First day of School (and a little bit before)

Well today was the first day for our students to finally be back at school. What a great time it was! As the students walked up the stares I realized how much I had missed them and how excited I was to be teaching them!

SO last weekend I got a phone call from one of my Chinese friends, he asked me if I wanted to come and watch some people play sand volleyball at this pretty big tournament near my house. I of course said yes, well when I got there I was actually ON a team, oh boy! So there I was the only white person and the only girl playing in the mens league. We had such a great time, I was sore for about 3 days but the tournament was for sure a blast. It was great at one point our game was the only one being played and everyone was around our court cheering for the 1 WHITE person, they kept saying in Chinese "LETS GO foreigner ! haha...

I was SO tired that I slept through a good friend birthday party, I think that was a little due to jetlag, and the tournament, I felt pretty terrible. However, like I said it was a good friends bday party so she was totally understanding!

Monday-Wednesday we had meetings at school along with lots of PREP for our class rooms. Oh man my class room/area is a mess. As I have mentioned before we share our school with a Chinese elementary school.... Well every year they seem to take more and more away from the outside open area, where we do PE. So we used to have a field in front of our school however, now it is completely torn up with a few strips of concrete down the middle. There are many workers daily out there however, I'm still unsure of what they are doing. Well when I saw that I was like "oh its okay at least we still have the circle area". The next day I went to work and BAM, there they were buidling another shed, straight dab there in the middle of that circle area... So I'm unsure of where PE classes will really take place, we can go to the tennis court but half that time that is filled with chinese students. God has def. talk me the word flexibility and HE has given me great ideas exactly when needed, I will continue to realx and trust in HIM.

Tomorrow is Friday, which this year MWF are my busiest days. I have 8 classes plus Open Gym times, and starting next week we will have Choir practice after school. Which God has once again been faithful. Last year the choir consisted of 7 people, 3 high school girls and 4 middle school girls. As of today choir this year has 15 people singed up, 8 high school students (notice i didn't say girls) and 7 Middle School students. I'm so excited for this year in choir as I am excited for this whole year in general.

Okay my last thought for this post has to do with Christmas. I was thinking of places that would great to visit, and def. on top of my list is to someday go to Australia..... I decided okay I'll just check out the prices and see how expensive they are. To my surprise I found tickets for 4,000 RMB for round trip. (Less than 650 dollars) ... So I am currently looking for someone to go with my to Australia, if you are going or want to go or think you could do it.. LET ME KNOW! I seriously would love to go.

Thanks again for keeping up to date with whats going on in my life.. More to come, probably next week. ZAI JIAN !!!

--What greater joy is there than training the mid and forming the habits of the young? ~ St. John Chrysostom

Sun Burn, OH YEAH!

Well,

I've been home now for a totally for 2 complete days and yes the adventures have already begun... haha Today's post is not going to be too long but I just wanted to let you all know about my last day or so.. : - )

Last night after I went to the gym, in which I saw all of my friends there. Basically the people at the gym are my second family, love them. So I brought back shirts for them from America and they loved them, Golden (the cycling instructor) was wearing his today, fit perfect especially with the big smile he had on! Anyways after the gym I went to see my friends at the fruit stand, Dave (the owner) was so surprised to see me and excited. I'll probably talk a lot about these people throughout the year they are people that I am in contact with on a regular occurrence.

So today started off on a good note, haha! Our school was having a staff picnic and fun day at this park in which I THOUGHT i knew where it was... SO i decided I would just ride my bike and meet everyone else there (they were taking a bus). I knew it was at least 25-30 minutes away, I gave myself plenty of time to get there. Well I wasn't planning on taking the scenic route for an hour.. haha yup, I got lost and I couldn't even remember the word for "Park" in chinese. . . Oh man it was a mess, on that trip my sunburn began... hahaha When the picnic was over I successfully made it home in 30 minutes. To my wonderful surprise during the ride and picnic I turned into such a deep shade of red, hahaha!

