5.14.2009

My Birthday in China

So as everyone should know it was my birthday yesterday :)
And it was a perfect day. I woke up got ready and headed over to the school to use the internet, while walking over I passed two classes going out to PE and got the royal treatment of a million and three Happy Birthday wishes yelled at me! It was so fun, all day it was like that, all the kids telling me Happy Birthday and giving me hugs I loved it.
Chad surprised me and got me a beautiful bouquet of roses and lilys. They are beautiful. I taught in the day and about 6 of my students had made me a card or some sort of present. It was awesome. One of my students Haron made me a crown, a tiara, and a wand! It was so cute.
One of my students named Edward is a particularly crazy but for my birthday he gave me the best present he could give. Before class started we went out into the hall way and was doing the eye exercises the students do every morning, I guess it is suppose to help calm the student down and bring them under control. Haha. He tried so hard to be good for me for my birthday, I loved it! Just to let you know the eye exercises didn't work for too long.

After teaching I had to go to dance practice for a bit, but then Chad and I went out for dinner to Papa Johns. It was amazingly good. It was the best pizza I could have asked for.
The school gave me a cake so we came home and had a small Birthday party with two Chinese teachers, Chad, and I. It was kinda late so everyone else didn't want any cake. But man was it good :)

Overall it was a perfect day! It felt like my whole world around me knew it was my birthday, I loved it!

This is my cake that I picked out. It wasn't chocolate.... but it was still pretty good.
These are a few of the kids during class. The boy in the front is Jason, it was his birthday yesterday too. So we had a huge birthday party.
These are the flowers Chad got me. He is the BEST!
This is one of my classes, they sang Happy Birthday for me, First in Chinese then in English. :)

5.04.2009

Random Pictures

Here are some pictures from the last few days. They aren't anything real cool but just some pictures we have snapped during random times :)

This first one is our view from McDonalds. I think its the best view you could ask for at such an establishment. :) This is me with a pomelo, it is grown all over the place here, its like a big orange/grapefruit. It was ok, not super good. But I think that is due to the fact that they aren't in season.
This was our breakfast one day, Banana Pancakes. They were pretty good.
Just the view we had while we were cooling off by putting our feet in the river.
These are for you, Dallin Paul. (if someone wouldn't mind showing him) We found the Red Ranger in China!

This is in Yangshuo Park, they have 3 mountains you could climb. This one had a building at the top to see the view.
Again at the park
Chad contemplating life at Yangshuo Park.
The sun set while we were at the Park
This is a fresh strawberry smoothy. They are sooo good, we have gotten one each day we have been here. And they are only 6 yuan = $0.87. Again SOOO good! :)
Yesterday we rented bikes and took off on an adventure by ourselves. We ended up at Moon Hill and hiked to the top.
Later that night we watched these birds, cormorants, go fishing. There is a fisherman with about 10 birds. There is a string around the birds neck and they dive down and get fish then the fisherman brings them back to his boat and makes them throw up the fish... haha... its pretty funny and crazy.
We got to have a photo shoot after so here we are being fishermen. :)

This is West Street at night. I love the flute players!

5.02.2009

More Yangshuo Goodness...

Things have not changed much... We still LOVE Yangshuo! It is amazing. If anyone ever happens to be in China I would definitely suggest coming here, it is so serene.
These first pictures are of us on a tour on bikes through the country side. We met this lady on the street, she is a local farmer and wanted to take us on a tour of her village... or maybe just wanted our money?
It was amazingly beautiful, we went on back country roads almost the whole time and saw farmers out in their paddy fields with their water buffalo. The tour took about 4 hours in total and every minute was fabulous.

This is the village where our tour guide lives. It is a village of about 80 people.Another view of the Village
A snap shot of the ride, with 3 old ladies in the distance. We passed all sorts of people on the roads so many cute of men and women who were working on their farms.
Some of the rice paddy fields.
Chad and our tour guide crusin right along

This is our guide, she was really cute. She told us she doesn't like Yangshuo she doesn't think it is very beautiful. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side.... although I don't think a greener place exists :)This is one video, its pretty crappy just because I was filming while riding my bike :) I am a dare devil what can I say :) Please notice that every time I went over any small bump in the road my bell on my bike would ding. I loved it, it made me so happy every time. It isn't very long because we ran out of memory on the camera but its a good one. Another video is posted on Facebook, let me know if you don't have access and I can post it on here too.