faces i luff

"While we try to teach children all about life, children teach us what life is all about."

{Tony, John & Jack being silly after class}

{They are trained from the time they are little to do the peace sign hahhah}
{John & Jack being silly- age 4}

{William- 3 years old}

{John- 4 years old}

{Our 3-6 years old classes}

{Dave- 6 years old}

{Jack in KungFu attire- 4 years old}

{Wendy, Jack, John & Tony - 4-5 year old class}

{Tony- 4 years old}

{Dave, Lucy and Max- 6 years old}

I love these bebieeesss! Sometimes I get frustrated when I teach the really young ones, but then I realize how smart they are for only being 3 or 4. I know most American kids that age wouldnt be learning a second language that young, and catching on as fast as these kids are! They put a smile on my face everyday, and bring me so much joy. Ill never forget these little faces.

Gotta get down on friiidayyy

You know your weekends good when.....

You go shopping and find

1. $3.00 favorite perfume

2. FROZEN YOGURT!

3. .80 cent bathing suits....

When you buy new bikes to explore more of our town

When you get to attend a sacrament meeting with all the ILP teachers

{on our way to church}

When you get a massage and hair washed... twice in one weekend.

When you go to the KTV (kareoke) with some of the Chinese teachers from the school! Plus some friends...
{I try not to pick favorites, buuuut Alice might be mine}


When you meet new friends.... and see them randomly around throughout the weekend

• You know its a good weekend, when girls receive their first packages! Now we know they get to us safely : )
• When we get to go to Walmart. Even though we didnt find butter.
• When we get less than a dollar dumplings and noodles. twice.
• ITS A GOOD WEEKEND when you realize that next weekend we will be on our next vacation!

Ive got a case of Mondays

Today was awful.

I felt so defeated teaching today. The kids were so naughty, and my lesson was awful. I had zero energy to keep up.

Such a Monday.

I felt pretty down after teaching, but got a good nap and woke up with a better attitude. Tomorrow will be better.

Bad days just happen sometimes ya know?

" Embrace each day with an enthusiastic welcome.. no matter how it looks" - F. Enzio Busch

sweet sweet cookies

This weekend ended up being much better than I thought it would be because I got pretty sick Thursday night, and had to have my head teacher teach for me on Friday. I guess it was bound to happen, being here in China.. and Im sure it wont be the last. I got to rest all day Friday, and finally felt okay that night to go get some dinner. We headed out to go to the first restaurant we went to when we arrived here in Zongshan. Best chinese food ever. yum yum dumplings. After dinner we decided to walk home to get some fresh air and explore our little village some more. We came across a "park" that was just full of people! They were dancing, rollerblading, and riding around these little motor animals. Of course April and I had to do it too, and they actually went surprisingly fast. I may have run over a few toesies

April getting on hers. This is typical for everyone to surround us white people.. their so intrigued by how we look, talk, walk, smell... its really funny and sometimes gets annoying :0)

On our way home we snatched up some chinese face masks and decided to make a girls night. Our coordinator Freda came over and we made her put on a mask too while we watched Tangled and ate cookies and popcorn. The face masks were pretty frightful so those pictures are being kept to myself. Freda is so adorable. She reminds me of a little girls with her fluffy pink dresses, frilly shoes and bows, and her excitement for cartoons. She makes cute little noises during exciting, scary, intense, happy or sad parts of the movie, bah I love her. Good thing we have so many good Disney movies to introduce to her!

Saturday was the best! Little China secret: You can get your back/neck/shoulders/arms/head massaged, hair washed and styled for about 3 US dollars! whhhaaa? Im in the best place on earth. It was heaven. Of course we got giggled at a lot by the workers there..

We got our massages and hair wash by the girls who work there, and then the men do the styling! OF COURSE, look at em. They are stylin mojos.

Ive never had my hair so straight in my life, they slicked our hair pin straight. But whatever, my hair hasnt felt that clean since Hong Kong. hmmmmm... this may have to be a weekly thing.

{after our 2 hour pampering}
For lunch we were invited by one of our students families to a barbecue. They have such an adorable little home, with a cute little backyard. Im not sure why I was expecting familiar food. I heard "barbecue" and my mind instantly went to steak...chicken...burgers....

umm lets just say i was wrong.

::A few pictures::

{This is our meat. That we put on sticks to cook in the fire.}

{Tonys Family}
After our barbecue we took a bus to shiqi where we have some ILP friends. We spent the night there so that Sunday morning we wouldnt have to wake up AS early. Sleepover= childish behavior. Im sorry April for the pranks. But you were snoring.. and we couldnt sleep! Again, so much giggling.

We had to be up at the bus stop at 7am for our 2 hour bus ride to church! We went to a little branch of about 20 people, so as you can imagine, having 40 of us there was kinda a big deal. They were so nice and welcoming to us, and had a linger longer full of delicious foods. We didnt realize how much we missed lasagna, salad, pasta, and cookies. and more cookies.

cookies. mmmmm

{The little branch building}

Okay... this is the married couple at the kayene school sleeping on the bus. Arent they just adorable? Im coming back with my husband. That wont be negotiated.
Im back in my little village now. And I already miss normal cookies, and cheese. Oh dear.

