Oh China, oh China

Hello dear friends and family!

Shockingly, China is still amazing. I thought it was just infatuation, but China and I have been through enough hard times. I know it's the real deal. I'm in love with China. It's crazy to think my time here is half over.

We had National Old People Day a while back, that was nice. We went on our usual celebratory hike with the teachers from the school. We go on this crazy hike, parts of it are like the jungle, all the way up to a pagoda. Once you're at the top, the real party starts. Everyone just hangs out up there eating and playing games. Even though it was Old People's Day, I saw maybe one old lady. China. Some random frog jumped on Alice and she freaked out. It was rather funny. When we were up there, we were ready to leave, but we couldn't find Shalise, typical of Shalise. We look around and find her in the middle of all the Chinese teachers and random Chinese people swing dancing with the principal! So we walk over to the group, and the principal grabs me and makes me start dancing with Shalise. It was a pretty crazy/good time. Once they wer satisfied with our dancing, we were able to go home.

We also had Halloween! That was... interesting. Halloween was fun, the Chinese teachers just have crazy ideas about what they want, we have miscommunications ALL the time, and everyone ends up disappointed and angry. I hate doing projects for them. They were really adamant that we make a giant bat for the Halloween party. How we were to make this bat, no one knew. But when we got to the school to decorate, there was a ladder waiting for us. Somehow we were supposed to make a bat out of a ladder. We got string, and black bags, and decorated that ladder like you wouldn't believe. It was the most ridiculous bat ever, but the teachers were somewhat happy with it. They only made slight improvements, which is rare. My kids went as ghosts to the Halloween party, but of course, even costumes didn't go smoothly. Everything is so complicated here! But, my kids were cute. Even if half the costumes only lasted an hour. We were stinkin cute ghosts.

My bed broke, finally. That was rather intense. Luckily it was when I was climbing out of the bed, and not while I was sleeping. That would have been horrible. I would have crashed down onto Amanda, and a real disaster would have occured! The breaking sound was still awful. Amanda was sleeping, but as soon as she heard that sound she jumped out of bed quickly! I'd never seen her move so fast! Luckily it's fixed now and doesn't seem as dangerous. Although I'm still sure we'll have another bed catastrophe. I mean, we've broken three beds now. Apparently we're bad luck. Apparently they don't fix the beds very well!

Teaching is going pretty well. I love my kids more and more every day. They seem to be getting naughtier and naughtier every day too. We're working on a secret handshake, it's the coolest thing ever. Even Maggie does it! That says a lot! I stupidly taught the kids some Spanish one day. Actually, I didn't even teach it to them! I said the most random thing in Spanish, bata bata chocolate. Somehow that's spread throughout the whole class! They chant it all the time! I don't know why they remember that so well, but not English! The other girls didn't know I had taught that to the kids and had no idea what the kids were saying. So I informed them of my slip up one day. Now, at least 10 times a day, I hear a Chinese kid say "bata bata chocolate!". Those crazy kids.

Amanda was really sick a couple days ago. She researched it on the internet and diagnosed herself as having Strep. At Alice's insistence, she went to the hospital. I had heard stories about the hospital and was dying to go, so we told Alice Amanda was too scared and needed me to go with her. Alice didn't care, so we headed out to the hospital. Talk about a shady place! There was no waiting room, everyone just kicked it in the doctors office while he consulted other patients. No confidentialty whatsoever! When it was Amanda's turn, he asked her what drugs she wanted and for how long. There was no tests! No examinations! He didn't even take her temperature! He just blindly wrote a prescription! Shalise and I explored the hospital a little bit, pretty shady business. They had this ghetto IV room where everyone was sitting in chairs with their IVs hanging from the ceiling. It looked like the most thrown together place. It was a real eye opening experience.

I believe that's about it for now! I've attached a picture of me, Mary and Jackson in our ghost costumes. Not the best picture, but, you get the idea of Halloween, China style. I hope everything is going well back home! I love you guys!

Cam