wo jiao zhu tou

For school today we are supposed to have this theatre room, which is pretty much a room with a stage. But everyday so far it’s been locked so we’ve just used a little classroom. Well today we got Lucy to unlock it for us. So we go in and the floor is just these huge tiles but in the middle of the room they are all raised up along the crack. Well we try and sit the kids down and all of a sudden we heard a huge crack. And poor Karen, one of the chubbier kids, had stepped on a bad spot and cracked the tile. We feel bad but we’re all like, well of course it’s Karen who cracked it right. Pretty soon we had all accidentally stepped on spots and pretty soon like 4 of the tiles had some pretty good sized cracks in them. We totally just busted up the floor. So we’re thinking maybe that was why the door was locked… woops. (picture of karen, which the head teacher from last semester told us she reminds her of a koala bear, which made us crack up because thats all we see now when we see her)





Okay so then we had our first Chinese lesson with Lucy today!! It was so much fun. I love Lucy SOOO much. She is so pretty and way funny. We are so lucky to have her and we are so lucky for everything she does for us. We’re sitting in the apartment with her and I was thinking about how much I’m going to miss her when I have to leave, and I’ve only been here for a month. That makes me think about after 6 months how bad it’s going to be to leave here and the people and especially the children!! I love them so much. I’ve known them for less than a week but I feel like I know them so well and already love them SOO much. Callie said something during one of our training. She always tells how “oh my gosh you guys the kids are going to be so amazing” “oh my gosh, you guys this is going to be so fun”, it’s funny. But she told us that what these kids have really is just like unconditional for us. I mean we can be strict with them and we can get mad at them but at the end of the day they just plain love us. I don’t know how to explain it, and it just makes us love them back that much more. Okay so during Mandarin lesson Lucy just wrote out like the pinyin (Chinese put into English with accents and such) consonants and vowels and sounds. Then she wrote out simple everyday sayings and then some dialogue that we went over. And in it was asking what your name was and saying my name is ____. So our head teacher Callie has been to China twice already, this is her third time. She was a teacher and then a head teacher and this is her second time being a head teacher. So she knows a little Chinese, not as much as you’d think but she knows some stuff. So she whispers to me, “Say wo jiao (my name is) zhu tou” (pronounced: woh jow jew toe). So I say, “Hey Lucy! Wo jiao zhu tou.” Right away Lucy just busts up laughing. And I turn to Callie and say, “What did you make me say!?!?” And Callie and Lucy are just cracking up. And we’re all laughing but nobody will tell us. So I’m like, “Lucy. What did Callie make me say.” Lucy, still laughing, says, “You said my name is Pig Head.” It was pretty much hilarious and Lucy wouldn’t stop laughing. We told Lucy to give us Chinese names and Lucy says that that can be mine. I asked her if I should go up to random Chinese people that I see and tell them “Wo jiao zhu tou” and so now Lucy thinks I’m funny, but ridiculous. And I really want to just go up to people and say it matter of factly that my name is Pig Head. I wanted to tell you guys that my name was zhu tou and it actually meant like beautiful sun or something but I couldn’t not tell the real story. So that was pretty great.

So Chantelle and I were going to make a trip to the store and Callie came along with us. And we decided that we just really didn’t want to put up with china food tonight. Because for lunch we had fish again, not the head thank goodness! But it was just not good and even the kale underneath the fish tasted like fish. So we figured out we’d go to KFC for the first time (its right next to the grocery store). China KFC is way different than America KFC. All of their stuff is chicken sandwiches and fish sandwiches. It’s weird, but good? It was crazy busy too. We just sat there and talked for a bit. Something different about China, at fast food restaurants the workers deal with your trays if you take your own tray and throw away your food its like an insult to the workers. It was a good time we sat there a while and just laughed and talked. But then we come home and some of the other girls had gone to Dong Dong again (the fast food restaurant) and we of course went to KFC but Jay had stayed home. So we see her dinner from the school on the table and we’re like oh was it any good? And she says it was alright but when she went down the chef saw her and said, “Oh I was waited for you! I made you guys something special!” (He speaks a little English. He asked her where the rest of us were and she said we went to KFC. So now we feel like total jerk heads. So we’re going to make him a card or bake him a brownie or something.

oh and today were just hanging out and callie always go on and on about these really really good looking chinese pop singers. So today we were just jamming out to the music. which pretty much made me laugh because Callie looooves these boys and one song was a girl and boy duet and Callie was singing the girl part and lucy the boy part. It cracked me up because Callie knows everything about these boys Wang Lee Hom actually grew up in New York and has a masters and speaks perfect english. So i looked these boys up.. and hey you know what, they aint too bad looking. (boy in white, wang lee hom; boy in black pan wei bo

Okay so my batteries died on me today for my camera but I’m going to take pictures of our apartment and the school and hopefully the kids. And I’ll write a little each day just about the regular happening and stuff that goes on here in China. One thing for sure I thought Idaho drivers were crazy at BYU-I, no. You don’t know crazy until you’ve been to China. Okay everyone either has bicycles, mopeds, junkie cars or really nice cars, but mostly mopeds. And honking is totally different here. Everyone just drives everywhere. They all just fit in and people somehow just weave through the traffic on the sidewalks. But honking is for “hey I’m on your left” “hey I’m coming up behind you and passing you” “hey you’re not Chinese/Americans!” (We get that one a lot) or just honking for the sake of honking. And construction, which is everywhere, involves bamboo, a lot of bamboo. It makes me laugh.
which is pretty much what chantelle and i have figured out. That's all we can do with china, just laugh it off. because there is no way we would get through some of these experiences if we couldnt just laugh it all off.