarey. I thought I was going to faint when one of them said to me " they can build this, you think they could build a decent toliet". I know I am a foreigner too, and I thought those things too when I first got here, but something about her attitude made me mad and I just gave her this look like you know honey I have lived with a squatty potty for a year now! and when you think about it, sitting down is kinda gross!, but I just thought it and didnt say it. It was like she and her family were taking a stab at one of my family members or something. I just didnt like how she was being that typical rich american on a trip to another country and making judgements, like why cant they join the civilized world. It just made me kinda angry.
After it all the dam was pretty cool. we'll put photos up soon!
We then had to travel back by train, but the train only went to wuhan so it ended up taking 10 hours to get home. Joe didnt get a seat so he stood in a different car from me. when we finally got home we went straight to bed.