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.

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 ! :)