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!

Nanjing

Okay so it’s my turn for a new blog post. Sorry I’ve taken so long to take my turn! If we are honest, the past week has been crazy! We are now in our city, Nanjing and we’ve been teachers since Tuesday of last week! To start out, let me tell you about our living arrangements.

We live on the fourth floor of a building on the Nanjing Foreign Language School Main Campus. We both have our own room and bathroom. In our room, we have a mini fridge, two desks, a tv, a wardrobe, two chairs, two end tables, a bookshelf/display case, lots of cupboards, and a full size bed. The bathroom has a sink, toilet and shower with pretty instant hot water which is so nice. However, you can’t put any toilet paper in the toilet because their plumbing system can’t handle it.

Most buildings aren’t ever heated even when it’s below freezing here. Lucky for us, our apartments have great heaters that work really well. We turn them off when we aren’t in the apartment, but it’s always still pretty warm when we come back. The TV only has one English channel and it’s lame. Not that we watch tons of TV anyway. We both have a cell phone and a landline. My landline phone is pink. Whoo!

On our first day, our liaison Stephen just showed us to our rooms and made sure everything was working well. Then he showed us to the grocery store across the street before letting us get settled in. For dinner, our group which includes Brad, Brian, Jenny, Kimee, Sherisse, and me, went out and found a place to eat. Lucky for us, Brad speaks Mandarin so when we are with him, we don’t have to play charades.

The next day, Stephen took us around the city a little and let us ride the buses and things to see how it all works. He is CRAZY! He’s a 70 year-old alcoholic from Australia with Chinese roots. His English is excellent, but he repeats everything he says about 80 times all while drinking his beer. He is very helpful and kind though, despite being a broken record. He answers all our questions before we even ask because he talks so much. He has a scary apartment. He’s a packrat.

Nanjing is quite large. There is a metro and buses as well as tons of taxis. Also, there are tourist appeals here. We haven’t checked those out yet, but when we do, we’ll tell you all about it. We live in the center of the city so it makes it nice to get to any of the places we want to go. We walk most places or catch the bus since the school provides us with a travel card for buses. Bus drivers are crazy and if you stand up, be prepared to hold on for dear life because there is no way you will stay standing without something to hold onto. Also, ignore personal space in China. Your bubble is WAY too big and you have to shrink it about 80 times. It takes some getting used to.

We have two Chinese friends who do things with us. Richard, who we’ve already told you about, and now Oliver. Oliver is a student at Nanjing Foreign Language School where we teach, and he is preparing for a huge interview with a Japanese University. I told him I would help him with his English if he needed me to and today, he came to my apartment with a gift. When we were out, he heard me say I liked a certain little purse thing. I wasn’t going to buy it our anything, but he noticed and got it for me. That’s just one example of how kind the Chinese are. Also, I asked Oliver about the candied haw berries and he went and bought me one so I could try it. He’s so nice! Interestingly enough, he’s 19 even though he’s still in High School.

Kimee and I teach 20 classes a week. I teach grade four and she teaches grade three. Each class has 20 or so students so overall we have some 400 students each. We have text books that we are to teach out of. Just today, I got asked to be a private tutor for some students at another school, so I’ll be doing that on the side. The students are so smart and Kimee tells me how cute her kids are every five minutes. Haha! They get to choose their own English name and some of them have really weird names like Karrot, Happy, Apple, Howk, Rain, Sunny, Thumb, Tider, King, Moon, Simba, Cherry, Queena, Bobo, Yoyo, Seven, Brain, Jam, Barbie, Top, Glory, Win, Flower, Kitty, Dido, Wobbly, Grace (boy), Fish, Njoy, Sweetie, Garbo, and Island. It’s really hard to call on Fish. I have a hard time with that one and Wobbly. They also use a lot of normal names, but spell them really weird. I have tons of Mary, Jack, Leo, John, Angel, Lucy, Daniel, Angela, and a few more. Now imagine trying to remember everyone. SO hard. But I do have a few favorite students already. One boy named Lee always says, “Hello Miss Sarah!” And gives me a high five. He’s really smart. Then one of the Leo’s is SO cute and he is also very smart. Some kids pick things up much faster. There is one little boy named Jack who seriously is SO little. And CRAZY. He reminds me of my brother Zach as a kid, a complete maniac. Ha! Also this girl named Amy. She’s super cute and clever. Okay, I know I shouldn’t have favorites, but it’s nice to have kids who know what you are talking about and can explain to the rest of the class. That’s what the Chinese teachers are for, but most of them don’t sit in on the class with me like they are supposed to. I guess they figure I’ve got it just fine on my own or something.

