Eat your heart out Angelina Jolie.

Fact: In China you are an automatic celebrity. If you want to know what it is like to be famous and briefly experience the celebrity treatment then you should come to China. Many of the people here want to take pictures with you and ask you for your signature. They absolutely love us here and think we are amazing. It is quite an experience being swarmed, asked for your signature, and asking if you will take a photo with them. They are very curious about America and think that it is a beautiful country. Today I taught some ele English classes at the high school. They were very curious and asked lots of questions and swarmed me. They think that we are very beautiful and it is very unusual to them to see someone who looks so different, with light eyes and hair that isn’t very dark. The kids at the high school are very smart and try their best to speak English but they don’t often get to speak with native speakers. They look forward to speaking with native speakers and when you leave they miss you. It has been an amazing morning and I think it will be a great rest of the week. In China, they also have a few American Idols. They love Lady gaga, Michael Jackson, and Justin Bieber. They also would like to hear you sing and to know all about you. It is very different being in China but it is amazing to get to know a new culture and a new people.

New Chinese Friends

                This last little while has been pretty crazy. My kids in class are pretty crazy. I love them to death but the weekend provides a nice little break. This weekend brought with it a new adventure. A group of my friends here in China and myself took the bus into town on Saturday to explore a little bit. We found a mall that looks like it’s pretty new and explored a bit. Eventually we found a huge arcade type area and kept going up the stairs until we found something amazing. On the top floor of this store was a roller rink. It was incredible and it looked like so much fun. After some hesitation some of my friends and I decided to go roller skating. It’s been a long time since I’ve been on roller skates so I was a bit shaky at first. However, I quickly made friends with a few Chinese girls who helped me to stay upright and have a good time. They were so nice and helpful and I made some great Chinese friends. The only problem was that there was a bit of a language barrier as I don’t speak Chinese and they spoke very little English. However, we worked through it and I spent a good amount of time skating and just getting to know one another. When we decided we needed to go they we’re a little bit sad and I got some amazing hugs from my new Chinese friends. Hopefully, I’ll be able to see them again.

                Once we were done skating we went across the street to the Tesco and grabbed a quick snack before we ventured out again. We got onto another bus and made our way to one of the parks here in Changzhou. It was a very large park and very beautiful. It is very close to one of the pagoda temples so the backdrop was absolutely stunning. There was a beautiful little lake and there were boats you could rent and ride around the area. However, when we got there it was just a little too late to rent a boat so we made the strong resolve to come back so that we could see the area by boat. However, since we weren’t going to go on a boat ride that way we found an area that was just about the water with a pavilion and some benches along with a gorgeous view. We spent awhile sitting and marveling in the beauty just pondering, then we left to look at a few shops, where I found a beautiful hand painted tea set which I bought. Soon after we called it a day and headed back toward our school. Once we got off the bus we grabbed a bite for dinner then headed home for the night. As the days go on the adventure continues.

The girl and the chicken

First...There was man....Then, there was chicken... Then.... Man met chicken foot. The day to mark all days. That's right all this last week I did it. I tried chicken foot. You may now awe at my bravery and slight insanity. This week was pretty uneventful. I taught through-out the week. My kids that I teach are as cute as can be but they're little hell raisers and trouble makers. It's all I can do sometimes to maintain my sanity. The excitement began on thursday night where the school had us meet together and we ended up going into some of the classrooms and spending time with some of the kids. This monday was a holiday in China known as the mid-autumn festival which is somewhat akin to Thanksgiving back home. So on Thursday we went and ate moon cakes with the children and after we were done with that we made paper lanterns with them. It was great spending time with the kids and enjoying the festivities of the holiday.

