back in guzhen and the turtle temple

today was the first day back teaching. the 2nd semester has started and it feels good to have routine back and it feels SO nice to have our kids back. they are more of a blessing in my life than i could've ever imagined. i didnt realize how much i miss their smiles and wierd quirks while we were on vacation until today.

okay but first. i've been lazy updating the blog so i'll have to update you on the past week's happenings.
we had the rest of last week off, part of spring festival (chinese new years). it seriously goes the whole two weeks, its awesome.
we mostly just lounged around the apartments, you know taking our vacation from our vacation. mostly just enjoying our last little bit of sleeping in and having no obligations. oh. and probably some of the best news, at least to us. chantelle and me went out and bought padding for our beds!! you have no clue how excited we were when we came home and put it on our beds. and i wasnt thinking and sat on my bed and still bracing myself for the hard wood impact i was pleasanly suprised because it was SO SOFT!! i was seriously giggling and giddy all night. chantelle was laughing at me because i couldnt stop smiling. and instead of buying a heater i just bought the loveliest fleece blanket. its a beautiful thing. its kind of funny how just a blanket and an inch of padding can bring so much happiness into my life.

then on saturday gary (one of our native coordinators) took us to a really neat buddhist temple thats right in zhongshan. we werent too pleased with more stairs (we were still recovering from moon hill and what not). but it was a really pretty escape from the city and it was so nice to get some fresh air. all gary told us was that it was a temple with turtles in it? so i'm imagining like a tank with huge sea turtles (i have no idea why) but it was amusing because it was just a large pond with little turtles swimming around. there was a statue in the middle of a turtle and 2 fish on the side and you try and throw jiao (coin money) into the mouths for good luck. but gary said that there werent as many turtles as usual. but the ones we saw were pretty cute. then a few more stairs and we go to the temple. there were these humongous statues of some angry looking guys, a giant gold buddha (of course) and this really pretty gold shrine of another diety that i didnt know the name of. it was all pretty but of course we couldnt take pictures inside the places. it was interesting to watch, except part of me didnt like it because it felt like we were making a tourist attraction out of religious ritual and something kind of sacred to them. but it was still interesting. so they buy incense, lots of incense. there are these metal cart like things that they put little incense into, but then they had these narly 6 feet giant incense. they were flipping awesome, but the whole place smelled of incense, which some i didnt mind but getting a mouthful wasnt fun. then we walked around this park afterwards. it was very pretty but i was kind of tired and i forgot my camera so the pictures up are chantelle's. oh okay so this park was an island? or it was just near a river, but near the end there was this bridge and right under it were hundreds and hundreds of "goldfish" (thats what gary called them). but you could buy little pellet food. and all these fish just swarm in a huge pile. it was gross but really pretty? i dont know how that works but it was.

other than that the only thing that has happened is last night we were invited by the school to a restaurant for dinner. everybody who works at the kindergarten was there.
it was a "the new semesters starting"/crap-we-have-to-go-back-to-work dinner. it was a good seafood restaurant. the most sketchy thing we had was pigs feet other than that we had good fish, good soup, and chicken. and it was all pretty good for the most part and we went from table to table toasting them (lucy said now everyone at the kindergarten will like us). its very interesting. things like toasting people at dinner are important here. and lucy told us when we cheered we had to say gong she fat sigh (i have no idea how to really spell it). but it means good fortune and happy new year to you.

alright. well now life is back to the normal routine. back to sketch meals from the cafeteria and little kids that make me smile. and waking up to dumb machines punching holes in the ground and creepy music they play over the intercom at the school that we can hear from our apartment. :) but alls well and now we're in for the long haul.