We really love the food here. Today, we had the best pulled noodles ever. A lot of the street food is a lot better than the nice sit down restaurants and they make it right in front of you. If you went into a restaurant like these ones in America, you would barf and run out. You get used to the way things are and it isn’t scary anymore. Typically, the little alley ways you would avoid in the states are where you can find the best food. We play charades or use our little Chinese cheat sheets to get the things we want. One word we use a lot is jiga(sp?). It means “this.” It’s our favorite word because it gets us basically everything we want. I love to say xie xie (thank you) because it seems like people here don’t use it very much. It’s just not part of the culture.

In China, they have an instant messaging system called QQ that pretty much everyone uses. I have one and Brad has had a bunch of his Chinese friends add us. One guy, Robin gives me Chinese lessons. It’s so funny because he voice calls me on QQ and has me say things, I never seem to get them right. The differences are so small that it’s really hard for the untrained ear to hear them. I am quite determined to learn this language though. I think I’ll just stay in China forever. I love it here so much. When I am forced to come back to the U.S. because my visa expires, I will take Chinese language classes. I’m so very determined about this one. China is incredible and so are the people. I am so excited to be here for so long.

Okay, one last thing before I send this to Sadie to post. I had a little free time last week so I went out exploring. I went to this small Buddhist Temple just ten minutes from my apartment where there was a few pagodas. It was so beautiful and peaceful and the view from the top of the stairs was so pretty! On one side, you see the city sky line and on the other, the lake. I love Nanjing.

Sorry again that this took so long! Miss you all and hope everything is going well for you! I love getting emails so totally send some my way!

Hong Kong

Day two and part of day three! Kimee was supposed to do this blog post since I did the last one, but she didn't want to so I will!


Yesterday morning, (Saturday) we went to the Hong Kong Temple to do baptisms and sessions. There were 25 of us total and all the guys with us are endowed so they took turns helping in the font. The font itself is so beautiful. Mirrors everywhere and gold designs. The room was pretty small and the dressing room even smaller, but the spirit was the same. Kimee did baptisms once and two or three confirmation sets. I did baptisms and confirmation sets twice. We had lots of time.

After the temple, we went to Victoria Peak. In order to get there, you have to ride the tram. It's really steep and it's a huge tourist attraction so it was so crowded. We waited in a line for two hours. The ride is right near the US Embacy so there were all these weird signs around against the CIA. Stuff about mind control and electromagnetic scissors.

The smaller words say "I'm 80% moron now due to surgery by CIA on Nov. 4, 2011." What the what!?

We also went to the Festival Walk mall here and had lunch. It was interesting since you can't read any of the signs. Luckily they have English underneath for us foriegners. That won't be the case in the rest of China. Kimee and I both got a noodle soup with shrimp and some sort of green plant in it. Couldn't ask what it was since we don't speak Mandarin. :)

This mall was really cool because it has an ice skating rink in it and tons and tons of escalators like everywhere. There was also an import grocery store that we visited. We found some good American stuff and lots of really weird other things. The meat section smelled SO bad. I almost threw up my lunch. It didn't bother Kimee though.

Back to Victoria Peak. Sorry. :) So we rode the tram to the top and then you ride 80 more escaltors to the top of the building where the look out is. It wasn't super clear so you can't see the whole view in our pictures, but it was still really cool and just as we left, the city lights went on as it got dark. 

