Yangshuo!

Here it is: Yangshuo! So beautiful! It's so much prettier in real life. You just have to go there. Now. Anyways, it was so awesome! Can you believe we've only been teaching for like 2 weeks and we already got a vactaion?! I'm a lucky girl. So lucky.

Okay so, around 6:30 pm we hopped on a sleeper bus, which in itself was a crazy experience! I didn't really know what to expect, I never do here in China anyways haha. So we get on the bus and there's crazy asian techno music and the bus driver is trying to ask or tell us something and of course we have no idea what's going on so I just be a goof and start dancing. You have to take your shoes off when you get on the bus and put them in little red bags. I got one of the beds on top in the middle. Bad choice. Kind of. It was okay for like the first hour or two but they had the ac blasting which was totally awesome when we first got on because it's 85 outside and like 100% humidity, but then I started freezing, especially because all the vents were pointed straight at me. Ugh, so cold. And 12 hours is a long time. I slept most of the time but Chinese drivers are really scary so I kept waking up thinking that I was going to fall off! But I felt bad for the pople on the bottom because we kept picking up random people on the side of the road and they had to just sit in the isles. Stuff that would never happen in America is totally normal here, it's crazy. But we somehow made it to Yangshuo at around 6:30 the next morning.
This is the hostel we stayed at. It was so cute and nice and inexpensive. And only 3 months old.

Nana, the cute hostel dog.

View from the rooftop.

West Street. There were all kinds of little shops and stands with cool chinese stuff, and lots of handmade things. We spent many hours on this street.

Baby.

So pretty, I want to go back already.

Esther! Look at that face! So happy! We met Esther on West Street the first day we got to Yangshuo. She found us wandering around and wanted to take us on an adventure. And she sure did take us on one crazy awesome adventure. She's amazing, we love her.

First, Esther took us on a boat ride. We got to ride the sweet yellow dragon boat.

Lovely view. It was a nice leisurely boat ride on the Li River.

We stopped at a little villiage like place on the bank of the river where there was random touristy stuff like pony rides, these cool birds, and monkeys in wierd outfits.

Creepy monkeys.

Esther took us on an intense 15 mile bike ride the next morning. It was so fun. And pretty exhausting, but it was so worth it.

We went through the city and then off into the countryside. We even did a little off-roading on our cute pink bikes with baskets and bells.

This one's just for you mom. (I guess I don't have enough pictures of myself.) I almost crashed trying to take this picture. Not really. But I did have a few close calls haha.

We biked to the Buddha Water Caves next. It was pretty sweet. There was a natural mud pool, some mud slides, underground river and waterfall, and hot springs. I think I was looking forward to the mud the most. Seriously, when do you ever get to roll around in a pool of mud?!

We biked to Moon Hill next. And then we hiked all the way to the top. So exhausting.

839 stairs later, we made it to the top.

The view was so worth it. Look familiar? These are called the Dr. Suess Mountains. People say this is where Dr. Suess got his inspiration for the mountains in his books.

After our crazy awesome day we wnet out and met the local crazy asians. We stuffed our faces with delicious American food that we miss so much. Brushcetta, pizza, and apple crumble. Yummm.

The owner of the hostel took us to a bar/dance club thing. Haha asian people are so funny. When we walked in the dj announced that we were there and started playing some Lady Gaga. Awesome!

The next morning I went rock climbing with two other girls and two cool rock climbing guides. This is Wine Bottle Cliff. I climbed this! It was so hard but way fun. I'm totally going to take a class or something when I get home.

My arms and hands were so sore.

Ah, so awesome!

Oh, and then we cruised around on mopeds! And almost crashed like 12 times haha.

I bought a flower crown from this sweet old lady. She's so cute. I love wrinkly old chinese people. I'm seriously going to have a whole album of them when I come home.
Such a great trip! But I'm glad to be back with my students! I love China!

Livin' on the other side of the world.

China - my home away from home.

We live in a nice little gated community in a pretty small town for China called Zhongshan. This is the road that we live on. Our apartment is one of the buildings on the left. We're on the 5th floor. Our elevator always smells bad.

Our little town. About a 10 minute walk from our apartment.

Humble abode. We even have a flat screen with lots of chinese channels. Our couch is deceiving though, every time I sit down I think it will be squishy like a normal couch, but it's not. Same with our beds.


Freda, our chinese coordinator, teaching us how to make dumplings! She's the best!

Hello neighbors. We never actually see each other, just each others laundry hanging out to dry.

Fishes and turtles in the market. Not sure if they're to buy as pets or dinner.

I really want one of those bicycles.

The market. I love it. I usually only recognize about half of the fruits and veges.

The chicken lady at the market. I just wanted to pet the chicken but she wanted to chop its head off!

Naked baby. Strange fruit.

Everyone stops and stares. All the time.

Crazy traffic.

Best way to get around town. Only 4 yuan or about 60 cents.

Back alley.

Such happy people here. They have so little, and work so hard. We could all learn from them.

The Walmart palace. About 30 minutes away by bus. We were hoping it would be an exact replica of Walmarts in America but it was nothing like what we imagined. It was quite dissapointing. But we found butter! We had been searching for it everywhere in our part of town. So we bought all the butter in Walmart. Yeah, all 3 sticks of butter. That's all they had! Craziness.

Riding the Walmart bus. Yes, there is a bus, that only goes to Walmart. It's awesome.

Our school! It's so cute and fun. And it's just down the road from our apartment. I love that it's so close. Teaching is so much fun! I was really worried and nervous about it at first, because I had absolutely no idea what to expect. Our kids have never had english classes before so when I'm trying to tell them to glue on the googley eyes, they have no idea what I'm saying and just look at me like I'm a crazy American girl. They're so fun though. I'll have to take more pictures of the kids soon. We have 3 different age groups that we teach, two 3 year olds, four 4 year olds, and then three 5 and 6 year olds. We come to the school around 8 in the morning and do little dance exercise things with all the kids in the kindergarten, which is about 100, then eat breakfast, teach 3 classes, eat lunch, and then we're done! Next week we're going to have 90 minute Kung Fu classes twice a week. And hopefully we'll start our Chinese classes soon too.

Cute kids! Ah I love the kids already! We've only been teaching for 2 weeks and they've already stole my heart. All the kids are so sweet and friendly. Every single day they always yell "GOOD MORNING TEACHER!" at us from in their class rooms or when they're eating lunch or whatever. I love it. It's so cute when our english students try to say my name. It always sounds like "Hallo Teasher Aberal." So stinkin cute.

Where do I even start?

My little adventure has already been so crazy and amazing!

I LOVE CHINA!

Well, I guess I should start from the beginning.

Sunrise in Korea after our 15 hour flight from LAX (worst airport ever.)

Hong Kong.

Stanley Market.

Boat ride.

Hong Kong Temple.

We spent two days in Hong Kong being tourists and trying to get climatized to the insane humidity. It was pretty awesome. We found this cute little park with duck ponds, a waterfall, parrots, and lots of jungle like plants. We kept walking around and found a random Nepalese festival thing with beautiful dancing ladies in traditional Nepalese clothing, and awesome music. Amazing. We had a half day tour on the second day with this crazy asian lady tour guide. She had the funniest laugh. We went to Victoria's Peak, Stanley Market, and an old fishing harbor where Jackie Chan has filmed some of his movies. We also drove past his house. After our tour we went to the Hong Kong Temple, got some delicious pizza, and did some shopping/bargaining. And finally we took a ferry to mainland China and made it to our little home away from home in Zhongshan. I'll put up pictures of our apartment, school, and town on the next blog post!