on Thursday we go to the market-

A man from Lifetime was visiting so we decided to give him the classy local Xiamen tour and take him down the market and to Zhongshan Lu. I will miss these markets so much- pure entertainment.

ex. Today one of the ducks was making his last attempt at escape and was flying all over and landing in the fish water and getting the sellers all wet, while we sat there laughing so hard and trying to get a picture (fail).

Seconds later his life was ended in front of our eyes. (This is not the entertainment portion) I usually try to avoid these events and move on to animated chopstick sellers.

Earlier in the day we went to the art market, where our best friend hand paints us pictures and sells them to us for pennies pretty much. Seeing as it was hotter than .... he closed the door and turned on the AC (very very kind of him) and he typed in his computer and it translated into English for us and then we used our very small amount of Chinese to chat with said man.

Then we took photos with him and he insisted that we emailed them to him that instant.

Secretly I hope when we bring our family back next week and he's painted a picture of us and has it hanging in the shop.

That would be some serious laughs.

Guest Post: Selina Gomez and Justin Beiber

A beautiful empty beach.

Caroline and I laid out our sheet (since we only have two towels and they don't air dry fast enough to use for non bathing activities), for a normal day at the beach. 

BUT

We forgot that we were celebrities.

The way people stared and took pictures was like it was US Weekly Magazine sneakily taking paparazzi pictures of JB and Selina in Mexico.

and...

I think a crab bit my foot while I was standing in the water.

So it was an awesome day to say the least.

Especially when we topped it off with night badminton-we had to add a harder element because our skill was increasing too rapidly. And then our little hole in the wall dumpling guy who walks around bare foot-wearing a swimsuit-while cooking- and walking around an inch of water on the floor.

Sorry for making you turn the computer, or your head. But it's worth it.

This is my amazing ability at putting sunscreen on.

Just like my mama always said:

Sunscreen works.

Pretty Proud of ourselves

Me and Caroline were up for an adventure so we took a bus over to the new Westin plaza

We decided since we were foreigners, even though we were under dressed they wouldn't mind us seeing the lobby. We literally stood staring at the ceiling taking in the smell, the glorious non Chinese food smell for a solid three minutes. Until the manager came and asked if we were staying there to which we said no, and he then took us on a tour of the entire beauty. Me and Caroline were pretty pleased with ourselves and knew Matt would be jealous until ten minutes later he called and said "Hey on Friday do you want to go on a tour of the Westin," welllll we just did that actually.

Then we walked over to a soccer stadium and found these boys playing soccer with a tennis ball as part of their training. We also found a gymnasium, driving range, soccer field, basketball courts, and tennis courts. 

This is where all the children prodigies go.

Then me and Caroline decided to be domestic and made homemade tortillas with taco meat and salsa.

Matt claims it's one of the best meals he's had of Carolines, so we think we did pretty well for having to use a cup as a rolling pin. The creative thinking i'm learning here is unrivaled by any I tell ya.

The Modern Toilet was our next adventure of the day- where you sit on toilets and eat your food/ice cream out of a toilet or squatter.

Looks appetizing? It was.

Our bathtub banana split

To whom we were high maintenance and had them get an English speaker so we could ask if that was Mocha or Chocolate.

Shout of to Tina Fey's book Bossypants who makes a hilarious reference to this restaurant.

This weekend:

I landed in Xiamen, the Chinese preffered vacation spot, where my brother lives.

 Down a street market

 On Friday I finally got to see Hunger Games, with some of our Chinese friends!

An awesome mango ice Serendipity-but-Chinesey hole in the wall place where we cooled off from this 90 degree 90 percent humidity.

The coolest containers on top of one of the forts at the fortress

I shouldn't have played this, we began the day by dripping with sweat.

A traditional war performance at the fortress

The girls.

We've had a blast all weekend, i'm sad to see Abby and Caitlin go home

I rescued Caitlin's sunglasses after they dropped in the ocean, wave after wave, but I finally got them.

I did leave the seat on the bus very wet, i'm deeply sorry to the unfortunate Chinese who decided to sit down after me.

Moist

Yesterday and today are the only days so far that i've wanted to die because of the heat. Now I know my family makes fun of the word, but MOIST is literally the only word I know that can describe this feeling. You walk outside and you literally feel wet, to the point that a shower is pretty much useless. My hair has reached a new level of big-ness. Everyone is just panting and shiny and the whole no air conditioning thing is pretty awesome my friends. Pretty darn awesome. I hope you notice the sarcasm. Oh well we're off to Shanghai for our last vacation! I hope your weekend is fun, and involves less sweating. Gross.

Questioning Teacha

I finished testing my kids today and most passed with A's except a few who tried to have students sneak behind me or jump up and down and try to sneak the answer through the window. I know all the tricks people. I was asking one of the students if a pen and pencil were the same or different and he said "No" so then I showed him my shoes were the same and he said "no," so naturally I gave up and moved onto the next question. "How old are you?" "I'm fine sanks, and you?" Now don't question my teaching ability based on these two examples. The rest passed with flying colors and one girl explained to me that she is a twin, but he family only had enough money to send one of them to school so she got to come here.

In ILP we did a cake walk, except stickers were substituted for the cakes. Since the kids really don't know any music other than Justin Bieber, I decided to enlighten them to N'Sync. They for the most part loved dancing to them, but Tina took my Ipod and said "Teacha I want" so I was waiting for what she would put on and what did she put on? She put on Butterfly Kisses, the most popular wedding song in history. So we did our cake walk to that serenading song while the other kids yelled that they didn't like it.

Short Notices

Five minutes before I left to teach ELE, I answered the phone and found out that this week would be our last week of ELE. This is just one example out of many of the Chinese and their short notices (other examples include us getting five minutes notice before moving TWO times). So naturally we were all pretty sad, except one girl who cheered, but not only was it the last day but we had to orally test each student. Talk about hating your teacher on the last day. I'm super sad that I didn't get any time to give them a little party for how far they've come. They all tested really well, and I even found out a few are really smart, they just act dumb. Jim and Henry said they were going to cry, since i'm leaving ha I highly doubt that. I'm really going to miss them.

In ELE today I asked a girl where Tina was and she said "her grandpa" and then pointed up. I kind of thought heaven...but wasn't too sure what the Chinese view on afterlife was so I told them I didn't understand. So Tom thoughtfully over-dramatized a heart attack and fell to the floor and then Leo flapped his arms (like an Angel i'm assuming) and then Linda pointed up. So I did the universal sign of death (slitting your throat) and they screamed yes! By this point the whole class was laughing and then I realized how terrible the whole situation was...whoops

A Monday

Today Caitlin was doing rotations and informed me that she killed a spider as big as her hand in the kitchen classroom. So far I haven't been too shocked with the bugs here, there are these flying beetles that scare me, but when I saw this dead spider I wanted to cry. I know that seems dramatic, and it is, BUT this thing was harry and the size of your hand. Not normal. The day just kept going up hill when I was riding one of the girls bikes and ran over a wire and heard all the air immediately leave the tire. Me and Nicole and three Ayi's laughed so hard and then I had to walk it down the street to a mechanic where we said "whoooooosh" and pointed to the tire. He promptly fixed the hole and the tire while a whole group gathered and we were just laughing. Then the man wouldn't let me give him any money. Sweetest man ever.