After that, we returned home for bed. Poor Kimee had to deal with me being tired and ornery. Haha! Lucky for me, I have a great friend who puts up with me. :) We went to bed at about ten o'clock and I have never fallen asleep so fast in my entire life. I closed my eyes and seriously, that was it. Regardless of the hard foam mattress, I slept straight through the night until it was time for Church this morning. Kimee didn't sleep well last night though. :( It's hard to adjust to things here and we are all experiencing different discomforts). If you were wondering though, McDonald's in Hong Kong tastes the same as at home.

We went to Sacrament in one of the Hong Kong wards and it was an interesting experience. We were given these small translator head sets that the translator talked into so we could understand what was being said. One of the speakers talked about visiting Utah and that made us excited since we live there usually. It was fun to hear everyone singing in Chinese (we sang in English with our English Hymn books). The Gospel is true no matter where you go and what language is spoken. It's a beautiful thing.

Up next: Big Buddah and the Cable Car ride! We love you all very much! Be safe while we are gone!

China Day One

Hard mattresses, fire alarms, tall buildings, fog or is that pollution? Driving on the wrong side of the road without realizing it, tiny apartment, weird smells, a temple, a double decker bus, and lots of adventure.

Today, we embarked on the adventure of a lifetime. We got to the Salt Lake Airport at 7:30 and flew out to San Francisco. To start out, our flight was delayed and we ended up arriving after our international flight was due to leave. Lucky for us, they held the flight because we were such a large group. We ended up not sitting by each other on the plane in our rush to sit down. We were on the same ailse with a guy in between us. They played one good movie and three lame ones. The plane took us up near Alaska and then down. If anyone is wondering if Japan is real, we saw it. It's real. :) Also, if you were thinking that it was foggy in Hong Kong, it's not fog. It's SMOG. Pollution that you can see just floating in the air around you. It doesn't smell too bad, but I (Sarah) still think it smells bad. Kimee can't smell anything. We went through customs and exchanged our money. Hong Kong has it's own money system like Beijing does and the exchange rate is higher here than mainland China. So right now, we have more money than we will in Nanjing.

From the Hong Kong International Airport, we caught a double decker bus and road around lots of round-abouts and watched the Skyscrapers rise and fall around us. We then stopped in front of the Hong Kong Temple and crossed the street to the temple housing unit. That is where we are now. Kimee slept quite a bit on the plane but I got less than an hour. Here it's 12:10 AM Saturday morning. Friday basically didn't happen. We have an early start tomorrow because we go to the temple first thing. They have asked us to stay as long as we can and do as much work as possible so we will be there for a good four hours before we begin touring around Hong Kong. It's such a great opportunity and we are both really excited!

On the bus, Kimee was all smiles and giggles. I'm in shock or something. It doesn't feel real and it hasn't hit me yet that we are in CHINA. Half way around the world. You know, home is on the other side of the planet. CRAZY!

We are the foreigners now and it's totally weird. We can't wait for tomorrow and all the adventures we will have. We are safe, happy, and completely exhausted since we've been up all night long and I hope we sleep some tonight!

We love you ALL and will post again tomorrow. We have facebook and wi-fi while we are in Hong Kong but Nanjing is in the unknown.

Also, if anyone told me I had to fly in a plane again tomorrow. I would cry. Literally. 14 1/2 hours is TOO long. It was relaxing too, but cramped and LONG.

Lots of love! Have a good Friday for us since we skipped it. :)

Where it's at!

This is our China blog! We'll try and update it at least once a week if not more to tell you all about living in China. For anyone who doesn't know, Kimee and I are going to China on the 26th of January to teach English to the children in Nanjing, Jiangsu province which is a 70 minute train ride west of Shanghai. We are going to be there for a little over 5 months at one of the more prestigious schools in the city. We are really, really excited and We can't wait to get there! Before going to Nanjing, we'll spend 5 days with a group touring Hong Kong. We get a couple days of training before they send us to our schools. We'll be in Nanjing with 4 other people. We will put pictures up on here and our mom will post things on our Facebooks because China has a censorship program where Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, and Gmail are unavailable. we also have set up new email addresses through Hotmail that we will put in our info on Facebook.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us!