sunday

we travelled to shengen to an international branch. it was held at a very nice couples house. but we get there and this is just like fake china. its this really nice neighborhood where a bunch of rich white people live. its pretty much a place where they can say they live in china but they dont really live in china. they don't know what real china is. they have real toilets and regular food and americanized grocery stores to go to. it was pretty much a joke. but it was really really pretty and we will really appreciate visiting there.

okay so to get there it takes 2 and a half hours. so we woke up at 5am got ready and walked to a hotel which is about 10 minutes from our apartment and then we stuffed 6 people into a cab that should really only hold 4. the taxi took us to xiaolan (sh-ow lawn) school. we rented what i thought was going to be a bus but it was two vans and that took us straight to the branch's house. number one i hate chinese driving. the drivers are crazy. and i'm pretty sure we get inches within hitting SOO many people. i just try not to pay attention.
so we get there and turns out we're an hour early. so we look and see that its a pretty sweet neighborhood and its actually sunny!! so we just took a walk around the hill and there are butterflies everywhere! it was so cool. so i want to take a picture of one so i see one on a bush and i sneak up on it. and its letting me get SO close!! so then i'm thinking hey, i wonder if i can catch it. so a callie and the other school's teacher watches me as i sneak up on it and i grab it aaaaaaaaaaaand
its dead.
saddest slash funniest thing.. but mostly sad.
but i got the two other girls to laugh..at my expence but oh well... lol

the people in the branch are really really nice. its full of nice couples with younger children, and i think there's one Chinese family. and afterwards they held a linger longer (which is a get to know you with refreshments) best part was that it was american food!! it was so good and the people are some of the nicest people. we def love that house and best part about it, its has real toilets!! we almost cried when we saw them. the people just laughed, we felt like such poor ragamuffin teachers.. having to use squatters and eat fish head..
the branch wants us to come at least once a month but we're going to try and make it every other week just because transportation costs about 20 u.s. dollars... so we'll see. but we know how important and seriously blessed we are that we have a branch to go to! we never thought that that'd be the case so we know how lucky we are to have it.

side story we were waiting for our vans to come so we took a walk around rich hill and found this quaint little fountain park. it really is a beautiful area and i found dr. pepper!! all i've seen is coke but since so many americans live around the area they have stores just full of imported stuff you wouldnt find at regular chinese stores. it's ridic.

so everything in the middle of the day was pretty much just perfect but the ride home was a different story. since we woke up at 5am i was a tad tired so i tried to sleep but dumb crazy driver kept me from that. and then we get to the other school where the vans drop us off and now we have to find a way back to the school. we have the address on a piece of paper so we're on this busy street and finally catch a taxi's attention and he wanted too much so we tried another lady that wanted us to 50 yuan for 5 people but we had 6 and we have to travel in 3's so she still wanted 50 for 3 people so we just took it because we all were kind of at the end of our ropes. well i went in the first taxi and this lady takes us through this run down part of town and then just starts driving around and we're pretty sure she's lost, we think she called somebody for directions and she's asking us stuff and we cant understand her. so finally we get home. and the other people get home and their driver used a meter and it was less than 30 yuan. so yea.. taxis are cheap. they know we're american so they try and charge us more.

oh! good news! so callie our head teacher has been to china twice already before this time and one of her friends gave her a chinese name. her's is baimeigui (white flower). and chantelle had a chinese room mate last semester that told her her name actually sounds like a chinese word xiang tao (shawn tow) which means sweet peach. so we told lucy she has to give us chinese names. well she said i already have one zhu tou (pig head) but i told her i wanted a real one. so she asked what i like and i said stars. so my new name is xiao shing shing (shoaw sheeng sheeng) it means little star :)

but comes to find out lucy told us that it also means orangutan (she didn't know what the word was and had to look it up and she couldn't pronounce orangutan it was cute)
but yea it doesn't depend on whether i say it right. it just means the same thing. so we'll see by people's face expressions whether they think it means little star or orangutan. i'm just going to forever be just one big chinese joke.
i am jessica no longer for the next 6 months i am xiao shing shing, the little star :)


(ps. to explain some of the pictures, on the drive back we passed this building that had these statues coming out of it! it was weird, ones flying horses the other is like tritan? idk. it was just neat. so i took a picture.
and then the sun was a beautiful red, from the pollution but we just try and forget that part..
the picture doesnt show it well but it was this deep reddish color. and it just looked like this perfect circle sitting in the sky. it looked fake but it was pretty)