We Made it to Guilin!

We are currently in Yangshuo, it is near Guilin, which is the place we were originally suppose to teach at. It is absolutely beautiful. I have been in the best mood since the moment that we got here! It is amazing, everything is beautiful.
I will post more about what we have done later here are a few picture to let you see the scenery!
This is on the bamboo raft trip we went on yesterday :)

Love it!!!

This is a little sample of what my days have consisted of for the past 2 weeks.
I have been at China Dance Camp. Our school was in a competition against 18 other primary schools and we were determined to win!
We had practice everyday for an hour, until the week before the actual competition then we had at the least 2 hours. Then they would let the foreigners go and all the Chinese teachers would continue to practice for like 4-5 hours!
The school hired a professional dancer to come and teach us this dance, along with someone to make the outfits, and a makeup person to come pretty us all up on the day of the competition. It was insane, so much effort to make these school teachers professional dancers.
A few days before the performance they realized that the dance was too long so they cut out about 3/4th of the foreigners dance :) Which was ok by me but we had just spent so many hours learning this dance and now we were down to 45 seconds on stage :)

So the day of the competition came and we spend all morning getting ready for it, practicing, put on our lovely bright orange shirts, and caking on the makeup. This video isn't at the actual competition it is at a track meet that we participated in this weekend.
The results came in and we got first place! So all the work was worth it! Until I found out that all that meant was that we go on to the next round! That means.... more practice... more tired legs... more Chihuahua...

This isn't the whole dance, it's only the last part but still the best part... cause I'm in it :)


They did this after our dance, it was way cool.


Wish me luck in Dance Camp this week :)

The Great Wall

Its official, we have been to China :) We visited the Great Wall on Friday and it was simply Amazing! We both loved and and would recomend it to anyone who happens to be in the area.

I was blown away by the size of it and to think about how it was built. It was a more of a hike than I was expecting but totally worth it. It was amazing.



Here is Chad on the Wall. My favorite part was the guard towers, they there pretty big inside and just had amazing views.

Again another great shot of Chad. The weather was perfect. It was warm but there was a breeze so it wasn't so hot. It was perfect.

It probably would have been more pretty in a few weeks when the trees are more green, there were only a few flowers on the trees.




This is on the way up to the wall. It was quite a hike to get up to. There were 3 options of where to go to the wall. 1st is very touristy with lots of vendors and lots of people, which is very common in China. 2nd is more remote, with fewer vendors and less people because Chinese people don't like to hike so much. 3rd is very remote and is also 3 hour drive away, with very little people because it is a fairly large hike. We choose option number 2. I was happy with it. There were still vendors at the bottom but we got some good stuff from them so it was ok. :) Chad hates suivenier shopping by the way :) But we got some anyways.

And here is a video that we took. WE LOVE THE GREAT WALL ! :)

The Food

Here are a few pictures of the food that we have had the opportunity to eat everyday, 3 times a day.


Just some food, included is chicken feet.
Here is Chad trying his Chicken Food... he didn't love it. :) It is mostly just tendons and bone. I don't understand why they are a treat.


This is congee... This is what is served for breakfast every morning. I think it is ok but Chad says its not so good. He says its a texture thing but really it doesn't have much taste either.

Here is a fish head that showed up in one of the meals.

The Kids

I am going to do a few different posts today so here it goes....
Here are a few pictures of the kids in my class. I love them all so much, they are so sweet. Although all the ILP teachers (except myself) say that they are the worst class to have because they are slightly out of control. :)

On this day that the pictures were taken I was doing arts & crafts, we were making face puppet/stick figure things. They turned out really cute.

This is Edward. He is a pill, we never stops speaking Chinese.

This is Willey, he is a pill but also one of my top 2 favorites.
This is Nathan, probably the biggest pill in the class, but then again he is the other one in my top 2 favorites.
This is Ryan, he is really cute and pretty quiet except he is in a group of three of the kids in the class that often talk to each other.
This is Cindy, she has the biggest temper tantrums that I have seen. Very dramatic. These only child kids are kinda out of control. aka all the kids in China.
This is Joey, he is so sweet, very concerned about getting in trouble and being a good kid. He is in this trio that have secret plans going on in Chinese. The other one in the trio is Cade, I didn't get a picture of him but he is super cute.
This is Jan, she is very smart and loves to prove it in class.
This is Haron, also very smart but also reacts to the class clown acts and thus makes a lot of noise.
I have 10 kids in my class, so I don't have pictures of them all but I will get some.