Sorry I haven't blogged in a while friends!!! It takes a horribly long time to get pictures up here but I will do my best so you can see where I live! These are pictures of the school I teach at. This is the No. 1 High School in Huangshi.
This is the main building. It is where Senior 2 and Senior 3 are taught. They are like Juniors and Seniors in America. I teach one Senior 2 class here every week on the third floor!
This is the building to the right of the main building. (the building on the left not pictured is for offices) This is Grade 1, where my other 8 classes take place. Grade 1 are freshman in high school.
This is Camille and I's office. It is located in the Grade 1 building and is shared with the teacher who is the head of Grade 1 and some university students who are teachers in training. We just met these girls this week and were excited to have new friends close to our age!
Last week our waiban (foreign boss who takes care of us), Diana, called to tell us the night before our classes that we had a week's vacation because our Grade 1 students would be at military training! AWESOME! So we spent the week exploring a little bit more of the city and then watched our students perform what they learned at training on Saturday! It was fun but it turned into a paparazzi shoot of Camille and I! The students AND the teachers and then even the military people were coming up to us to take pictures! It was crazy!
We taught a normal week this week. And next week is the National holiday so we get another week off from teaching! What?! This is ridiculous! And I still get paid? Yesssss! Actually, I am more excited to get into a regular routine at school so that I can fall into a groove with students...all 500 of them and get to know them better! Today in the hallway one of my students said "Hello Ms. Lesley!" and I said "hello Ricky!" Then he got so excited "You know who I am? Oh my gosh!" I told him "of course I know who you are, we talked yesterday!" haha I know who he is because he loves Harry Potter and wears HP like glasses!! So basically, he is awesome!
More Pictures!
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| This is a picture of downtown Huangshi on one of the main roads. Camille and I live right off of this road and it is always busy with people and cars! |
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| This is one of the more peaceful areas of Huangshi where you can actually see all of the mountains that surround the city. This is at on of the other Zhong Relations teacher's home. |
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| About a 20 minute walk for our apartment, but it is really pretty and quiet (which is rare here!) so it is worth the walk! |
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| The entrance to the park alongside the lakes. |
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| Inside the park! This is one of my favorite pictures! |
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| On our week of vacation, Camille and I had team dinner at our house! We made baked potato soup with dinner rolls! YUM! And then we surprised them with chocolate chip muffins! We had to bring the muffin mix with us because they do not have any baking supplies here! These are the Huangshi team members. |
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| The entire Zhong Relations team! This was taken during the Huangshi group's trip to Wuhan, the city that the rest of the team lives in. Wuhan has over 8 million people in it! Crazy! |
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| Chinese pose! hold up a peace sign and only sort of smile! |
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| Silly pic! |
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| Diana took Camille and I to a traditional Chinese tea house for tea! We were quite excited! |
The tea is good for your organs and for burning fat! yes please! Diana also taught us how to play
an easy version of Chinese checkers. The picture to the right are the coasters for the tea that have the chinese symbol for tea on them.
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| Entrance to the flea market.... |
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| Where Camille, Chelsie, and I bought huge sheets of foam to make our beds soft! |
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Our typical lunch, jaozi. They are delicious dumplings made by a sweet street vendor down our street! They cost 2 RMB which is about 30 cents in American dollars!
More Stories!
So I want to tell you about my Huangshi team since they are the only people I really know here and I will use their names a lot in my blog. Here goes... There are seven of us who live in Huangshi from Zhong Relations. Paul and Erin Korson are the married couple from Michigan and teach at the No. 3 high school. Aaron Noble is from Michigan and lives with Kevin Bruce, the Canadian. They both teach at the No. 8 middle school. Chelsie Priest is from Ohio, but lived in South Carolina during college, so she understands southerners! She teaches at No. 16 middle school. Just wanted you to have a little info about these peeps!
Last weekend, the Carpenters (founders of Zhong Relations) came to visit in Huangshi! They took us to the flea market where you can buy just about anything, literally!! You name it...shoes, yarn, clothes, bikes, vases, giant pieces of foam....its there! Obviously this is where we got the foam for the beds! We all went to get massages together because it only cost about $6 and then the girls got their nails painted! Okay maybe I feel a little pampered ;) On Sunday we celebrated one of the Carpenter daughters, Sophia, on her birthday. It was also Jessica's daughter, Ray Ray's birthday! Jessica is Paul and Erin's waiban. Sorry if this is confusing! So yeah, we had a princess party at KFC for the birthday girls! After, we had fellowship together. Our team meets together every week for "church" since there really isn't another place for us to go. It was an amazing afternoon of worship and praise in which I witnessed His power and ability to heal! I feel truly blessed to have been a part of what He was doing!
Other fun things.... Camille and I found a DVD store where we bought the entire series of How I Met Your Mother, Arrested Development, The Big Bang Theory, Growing Pains, and a packet of 10 Julia Roberts movies for 140 RMB! Yeah, thats about $20! SCORE! I have begun to "punish" my students for talking in Chinese instead of English/sleeping/not doing their work by making them stand up and sing or dance! I borrowed this genius idea from Aaron, who has been doing this in his classes! It is so funny, I have such hard time not laughing with all the students! Justin Bieber is a big hit and my students often choose to sing Baby! Speaking of JB...one of Camille's students gave her a gift....a giant poster of Justin himself! Can't wait to hang it up in our apartment! Camille and I also joined a gym this week, but have only been twice so far. Last night we went to the jazz class. The entire gym stopped to stare at us when we walked in and then a group of people came to the doors of the class just to watch the Americans dance! It was our first time and we didn't really know what to expect. It turns out the class had already learned the routine so Cam and I had to catch on quick, so we looked pretty silly at first but finally got the hang of it and it turned out to be pretty fun! Tonight, we are going to try Hip Hop! haha
Some days are great like the stories I've told and other days have been quite difficult with no hot water or electricity, but we are learning to adjust and be flexible! Today, I entered a battle with the largest spider I have ever seen in my entire life! Seriously, the thing was huge and I'm pretty sure it was just waiting for me to walk in my room so it could jump out at me and scare the daylights out of me! Did I mention this was at 6:45 AM!!! Not the best way to start a day! Anyway, the spider won because it was just too fast for me...not for a lack of me trying my hardest to squash it. Hopefully, I will never see it again, but I'm a little frightened to go to sleep in there!
"The Lrd is near. Do not be anxious about anything." Phillipians 4:6. I know He is with me in all that do here and I pry that he uses our team in big ways this year. Please continue to pry for us, I am feeling a little under the weather with a sore throat and really don't want to get sick here! I appreciate all that you have been doing!! And keep the email updates coming!!!
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