Well tonight I went to the cycling class and then a new friend from America asked me to stay at the gym for a Yoga class, so yeah I stayed... Let me tell you, I'm pretty terrible at Yoga I started laughing out loud at one point! ha

Jetlag is actually doing pretty well, sleeping through the nights just getting a little tired around 10:00 am haha oh well!

Okay I'm out for the night just thought I would let you all know that somehow i still managed to get lost tonight! The picture attached is of the fruit guys sporting their shirts, in which they put them on immediately after I gave them to them!

37 Hours later

Before I say anything about my trip let me say.. MIDWEStern states you have NOTHING on this Wuhan heat. I was in triple digits for the past 2 weeks while in Kansas however, as soon as I stepped off the plane in Wuhan I felt like it was 150 degrees.. haha It is so hard to explain how hot it is here and I know that it is only going to get hotter.. : - )

Well my adventure home began on Sunday Morning (american time) and ended Monday Night. I began my trip in Chicago after spending a great two days in the chicago land area. Hitting up the downtown with some of my friends who also live in China but are on Vacation in America!

I took a 13.5 hour plane trip to Korea, which Korean Air is the way to go. Amazing service, comfortable seats, and a billion movie options. I was in the second to last row right above the wheels, oh man was that great! During the trip I saw the flight attendents struggling to make it to the back of the plane and then as I watched I saw this was because they were carrying a girl who seemed to be passed out and shaking. After they got her back and laid her on the ground they called of the speakers to see if there were any doctors on the plane. They ended up bringing the shock paddle thingy's to the back of the plane, there were about 4-5 people who stood up when they asked for a doctor. I found myself tearing up but then just praying for this girl who was apparently traveling alone. To make a long story short... The girl a couple hours later ended up walking back to her seat, answer to prayer! That was probably the most exciting thing on this trip back.

I was able to watch many movies during those 13.5 hours... Soul Surfer (Also made me tear up), Win Win (Dad you would like this one and anyone else who likes good old emotional movies), Hanna (interesting), and Prada to Nada (Loved it)!

So I got to Korea at 4:00 PM and then my next flight was not leaving until 9:00am the following morning. So while I was in Korea my amazing Cousin Andrea and her Husband came and met me. They took me out for some amazing Korean food and then we just walked around and chatted.. IT was awesome to have someone there that I could just chill with and also keep me awake.. haha

Well the morning came and I met up with the Kingmas, a fellow employee, and we went to the airport jumped on the plane and BAM we were in Wuhan.. It was so great to land and almost right away feel like I was home! We were a sight to see at the airport, I had 3 suitcases, and they Kingma's had 7 plus carry ons :- ) The driver who was picking us up just looked at us like "Are you for real, how could anyone have this much stuff?" haha... I'm pretty sure that the driver was driving significantly slower due to the weight he was feeling in the car.. haha

WEll I got home to my amazingly clean house, put my stuff down and then headed out on a mission to find a good phone. As I was walking to the store I saw a Chinese friend who ended up coming with me to the store :- ) This cell phone process took 2+ hours, ahhh I now have a pretty sweet Android phone email, internet, wifi, and all that good stuff. I started to get tired after this trip but I was determined not to go to sleep :- ) In which I didn't, I returned home and began unpacking and tidying up my room.

For dinner my roommate and I along with Ben went out for some Korean food, YUM! Oh its great to have fantastic Asian food :- ) Then hit up the Ecoffee and then made it back home to finish unpacking. I was determined to stay awake to at least 9:00pm, well I made that however, now it is 12:00AM and I'm not overly tired.... I am praying for some sort of sleep tonight : - )

I guess that is it for now, I am safely home, blessed, encouraged, ready for work in 8:00 hours, and excited to see what God has in-store for this upcoming school year! !!! Thank you all for making my summer home amazing.. I had a great time with you all and am blessed to have been home for almost 2 months! Be sure to check back with this blog to see how China is doing this time around!

PS. the quilt that me and my mom made this summer fits perfectly on my bed : - ) YEAH for old T-shirtS! haha