I LOVE China!

Hello family, friends, and random people who read this!

I wish there were words either in English or Chinese that could explain how I feel about China. China is such an incredible place! There is a feeling here that I have never felt in America. China has so much history and it's people are so rooted to that history. You can feel the history here. I don't know how to explain it so you'll understand, but it's almost like I can feel the people who have lived here in the past. It's almost like they are present on the streets, but not in a creepy way.

Teaching is going SO well. I love my kids so much and I can't help but smile when I am with them. They are hilarious and do the craziest things to get my attention. The best words I hear are, "Miss Sarah, high-five!" I get mobbed by kids all wanting to give me a high-five or maybe a million high-fives.

One day in class, my students were so full of energy and just going crazy. I knew that we wouldn't get through the lesson at all if I didn't find a way to expend their energy first. So we did the Macarena. I will post the video on Facebook. They learned the Macarena but decided to do their own dance. It was SO hilarious!

I have to tell you about Pizza Hut in China. It's a really fancy sit-down restaurant. It's not really normal for people to order just a pizza. They have appetizers, desserts, etc. Kimee and I decided that we would go for dinner one day. We sat down and they gave us one menu. Kimee went to scoot her chair closer to me so we could look at it together, but she bumped into the table next to us. The girls gave her this way dirty look. (really embarrassing, by the way! ;) Love, Kimee) The waitress came to take our order but she didn't speak any English so she went to get someone who did. He didn't really speak it either, but he tried. We pointed to what we wanted and he wrote it down. When he came back with our drinks, they were wrong. It was some sort of milk tea so we grabbed the menu and showed them what we wanted again. They came back with iced tea instead. So we just went without a drink. The appetizer came, and it was wrong. We just ate it, and it was good! The pizza came and it was actually right! It was so good, too! Even by American standards I think. Kimee was trying to dish up her pizza and it fell off the serving spatula and knocked her fork onto the ground. Oops! (So embarrassing, by the way! Again! Haha that was not my day. Love, Kimee) When we finished our pizza, we waited for our dessert to come, but it didn't. We didn't know how to ask about it, but Kimee got the idea to pull out her Chinese phrase book. She looked up "ice cream," but they didn't have it. She just showed them "ice" and "cream." They came back with a glass of ice and a little coffee creamer cup. We died laughing! (HAHA! Love, Kimee) I cried, I was laughing so hard. Then I saw a picture of ice cream on the table, so I showed that and we got it, but we had to pay extra for it. By the end of the night, I was completely resigned. We probably won't go back unless we take a Chinese friend with us.

The Nanjing Branch is so fantastic! It's small, but the members are like my family! One family has invited us over for dinner twice and they make really good American desserts. Kimee and I both have callings. Kimee is a Primary Worker and I am a Co-Young Single Adult Representative with Brad, one of the guys that came here through the same program. It's so wonderful to have the ability to attend church and take the Sacrament even though we are in China. I feel so blessed! On Friday, we leave to go to Shanghai for District Conference. I am giving the closing prayer at the adult meeting and Kimee, Brad, and I are doing a musical number for the YSA Fireside. One of the members in our branch found a violin in his new apartment so he let Kimee borrow it. She'll play the violin and Brad and I will sing. I'm so excited to go to Shanghai though. How many people can say they've been to Shanghai?

There is this thing that is really popular in China. It is called KTV. You know it as karaoke! We LOVE KTV!  I'll paint you a picture. You rent a room that has a couple of microphones, a TV, and a computer with tons of English songs for us to sing. We usually go with our Chinese friends and they sing depressing Chinese love songs while we sing Believe by Cher, Backstreet Boys, etc. The English selection is really big and they have tons of really good songs. All the Chinese like KTV and there are KTV places everywhere. KTV is the best! FOR REAL!

Chinese food is really good. Half the time, you don't really know what you are eating, so if it's good, you eat it. Kimee and I have had pigs ears, octopus and squid tentacles (Ewwwwwwww... Love, Kimee), and who knows what else! (We discovered a chicken head on my lunch plate. It was disguised because it was breaded and fried. I ate a chicken eyeball... Love, Kimee). Eggplant is really good, and they eat it a lot here. It's delicious! The fried rice is always good, but if you want good ice cream, stay in America. The ice cream here is good, but just not the same. Rice is great and we eat lots of it. it's not something I'm sick of either. We have a favorite restaurant that we call, "the rice place." We go there like 3 or 4 times a week and it's so good! They have really good fried rice with pineapple, or fried eggplant. They also have some types of fried bread they sell that are really good.

We live right by Xuanwu Lake, a 1500 year old man-made lake. There are a few islands in the middle of the lake with parks on them. We've gone and walked around it a couple times and it's so beautiful! When spring really gets here, it will be absolutely breath-taking! The lake is pretty big so we don't walk around the whole thing at once. We just go around a part of it and then come back.

The weather here is starting to warm up and we can't wait! There are some blossoms on the trees in pink and white and they are gorgeous. China is a beautiful place.

On Sunday, some of our Chinese friends came over and taught us how to make dumplings. It was so fun and they were delicious. Apparently it's like an art, so none of my dumplings passed the test. We also ate some duck that they brought (it's a specialty in Nanjing) and some potatoes. They eat a lot of vegetables and meat here it seems. We also made two American meals for them. We made fajitas (which we know aren't really American), and garlic mashed potatoes (Sarah is a pro, by the way. The mashed potatoes were to die for! Love, Kimee) and pork. Both were a success despite all the improvising we had to do because of lack of ingredients. We even made our own tortillas!

I'm really so sorry about taking so long to post in the blog. We are so busy! We teach and try to explore the city. We spend time with our Chinese friends and the other foreigners here. It's so much fun and I just love China!

I love how you can be walking along and see all these normal things and then all the sudden, see something COMPLETELY Chinese. Living here has become normal in some ways, so it's nice to be reminded that I'm in China, the greatest place on the planet. Time is passing too fast for me. I don't want to leave this place. There will be a huge hole in my heart when I leave. I LOVE CHINA!