Back to School to School to School

We are officially back in the real world, after about 6 months of play time we are back in the swing of things.
Chad and I are both starting our last year of our undergraduate schooling. And things are looking good. I have a pretty chill semester, I don't have any math courses, I finished all of them up last year. So I have only 13 credits of Education courses.... good news not to many intensive assignments... bad new lots of busy work... I think I would rather have Math classes.
Chad on the other has as a very intensive semester. He is taking 19 credits and none of them are show up and pass classes. So all sympathy goes out to him this year :)
Work has been keeping me busy for the past few weeks, for some reason all the students who needed a math class forgot to take the placement exam the past 3 months where there was plenty of time for us to help them. Instead the all remembered last week and this week that they need to take the Placement Exam and they haven't had Math of 4-5 years, and they HAVE to have this class or they won't graduate/getting in their program/live.... Fun times.

Overall life is good. We are moved into our new house. Trailer #165 :) Its a gem. More updates later.

Here are some pictures of us going to school :) Happy first week of school!

Confession...

I just had a good cry after looking at pictures of my babies in China...
I miss them so much.
I posted a few pictures so you can see the cute faces that I love.

I miss you my little trouble makers
Love Teacher JoAnna

Back to real life

We have been back in the States for almost three weeks now, and real life is hitting us hard. There will be no more sleeping in, checking emails for a few hours, teaching for 3 hours then relaxing from the hard day of work. It is now get up super early (for Chad at least) working lots and lots and school (again just for Chad). So mostly I just work lots and have normal work hours while Chad gets up super early and has lots of work and school, he is amazing!

Both of us got our jobs back, Chad at Impact Payments and I at the Math and Stat Advising Office up at USU. We are so blessed to both have good jobs.

An update on our trip home: The last day at our school was so sad, we had to leave at 3 am so the night before we packed our bags and put them on the bus. While we were doing so there were about 10 little girls that were just standing at the door and in their window crying their eyes out cause we were leaving. It was the saddest thing I have ever seen, we didn't even teach these kids they were just students at the school that we saw every once and a while. They are so sweet.
Saying good bye to my kids was one of the hardest things I have done, they are just too cute, even though I some times wanted to lock a few in a closet for a bit I love them all so much. I went into their class room to give them a portfolio of the work we had done in class and a few started crying and I couldn't control my self. I had 3-4 kids hanging on me crying so hard they couldn't breath, so anyone who knows me knows that I was the one crying the hardest yet trying to be brave and tell them it will be ok and we will always be friends. I will forever love those kids in China.

Both Chad and I miss all our friends in China like crazy! There are so many amazing people all over the world.
We left the school at 3 am and had a grueling 25 hours and four flight of travel home from Changzhou. Everything went rather smoothly we made all our connecting flights and our last flight actually ended up leaving an hour early so we got home at 6:30 instead of 7:30 on Thursday June 18. Both our families where there to meet us and we went out to Crown Burger for some good American food. :) It was awesome!

For about the next 1 1/2 we were extremly turned around on our sleeping schedule, it didn't help that we were at a Bischoff family reunion in Bear Lake where we stayed up until 1-2 every night. Bear Lake was so fun, staying up late getting to know family better and eating great food.

The next week we were back to work and now starting this past Monday Chad started school. So here we are back in real life... I think I may like the only teaching 3 hours a day .....

Back in the States

So I know this is a very big jump to the end of our China trip. But unfortunately I couldn't update my blog for the last month because blogger was blocked all through out China. Now that we are home and adjusting I could update on everything that we did the last month but it could take me over a month to do so.
These pictures of of my kids and their preparation of the final performance, we did a play based off Peter Pan. We had 2 classes of pirates, 1 class of mermaids, 1 class of Indians, and my class was lost boys. They each memorized about four lines and sang songs, it turned out pretty good they did awesome. I am so proud of them.
There are also pictures of our last day in China, saying goodbye to all our great friends.



The pirates
Three of my lost boys :) So Cute. (by the way I made their costumes and did their makeup)
Cade my little baby Lost Boy! haha so cute!
A Mermaid, an Indian, and a Lost Boy
Chad and a bridge near the school.
Just hanging out at the market (notice the crazy hair, it was crazy humid the last few weeks)
Willy and his sneaky face.

Serina, she is an English teacher at the school we were at.Chad and Jon two of the PE teachers.

These pictures are also of some of our friends in China that we already miss! Love Them!
This is Jordan, Chad would play basketball with him often.

This is Chad, Serina, and King on our last night in China.
These are my kids just being cute.
Chad and Andy, he is the supervisor over the cafeteria and a very dear friend.
Our friends on the last night in China.


We got back on Thursday June 18 at about 6:30 in morning, after almost 25 hours of travel. All four flights went good. It all started at 3 in the morning when we left the school to bus to Shanghai where our flight left at 8 to Hong Kong. We sat on the plane for about an hour before take off so our lay over in Hong Kong was only 1 1/2 hours. Our next stop was Taipei, Taiwan then a 12 hour flight to LA, Californina where we had to claim our baggage then recheck them to SLC. And then found out that our last flight was scheduled to leave a little earlier so we ended up arriving home an hour early then expected.

Since being home everything is going well, Families are fabulous, clean air is a treat, soft beds are amazing, sitting toilets are great, and the food is loved! :)
Now it is just time to find a place to live, jobs to support us, and stabilize our diets again.

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. :)

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!

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.