The real adventure began this weekend. As we waited for the bus in hopes that it would get to us and get us where we needed to on time. The bus finally arrived and took us to our destination. When we got off the bus we were cutting it close as we rushed through the train station, racing through, feeling like we were on an episode of the amazing race. We made it. We spent a few hour train ride amusing ourselves and then we were there. Shanghai. It was a bit of a bustle at night and we had to catch a few taxi's to make it to our hotel. That was about all the adventure for the first night. Shanghai, day one. We went and found the bus and made it to the metro station and found our way to the french consession. We explored the area just walking down the streets and seeing what this beautiful city had to offer. We sought out food and tried for the first time the street food of the area. What an adventure that was. After we got food we headed back towards the metro. However, as we were headed back we lost a portion of our group. We waited for them for awhile but couldn't find them. We'd agreed to meet at the metro at another location at a specific time so we headed there to wait. We split off into 3 separate groups to cover all of the stairwells out of the station so that we wouldn't miss them. As I waited in hopes that the rest of our group would arrive I talked with another member of my group, who was the one I happened to be waiting with at that stairwell, Nick. We just talked about life and tried to keep ourselves entertained while we waited. After awhile, we still hadn't seen them and figured we'd see them back at the hotel so we'd given up. We exited the metro, where we took a few pictures and after a few minutes thanks to the tower in our group that is Nick, the rest of our group had spotted us and hurried our way.

Once we were back together as a group we headed to the people's park. A beautiful park in the area. We spent some time marveling in the beauty and then moved on. Our last adventure for the day or so we thought was Nanjing road. Stores every which way and a hustle and bustle of people. We explored and looked inside some of the shops. We saw the Bund and some of the tall sky scrapers and sights of the area as we continued on that road. We headed back down Nanjing road and continued to look at some of the shops, eventually tiring. Then from one of her pamphlets Lorilei discovered that there was a parade back on one of the roads in the french consession. So we headed back there to wait for the parade. While we were waiting for the parade we ran into a couple of other Americans. Josh and Sasha who were taking a year sabatical from work and exploring the world. We got to talking to them and became friends and shared some of our China adventures and they shared some of their trade secrets with us. Although half an hour to fourty five minutes late the parade started and we watched and enjoyed some of it, but it was getting late and so we said goodbye to Josh and Sasha and headed back to our hotel.

Day two in Shanghai. on our second day in Shanghai we headed over to the Old Town where there was the Yu gardens and the Bizarre. We spent much of the day wandering and exploring some of the shops and getting food items from various street vendors. We met up after splitting up into various groups in the morning and then eventually split again with most of us heading to see the city god temple. It was a very beautiful location with fires burning and incense and as you explored many people could be seen praying. You could really see the significance of it all. In the afternoon we found ourselves at the pearl market located within the bizarre. We all looked at the pearls and eventually ended up bartering with various shop keepers and buying items. Many of the shopkeepers would take scissors to the pearls to show us that they were real. We all wandered and went to various pearl vendors each trying to find what we liked or what we would like to give someone else. We spent an hour or so just looking at and buying various items. After we went to the pearl market we explored some more and eventually found ourselves back on Nanjing road where we had agreed to meet up. We got ourselves some dinner and explored a bit more and then headed back to the hotel.

Monday morning we got ourselves packed up and ready to leave. After we were all packed we left our stuff at the hotel and headed just down the street to this great little noodle place and got some noodles. Once we had gotten the noodles we went back to the hotel and waited for the rest of our group that hadn't left before us to get ready. Eventually we hopped on the bus and headed to the subway which took us back to the train station. We bought our return tickets. However, the earliest train wasn't until 4:30 pm so we explored the train station and got some food, eventually buying some items from the convienence stores. When we finally headed down to the waiting area for the train we met back up with one of the two groups who had left before us. We just talked and waited to board the train. The other group was in a different car on the train so we parted ways. We went to keep ourselves entertained on the train ride and had an adventure. We got back together as a group when we got off the train and tried to find the bus we needed. However, to no avail. We made friends with a chinese guy named Daniel who tried to help us find the bus we needed but we didn't have any luck. Eventually we called one of the native coordinators who told us the easiest route would be to take taxis. So we spent the time to hail several taxis and split off into groups and showed the taxi drivers the address of our school. After a moderate length taxi ride we were finally home. Lorilei and I went to our room and put our stuff down and grabbed the computer so we could check our e-mail and get back in contact with our families. Thus, marks the end of my first great adventurous weekend in China.