Yangshuo

This weekend here in China was Mid-Autumns Festival holiday. Which for us means... vacation! On our last day of teaching Friday before we left we were given a bunch of Moon Cakes from the school and families. Moon cakes are a tradition here to eat on this holiday. To put it nicely, they are nasty-nast. They trick you, by smelling and looking like delicious pastries. They fooled me good, and it only took a few seconds of chewing for that to end up in a tissue instead of my tummy. I dont know why, but the Chinese love them here. And some of the girls liked them too, but most of us thought they tasted like dirt from a shoe. Very kind of everyone to give us them though.

So Friday night we left around 6:30 to take a sleeper bus 10 hours away. I was pretty nervous about this overnight sleeping bus, I've heard some horror stories about them. But it really wasnt that bad! A lot cleaner than I expected. But Im sure we just got lucky this trip... many more sleeper buses in my future. Annalisa and I snatched up the bottom bunk beds, knowing I wouldnt be able to sleep on the top ones with how crazy they drive here. 90% of the time we dont really know whats going on because of the language so we were surprised when the bus was stopping every half hour to pick up stragglers on the side of the road. These stragglers had to sit in the aisle in between us.. for 10+ hours. Sucky for them.. and sucky for us. Random strangers laying all over our stuff and us. And most of them were not good smelling strangers =/

{sleeper bus}

DAY 1

About 6 am we strolled off the bus hoping we got off at the right place, and showed a taxi man the name of our Hostel. 5 minutes later we were dropped off at this cute, quaint Hostel. We met some cool people and made friends with the awesome workers and owner. I love Hostels! They make the trip so much better

{'NANA' The hostels welcome dowgy}

{One of the coolest parts about the Hostel- 6 floors of rooms and they just have paint on every floor for travelers to paint as they wish. We had a lot of fun with that}

After we took a little nap we hit the town. We spent a lot of hours walking up and down Western Street. It had tonnns of bargain shopping, and oh so delicious foods. I might have gained 5 pounds just that day. what? I miss American food. After shopping we took a beautiful bamboo-boat ride down the Li River. It was breath taking.

{Walking street}

{Bamboo ride} {I stole this one from Annalisa. shes a photographer, obvi}

We ended our night with dancing to some fun techno music with some very excited locals, and tourists. Why do people love Americans so much?! Its entertaining. I dont hate it :)

DAY 2

Meet my main lady Ester. Ester found us on Western street, her job is to wander around and find people wanting to take tours. Most of these people we shewed away... but Ester caught our eye. How could she not? Look at this smile. She is one of the happiest people, and helped us out so much our whole trip. Ester is 50, and is supporting her 2 daughters by herself because her husband is lazy. (Her words not mine haha) She has a difficult home life. So many times throughout the day I would just get teary eyed thinking about things she told us about her life. We decided to give her a big tip since she was only making about 10 american dollars a day, after all her hard work. We loved you Ester!

OUR FULL DAY TOUR:

We met up with Ester at 9 am, and started our day out with a 15 mile bike ride. Give or take a few miles. Ester led us through the busy city, neighborhoods, the country, and dirt roads. It was a difficult bike ride, but it was so scenic the whole time, and we got a glimpse of a good variety. We finally made it to Buddha Water Caves where we explored and then played in the caves natural mud pool and hot water springs. Tchhaa... playing in mud?! I cant count how many times I've wanted to just roll, jump, splash and play in gallons of mud. And it was everything I was hoping it would be. Even had some mud slides. All this= a good day for Mandy.

But Ester had more in store for us! After we got as clean as we could and filled our fuel tanks with some lunch we continued with our journey by hiking up Moon Hill. 839 steep steeeeeep uphill steps! Did I mention we had already biked all morning? On top of all this, Annalisa and I for some reason caught a bad case of the giggles. Everything was hilarious to us- plants, feet, farts, singing, peoples faces, our sore bodies... we had it bad. We couldnt move much for a long while, and finally got our act together and made it to the top of Moon Hill! It was so worth it, such an exquisite view.

After all this we biked back home. We added an extra 2 hours to return because we lost one of the girls =/ uhhh... note to self: stay with the group! But somehow when we got home a few of us conjured up enough energy to go out dancing again, this time with the owner of our Hostel, Gavin.

{bike ride}

{mud caves- We were to busy gettin durrty to take a lot of pictures}

{Moon hill}

{Friends from around the world! Left to Right- Sacramento, Japan, Ohio, Germany, Czech Republic}

{Night out with Gavin}
{These are the DJ's!}

DAY 3

Our last day in Yangshuo was spent in the best way for us. We rented motor bikes all day for 40 yuan a person, which is like 5 dollars? Umm can you do that in the US? Don think so. I love China. They were kinda difficult to drive but we got the hang of them. Except for stopping and starting. Annalisa is a super trooper for holding on while we wiggled around when I drove. It was so nice and relaxing and felt so good to be adventurous and still explore while sitting down :) It was so peaceful just cruising around looking at the pretty mountains and the really cool towns and homes. Great way to end our vacation.

Now were back at our home in Zongshan. I was really excited to see my lil ones today. I missed them!